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Twilight Zone Review: Nick Of Time (Aired November 18, 1960 – Starring William Shatner & Patricia Breslin)

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By William Kozy

(In my ongoing survey, asking “What is your favorite episode of the original ‘Twilight Zone’ series?”, “Nick of Time” is currently in 20th place with 84 votes.

NICK OF TIME:

The PLOT:

Newlyweds Don and Pat Carter sit in their car as it is towed into a garage in Ridgeview, Ohio. Here is William Shatner as Don Carter, in the first appearance in a Twilight Zone episode by any of the Star Trek regulars. He’s told by the mechanic that it will take 4 hours to get a new fuel pump. The actor playing the mechanic by the way, is Stafford Repp who would later go on to play Chief O’Hara on the TV series “Batman”.

Okay, now at this point I need to go off on a tangent because in researching this episode I have stumbled upon what I believe is a case of bogus trivia that has gone viral across the Internet. A bogus trivia item related to this episode and the TV series Star Trek. On imdb.com no less you will find under the Trivia category for this episode the following statement: “Stafford Repp, the Mechanic would later guest star in Star Trek with William Shatner in the ‘Spectre of the Gun’ episode. Okay so I go to look up who he played in that Star Trek episode. And he is not listed in the credits anywhere, not on imdb, not even on this very thorough Fandom Star Trek page: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Spectre_of_the_Gun

There is a listing for “unknown actors” as “Three bar patrons” in the Star Trek episode, but Stafford Repp was hardly an unknown actor at this point in his career, having already played Chief O’Hara.

Looks just like Stafford Repp, doesn’t he. So much so that it almost confirmed for me that trivia statement. But…hmmm. no he doesn’t REALLY look that much like Stafford Repp. And a simple cast search for the episode reveals that this actor’s name is Bill Zuckert. Did Stafford Repp/Bill Zuckert go by both names in his career? No, he did not. So what’s going on here, how did this happen? Well, the plot thickens.

 

Take a look at this photo of Stafford Repp as Chief O’Hara on Batman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stafford_Repp

And now take a look at this photo of Bill Zuckert, ALSO in Police Uniform, and ALSO from the TV show BATMAN!!!:https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0958451/

Except Bill Zuckert was playing a Prison Captain in that episode of Batman. So I feel like somehow, someone got their signals crossed. The name Stafford Repp led someone to the listing of Chief O’Hara on Batman, and so they look up Batman and there’s a photo that they figured must be Chief O’Hara, and they absent-mindedly forget about the name Stafford Repp and see that the name of the actor in their photo is Bill Zuckert, and so they look him up and see that “Hey he was in Star Trek with William Shatner just like he was in this TZ episode with Shatner.” It’s a decent enough bit of trivia so he sends it around, posts it somewhere and it spreads like a virus.

But I discovered it the falsity of it. Me. I did. So what now. Start alerting these various web sites that list this erroneous claim? Luckily I found out about all this before posting it here! Found out just in a nick of time. Oh! Right, yes, back to this TZ episode’s storyline….

Don suggests he and his wife grab some lunch. “Lunch? We can homestead!” his wife jokes. They’re a good natured couple we can tell immediately that they’re in love. As they stroll their way to the Busy Bee Cafe their conversation reveals several key aspects about Don, that so subtly foreshadow things to come. You can tell that some TZ episodes are better written than others, and this is one of them. One thing we discover about Don is that he’s up for a promotion, but as his wife warns him, “You are going to lose that promotion if you keep pestering them about it.” Apparently Don keeps calling the office to find out if he got the job over another guy who has seniority over him after all.

The other cool little touch that happens is when they walk hand in hand down the sidewalk they come to a lamp post and rather than break their hand-holding, Don says, “Bread and butter!” and they both walk around it. Suspicious much?

They play Glenn Miller’s “American Patrol” on the jukebox and then take their seats in a booth with a fortune telling machine called The Mystic Seer. You can ask it a YES or NO question. He asks his wife for a penny and puts it in and asks “Does anything exciting ever happen around here?” The machine offers its slip that says, “It is quite possible.” This is accompanied by an ominous chord of scored music, which I think the production didn’t really need to inject. Too soon.

