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The Wild Wild West
"The Night of the Juggernaut"
Originally aired October 11, 1968
Wiki said:
Someone is trying to run settlers off their land, buying some of them out, scaring others away, and even murdering those who refuse to leave.
An interesting connection between this episode and "The Night of the Golden Cobra" - in both, Simon Scott portrays a man who is obsessed with acquiring land after learning that there is oil beneath it.
Jim and Artie are checking on a homesteader named Jorgensen and find him dead just as they're attacked by a strange motorized vehicle that makes a fairly annoying racket and injures Artie. Wiki tells me that Artie's injury was written in to cover for an actual injury that Ross Martin suffered during the filming of another episode (not yet aired).
So Jim rides into Grey Ridge alone to investigate. He comes across a homesteader named Lyle Dixon (Floyd Patterson) being roughed up by locals while trying to buy supplies at a general store. Jim lets his fists express how he feels about the situation. The interesting thing here is the episode initially lets you to believe that it's a skin color issue, but we learn after the fight that the store has been refusing to sell to homesteaders in general, ostensibly because of resentment from the established ranchers in the area. Jim's invited to a meeting of the homesteaders, who do prove to be racially diverse, and a familiar annoying racket heralds the arrival of an uninvited guest, which we get a better look at. It proves to be a sort of brightly painted steampunk tank with a battering ram in front, a stack on top, and wagon-style wheels on its sides. Jim tosses a heat-activated explosive of Artie's in the stack, causing it to limp away to a more pathetic-sounding racket.
Artie rides in via wagon, having learned that the people moving into the lands being given up by the homesteaders are known outlaws. Artie convinces the homesteaders to sell him the deeds to their lands so that he can present himself as a target. Going into town in a Wild Bill-style disguise, Artie boasts and toasts with the spokesman of the ranchers' cooperative/syndicate, Bock (Simon Scott), and is knocked out by a drug in his drink. Meanwhile, Jim has located the barn in which the machine is kept, as well as a vat of oil, just as Artie is being brought in to sign away his land under threat. Jim intervenes but is forced to surrender when Bock holds a gun to a member of his own household staff, Lonie (Gloria Calomee).
Once Jim, Artie, and Lonie are trussed up and left unattended, Jim breaks loose with the help of a piton-launching device that doesn't include the pistol. The trio commandeer the juggernaut and take a crash course in learning to operate it, busting out of Bock's villa undeterred by dynamite and Gatling guns. Bock has rode ahead with some men to confront the assembled and armed homesteaders, expecting the juggernaut to catch up with them and mop the place up. But when it arrives, Jim and Artie have taxed its pressure to the limit and bail out as it plows into Bock's men and blows up in a cloud of impractically colorful smoke.
The train coda is in two parts. In the first, Dixon and Lonie hook up. The second, which was obviously shot considerably later based on the growth of Conrad's hair and sideburns, involves Artie having returned to the hospital, ostensibly to hit up some nurses, and Jim wooing the nurse who comes to deliver a message about him.
"The Night of the Sedgewick Curse"
Originally aired October 18, 1968
Wiki said:
West and Gordon come upon the Sedgewick family, whose members have experienced rapid aging. In an attempt to cure this disorder, their family physician has been kidnapping people afflicted with the same disorder and using them to test a serum he has prepared.
Working the day watch out of Presidential Errands Division, Jim is tagging along with a man named Redmond (Arthur Space), just to get him to sign off on an appropriation, as Redmond is checking into the Sedgewick Hotel. I get the impression he's supposed to be a legislator, but he isn't referred to or billed with a title. When a bell in the lobby rings from that room Jim goes up to investigate and is stopped by a pair of toughs--one of them being Red West, of course--who insist that their mother is staying in the room. Jim gives them the usual treatment for characters played by Red West and enters the room to find that it is indeed occupied by a little old lady...and returning to the lobby, he finds a different clerk manning the desk, who confirms the occupant.
Clerk: If you care to check with her two sons...
West: No, I, uh, I already have.
