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<\/a>By William Kozy<\/strong><\/p>\nBurdened by dim-witted logic, and a pacing as slow as moss growing, \u201cValley of the Shadow\u201d received only 3 votes in the survey asking \u201cWhat is your favorite episode of the original Twilight Zone series?\u201d This put it in a tie with 6 other episodes for 133rd thru 139th place. Reporter Philip Redfield (Ed Nelson) stops his car along a backwoods road to consult a hand drawn map that one assumes did not give him whatever answer he was looking for, so he crumples it up and chucks it out of his 1959 Chevrolet Impala convertible onto the ground. Oh that is strike one for you fella! That\u2019s a pet peeve of mine whenever I see it in the movies. When a character litters with impunity. <\/p>\n
It tells me immediately that the filmmakers haven\u2019t a sense of decency themselves unless they actually did want us to dislike the offending character. But I saw no reason for them to want that here. And almost immediately after that, as Redfield pauses at a sign pointing to \u201cPeaceful Valley POP. 981\u201d Redfield tells his dog Rollie, \u201cWell you just earned yourself a steak!\u201d and turns left on the road heading toward Peaceful Valley. Why did Rollie earn a steak? What did he do? It\u2019s never explained.<\/p>\n
One can go on and on citing these weird inexplicable things about the dialogue, character motivations, acting, story-telling\u2014all of them not making sense, but this essay would be 15 pages long. Trust me, I\u2019m sparing you a lot of dumb stuff.<\/p>\n
As a lead actor, Ed Nelson leaves a lot to be desired. It\u2019s a journeyman\u2019s performance, not quite terrible, but oh so uninteresting. And oddly obnoxious in a way that\u2019s hard to explain. It\u2019s just an instinct you get watching his character. You don\u2019t like him, and that\u2019s not the type of character you can get excited about following along in a story. If he were a villain, that would be different. One might argue, well aren\u2019t characters more interesting if they have a mix of traits? Yes, that\u2019s true, but I suppose what I\u2019m saying is that in watching this I just get the feeling he\u2019s too tightly wound up in a way that doesn\u2019t serve the story well. It feels as though the actor was directed to pinpoint every negative or unpleasant moment in the plot and exaggerate his annoyance with that issue no matter how miniscule it was. But the episode is not a character study about this guy, no, this episode is an examination of a fantastical little town with immense powers bestowed upon it and what the town\u2019s responsibility is with those powers.<\/p>\n
The first sign of the town\u2019s abilities come when Redfield stops for gas. His dog jumps out to chase a cat, but then a little girl (Morgan Brittany! From \u201cCaesar and Me\u201d!) takes out a strange device and makes the dog vanish which Redfield was able to see as he got to them. She runs away, but then her father comes out and Redfield and argue, using amateurishly written dialogue. But look closely and you\u2019ll see that the father is played by none other then James Doohan, Mr. Scott of Star Trek fame. He\u2019s hiding his accent, but watch the scene again and you can hear it buried in there. They both go looking for the dog, and when the father rounds the corner and is out of sight, he pulls out the same sort of device and makes the dog reappear. So something\u2019s afoot. Redfield asks the gas station attendant where he can get something to eat, but he\u2019s told there\u2019s no place, everything\u2019s closed. The pig-headed Redfield drives up ahead anyway, and the attendant gets on the phone to tell someone named \u201cDorn\u201d that there\u2019s an intruder and \u201che saw something.\u201d<\/p>\n
Redfield enters a hotel to inquire about food, and here we meet the romantic interest, Ellen the proprietor, whom Redfield interrogates with some nifty bits of deduction to shoot down all her explanations about the town\u2019s oddities. He is a reporter though, a smart choice by the writers, since this keeps him very curious, and eager to dig around. Except that\u2019s not what the story has him do next. No, he gets in his car and in a huff yells out to the attendant and father, \u201cThanks for everything!\u201d As he\u2019s leaving town on the dirt road, suddenly his car crashes into an invisible wall. As it turns out, the town leaders put up a force field to prevent him from leaving, which doesn\u2019t make the most sense since we discover later they would have liked nothing more than for him to have never found the town. It felt to me like they had satisfactorily dissuaded him from thinking anything more about the little girl\u2019s device, so they should have been relieved he was leaving. So why keep him there? I suppose I can buy that they just couldn\u2019t take the chance. He is brought to Dorn and two other men and they interrogate him about his his background. But they\u2019ve really only made things worse with their force field, since at this point he really knows something is screwy. And this interrogation sealed the deal. To the script\u2019s credit it does have Dorn admit he panicked.<\/p>\n