OPENING NARRATION: “The hand belongs to Mr. Don S. Carter, male member of a honeymoon team on route across the Ohio countryside to New York City. In one moment, they will be subjected to a gift most humans never receive in a lifetime. For one penny, they will be able to look into the future. The time is now, the place is a little diner in Ridgeview, Ohio, and what this young couple doesn’t realize is that this town happens to lie on the outskirts of the Twilight Zone.”

The counterman comes to take their orders and when he tries pushing the chicken fried steak on the couple, there’s a little small acting moment from Shatner that I liked for no reason I can describe. It was the look and gesture he gave the counterman the second time that he tells him “No” to the steak.

Don next asks the Mystic Seer if he is going to get the promotion, and it gives him arguably a very specific answer rather a vague one: “It has been decided in your favor.” He calls work and it’s true! So now, his attraction to the machine is set.

He asks a long series of questions for fun at first, but then with increasing curiosity and even fear: how soon the car will be fixed, should they stay til 2:30? Til 3? In response to that last question the seer says, “There’s no question about it.” Don proceeds to stall their leaving the diner, but Pat protests, and he relents. They walk out and debate the events–whether a machine could predict the future and Don argues that the machine had been right. He then says a line you probably couldn’t get away with today: “Don’t treat me like I’m a retarded child!”

But sure enough a few minutes later the couple is nearly hit by a car in the street! Aha! Mystic Seer warned them no to leave before three, but they did! (I’m wagging my finger at them right now).

So Don heads back to the cafe and starts obsessively feeding it pennies and asking asking questions. He asks about the status of his car and the Seer answers “It has already been taken care of.” And who should walk into the diner at that moment but the mechanic, telling him that he lucked out, finding a part in town. The Mystic Seer has done it again!

What I like about this episode is that the build up to Don’s near-hysteria has a nice logical progression, supported by some fairly impressive coincidental answers from the machine. I contrast this episode with “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” which although I’ve always thought was an entertaining enough episode, was also however, one with at times a laughably unconvincing build up to the hysteria. It’s all just too much and too soon in that episode, but not so here.

Don tells Pat to go ahead and ask the machine her own questions, and so she does, but she tries to fool the machine by asking a trick question about when they will reach a certain destination which she knows they are not heading to. Don says, “But we’re not going to…”, but curtails his interruption as he realizes what she’s up to. The seer’s answer however is vague enough to not reveal its incapacity for predicting stuff, which frustrates Pat.

Don continues pumping it with pennies and questions until finally Pat has had enough and pleads the episode’s theme to him, “It doesn’t matter whether it can foretell the future. What matters is whether you believe more in luck and in fortune than you do in yourself. You can decide your own life. You have a mind, a wonderful mind. Don’t destroy it trying to justify that cheap penny fortune machine to yourself. We can have a wonderful life together… if we make it wonderful ourselves. I don’t want to know what’s going to happen. I want us to make it happen together.”

Her love and logic convince him. He apologizes to her and then addresses the machine directly, proclaiming that they “will go where we want to go, anytime we please!” They exit triumphantly, at the same time that a very worried looking couple enter the diner and spot the Mystic Seer. They make a beeline for it and slip into the booth They immediately start asking it questions. “Can we ask some more questions now?” and then “Do you think we might leave Ridgeview today?” The Seer’s answer to that one is unseen and unheard but from the wife’s reaction we know that it’s an utterly deflating answer. He continues: “Is there any way out? Any way at all?”….

CLOSING NARRATION: “Counterbalance in the little town of Ridgeview, Ohio. Two people permanently enslaved by the tyranny of fear and superstition, facing the future with a kind of helpless dread. Two others facing the future with confidence – having escaped one of the darker places of the Twilight Zone.”

TRIVIA: In The Twilight Zone Magazine, Richard Matheson the writer of “Nick of Time” said that he wished that actress Pat Breslin (who played Shatner’s wife) had been available to play Shatner’s wife again in the episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” which Matheson also wrote. But she wasn’t available.

The exterior street scene in this episode was also used in the episode “I Sing the Body Electric” and coincidentally both these episodes feature characters almost getting hit by a car on the same street. Furthermore, this same exterior street is seen in the opening of another Twilight Zone episode called, “Black Leather Jackets”.

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