The new clerk insists that there's no other clerk, but Jim sees the man's eyeglasses lying on the desk and covertly swipes them. Jim checks out the address of the owner of the eyeglasses and finds him dead, alongside a symbol scrawled in blood. Then outside he sees a stagecoach out of control and saves its occupant, Lavinia Sedgewick (Sharon Acker). Jim takes her to her home and sees a crest outside the door that resembles the symbol he saw--three swords piercing a heart.
Meanwhile, Artie has checked into the hotel as a retired colonel. The desk clerk eavesdrops as Artie's getting a massage while questioning his masseuse, then when he's in the room alone the clerk turns the steam up on full and locks the door, but Artie manages to escape and stays in character as he complains about the situation. Artie has learned that Redmond is one of three occupants who received special treatment at the spa for an unusual disease called Lubbock's Distemper...all of whom disappeared.
Jim returns to Stately Sedgewick Manor for dinner and meets Lavinia's grandfather (Richard Hale), who's being protectively minded by Dr. Shrink...er, Maitland (Jay Robinson). Maitland tells Jim about the family curse, which started with the founder, who was burned for witchcraft, and his sister, who went mad with sadism. Lavinia acts tense around Maitland, and the old man tries to warn Jim of something but is taken away. Later the maid, Jessica (Maria Lennard), tries to warn him that he needs to leave or he'll die. After dinner, somebody tries to off him with the old "spears dropping from the bed canopy" trick, after which Red West and Not Red West enter from a secret passage. Jim gives them the increasingly usual treatment, then takes the passage down to a dungeon where he finds Redmond and a couple of others in a cell, all looking elderly.
The episode description really spoiled a twist that we weren't supposed to learn about until the last act break. It turns out that Maitland has been working on a serum that would help the family to deal with their own unusually rapid aging upon hitting middle age, which requires the test subjects to have a blood condition caused by Lubbock's Distemper, but the subjects have themselves been afflicted with rapid aging by the serum...Lavinia's "grandfather" is revealed to actually be her brother, a biochemist who had been involved in the experiments before becoming a victim of them. Jim is locked in a cell with Jessica which is flooded with colorful gas, but he uses an explosive concealed in the heel of his shoe to bust out.
Meanwhile, Artie has returned to the hotel as a Frenchman, wearing a different mustache, and the clerk doesn't recognize him. Artie makes a point of mentioning that he has Lubbock's, pretends to succumb to a drugged drink in his room, and is abducted via the old revolving wall trick and being carried out in a crate. He's smuggled straight to Maitland's lab in the Sedgewickcave, where he uses the ventriloquism that we saw him practicing in his first scene on the train to distract the doctor long enough to replace the serum in his syringe with water.
Jim finds Artie and the two are attacked by Red West, Not Red West, and house servant Felix (Gene LeBell), who learns what the usual treatment is for teaming up with Red West. When Maitland sees that Artie hasn't aged, he assumes that the newest serum was a success and Lavinia immediately injects herself with it...then rapidly ages before their eyes...though not ours, other than a shot of her hand. Maitland surrenders on behalf of himself, Red West, and the rest. After the commercial break, we see Lavinia on camera as an old woman (Kathryn Minner).
This one was a bit of a conceptual mess...the serum meant to fight rapid aging just happened to cause rapid aging? And they didn't make it clear just how bad the family's hereditary condition was, as every victim of rapid aging we saw had been given the serum.
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She was primarily known as a jazz singer. I never even knew she had any songs that hit the pop charts. Loved her back in the day. Beautiful voice and an absolutely beautiful woman. RIP.
I shoulda mentioned that she had another Top 40 song that came up as
50th anniversary business last year:
"Face It Girl, It's Over," Nancy Wilson
(Charted May 11, 1968; #29 US; #28 AC; #15 R&B)
She also popped up on a
Sullivan in November, which included this song.
I may have to pick this up, despite the dearth of words and phrases.
That's unexpected...I would've thought this album was right on the other side of town from your alley.