After using the phone at the hotel and checking in with the car mechanic who has done nothing about his car, Redfield returns to Mayor Dorn who gives him the bad news that they are not going to let him leave. They narrate the town\u2019s back story, starting with a demonstration of the device that makes things vanish and then reappear elsewhere. Hey, maybe Scotty got this idea from Peaceful Valley! Dorn goes on to describe how a man came to Peaceful Valley 104 years ago with \u201cequations the likes of which no one had ever seen or dreamt of\u201d. A lot of the mysterious energy this man entrusted to the town are similar to those you can see on Star Trek\u2014food replicators, transporters, etc. They have something else though that the Enterprise didn\u2019t: a device that can actually reverse time in a way, make things go backwards as though they never happened.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s my imitation of you as you\u2019ve read that: \u201cBut then, why didn\u2019t they just use that device on Redfield instead of keeping him prisoner?\u201d
\nExactly.<\/p>\n
The mayor continues to show many more of the town\u2019s secrets to Redfield, content perhaps that there\u2019s no way he can get away. Redfield then starts questioning the men about why they don\u2019t share this advanced technology with the world. Their rebuttal, and it\u2019s not an altogether illogical one, is that the world would just use it to weaponize themselves and seek domination and destruction. Redfield argues that they could stop hunger, disease, but they counter that \u201cthe same power that can cure sickness can also be used to destroy the innocent.\u201d Dorn follows that up accusatorily with, \u201cWhat did you do with professor Einstein\u2019s primitive calculation E equals Mc squared? It could have been used to bring water to the deserts, feed starving millions. Was it? It was used to destroy countless thousands of human beings!\u201d<\/p>\n
Redfield is given the choice to be killed, or to assimilate and live there. He chooses the latter. Next thing you know Ellen is showing him his new house. Redfield tells her that he won\u2019t be staying. It seems a risky thing to confess since the two have had zero time to develop a trust. How does he know she won\u2019t report that to Dorn? And anyway, how did they expect him to stay since they only put up the force field in emergencies?<\/p>\n
Later, Redfield fills Ellen in on the facts of life, how disease and starving afflicts people the world over. And he tells her the town\u2019s technology could prevent all that suffering, and he plays to her guilt over having anything she could possibly want. It\u2019s such a drab little nothing town, it seems impossible to imagine that no one has dreamed up a little amusement part, or casino, or even a beautiful park with glorious gardens. But anyway, Redfield tells Ellen he\u2019s going to bust outta there and do something about it. Ellen then puts the moves on and tells him that when he was first leaving town, her feelings for him were crushed. She tells him that she wants to be with him. He tells her that they must have freedom from this place for that to truly happen. She leaves, sadly.<\/p>\n
But in a little while she shows up again, this time with a car! She said she wants to go with him. Now that he has a way out with her, he inexplicably goes back to the unguarded mayor\u2019s office to replicate a gun. He sets off an alarm and when the three heads of state, burst in, he shoots them dead! Like a murderer would! He runs back to Ellen and they start driving off. Just as they leave town, he pulls over to tell her what he did back at the office to see if she still wanted to come with him. She then takes out a device and makes him disappear and reappear back at the mayor\u2019s office. It was all a test of his intentions. The mayor tells him that he will be executed, but not in the usual way. He has given it some thought, studied the laws, and has come up with a different approach. They point an imposing machine at him. In an act of sheer genius Dorn has used the time reverser to take Redfield back to before his dog jumped out of the car. Duh.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an episode that for my money had a very promising premise, but lousy execution.<\/p>\n
I rate it a 3.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n [si-contact-form form=’2′]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [AdSense-A] By William Kozy Burdened by dim-witted logic, and a pacing as slow as moss growing, \u201cValley of the Shadow\u201d received only 3 votes in the survey asking \u201cWhat is your favorite episode of the original Twilight Zone series?\u201d This put it in a tie with 6 other episodes for 133rd thru 139th place. Reporter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[24604],"class_list":["post-97445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boxing-news","tag-the-twilight-zone-review-valley-of-the-shadow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=97445"}],"version-history":[{"count":-2,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=97445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=97445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=97445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}