Having had time to digest the news, I'm willing to attempt to binge the rest of the series by the end of the month and keep my rough notes for future discussion, if there will be others to play along with.
I was thinking of doing the same.
Land of the Giants: "Brainwash": Yet another episode driven by the discovery of other lost Earth expeditions -- this time just equipment left behind by a dead expedition, equipment that Steve and Fitzhugh stumble upon by coincidence and that coincidentally was built by Mark's company so that he can fix it. But we get an early hint of the thread of the government security police trying to learn the Little People's secrets by any means, with Warren Stevens playing a prototype of Kevin Hagen's Inspector Kobick from later on.
If the giants' tech is 50 years behind Earth's at the time, that'd correspond to the early 1930s. But they have '60s-style automobiles, they have television (at least in "The Golden Cage"), and they've been seen to have some pretty futuristic sci-fi technology, like force fields, shrinking drugs, and the brainwashing foam seen here. It's pretty inconsistent. Also, the plot here doesn't make much sense, especially the contrived climax. Why is Steve so determined to destroy the equipment right away when it should take a long time for the giants to dig it out? Why not give Mark the 5 minutes he needs to contact Earth? Why does the scientist think that spraying his foam into the pipe won't damage the equipment? And Dan is unfortunately sidelined -- not only kept out of the rescue, but reduced to a passive observer in the gratuitous Steve-Mark conflict in the climax. Not one of his better showings.
The Time Tunnel: "The Alamo": Well, this is even a weaker depiction of the Battle of the Alamo than the version
Timeless did a few weeks ago. Naturally, it completely ignores that the "brave" defenders of the fort were slave-owners and slave traders fighting for their "right" to practice slavery. But that's only to be expected. There are some bigger howlers on top of that. Like the bit where the Mexican captain says that his wine is "courtesy of the American merchants" who fled the town ahead of the occupying Mexican forces. Texas was a rebellious province of the Mexican Empire at the time, so a Mexican officer would consider the territory's residents to be Mexicans, or at most Texians (as they were then known). They wouldn't become Americans until 9 years later. This revisionism makes the Mexicans seem like they were invading the US, making them more clear-cut villains. Which meshes with the very stereotyped portrayal of the sleazy Mexican scout who captures Tony. (Also, if Travis was a US colonel in this revisionist history, why didn't he recognize General Kirk's authority over him?)
There's also the historically inaccurate claim that Davy Crockett was killed before the day of the battle -- which is contradicted by the appearance of John Wayne's Davy Crockett in the 1960
The Alamo movie footage cut in later. But then, the appearance of the Alamo itself is completely different in the stock footage than in the rest of the episode.
Otherwise, a generally meh episode full of the usual cliches -- captures, fights, escapes, Doug & Tony's vain attempts to convince people they know the future, and the Tunnel's chronic bad aim at retrieving people from the past. Then there's the way Doug is hit on the head twice and is so concussed he can't even stand, prompting Tony to seek medical aid for him -- yet 15 minutes later, Doug is perfectly fine again.
Planet of the Apes: "The Liberator": This episode was apparently not shown in most of the US on first run, and I'm not sure if I've ever seen it. It's a pretty intense and serious episode about a human community that's made a hard bargain to provide captive slaves for the apes to spare their own people, and there's some interesting drama as our heroes debate with villagers who've made hard compromises and taken ruthless actions because they feel they have no other choice. And it even works in some classic PotA-style allegory about the horrors of warfare with WMDs. Interesting guest turn by Ben Andrews as Miro, who had a fairly rich characterization. Andrews sort of reminds me of a tougher Mark Hamill.
Also, I think this episode has had the smallest ape presence of any in the series so far. Aside from the few scenes with the gorilla troops in the first act, Galen was the only ape here.
I didn't even know that was the line...all the better!
