Thanks to this past weekend's Decades Binge, we interrupt our Really Big Anniversary Viewing for...
Wild Wild Catch-Up Viewing
The next episode I was scheduled to watch was "The Night of the Druid's Blood" (March 25, 1966), but the Binge skipped that one, so we pick up with...
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"The Night of the Freebooters"
Originally aired April 1, 1966
Wiki said:
While posing as an ex-con, Jim infiltrates a renegade army.
A young woman named Rita Leon (Maggie Thrett) pays a visit to the train to enlist the aid of Jim and Artie in locating her husband and their old friend, Enrique, a Mexican Army officer who's disappeared after visiting a freebooting ex- US Army officer named Thorwald Wolfe (Keenan Wynn). A sniper takes a shot at them with a rifle that fires explosive bullets (which only succeeds in making the window go up in smoke) and gets away. To establish his cover, Jim has a series of wanted posters put up with the help of a bespectacled, overeager young agent named Richard Henry (James Connell); then he goes to Wolfe's ranch looking for work and gets into the customary tussle. West subsequently meets Wolfe and passes an impromptu test of his skills against top stooge Sgt. Bender (William Campbell).
While Jim takes a look around the premises, he sees how well-disciplined and -armed Wolfe's men are, and spots Enrique (Andre Philippe) looking out the window of a cell. Artie rides in posing as Colonel Hernandez del Valle Santiago y Sandoval, Wolfe's man inside the Mexican army, and Jim is briefed on Wolfe's plan to use his men to take over Baja Mexico, currently populated by a Native tribe and unprotected by the otherwise-occupied Mexican Army. Wolfe then unveils a secret weapon of his own devising--a compact, heavily armored steampunk tank dubbed the Turtle. But Jim is quickly outed as a spy by the sniper, Oldfield (Robert Matek)...who manages not to recognize Artie thanks to his handlebar mustache and outrageous accent.
Jim ends up in a cell with Enrique, who'd been propositioned with an offer to fill the same role as Artie's pretending to, but turned it down. Artie pays a supervised visit and discretely leaves Jim some plastique explosive and a monocle with which to light the fuse--which Jim has concealed in his vest, and cuts to the right length with his boot dagger. Ever the big spender, the paper that Jim has handy to ignite for lighting the fuse is a concealed $100 bill. While they're planning their escape, Wolfe orders that the prisoners be killed via firing squad, but Artie provides a timely distraction by re-arriving as an old cantina proprietress bearing a wagonload of liquor and comely senoritas--one of whom is Mrs. Leon. Jim and Enrique make their break and commandeer the Turtle, using its firepower to take on Wolfe's men, though Wolfe counters them by crippling it with his X-2 explosive bullets. Jim exits the tank, temporarily taking cover behind a stack of explosives that Wolfe doesn't dare shoot at, and ultimately ends up in a brief, climactic tussle with the villain.
In the coda, Jim and Artie host the Leons on the train while Jim teases Artie about his last disguise.
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"The Night of the Burning Diamond"
Originally aired April 8, 1966
Wiki said:
West and Gordon investigate the mysterious disappearance of Serbia's Kara Diamond, which leads them into the lair of Morgan Midas. He has mastered a formula that can make him move so quickly that he becomes invisible to the naked eye. [Episode producer] Gene L. Coon later used this idea for a 1969 Star Trek episode.
Jim pays a visit to the Serbian Minister (Vito Carbonara) to persuade him to allow the American government to take the to-be-exhibited Kara Diamond into custody because of a series of mysterious and daring diamond thefts. Confident in his own security measures, the minister unveils where he has the diamond hidden on the underside of a trick table, and in the wink of an eye (
nudge, nudge), the door bursts open, the glass case shatters, and the diamond is gone. The minister assumes that West has pulled a stunt, so Jim has to escape from Serbian soil via tussling and a smoke-firing cane.
Meanwhile, Artie pays a call on a Lady Margaret Midas to offer protection for her diamond, and is met and turned away by the beautiful Lucretia Ivronin (Christiane Schmidtmer). Back at the train, the agents are called upon by American envoy Thaddeus Baines (Dan Tobin) regarding the Serbian Minister's official complaint, and the official is shaken when one of the exploding cue balls lends credence to Artie's theories that the diamonds may have been caused to explode. Jim then takes his turn calling on Stately Midas Manor, where he's met by Margaret's nephew, Morgan (Robert Drivas), and learns that Lucretia is his fiancée. West demonstrates how easily their safe is cracked, finds the diamond already gone, and is knocked out by an invisibly fast assailant who turns out to be Midas.
Jim is bound upside-down in Midas's lab and interrogated with electric shocks concerning how much he knows about Midas's work, and observes that Midas has disposed of his aunt. Artie pays Midas a visit as a friend of Lady Margaret, the elder Count Baron Felix von Schlesweig und Holtzbergen. Jim manages to get to a concealed miniature blade in his boot and makes a break. When Artie hears the commotion, he tries fighting his way through the manservants, Clive and Rudd (Calvin Brown and Whitey Hughes), and is joined by Jim coming downstairs...but the agents are promptly subdued by Midas, once more doing his "now you see him..." thing.
Jim and Artie find themselves both taken captive in the middle of the episode, which seems unusual, so that Lucretia can exposit to the skeptical agents about how Midas burns the diamonds to make his speed formula. Midas then attempts to recruit them to work with him as the easy way to get info about the traps that Artie has rigged up in the exhibit hall. He takes them to that locale and gives them some of his "diamond elixir," while chained together as a precaution, in his coach, with some very Trek-sounding musical cues as it takes effect and they find the world outside seemingly frozen in place...even the flask that Midas lets go of seems to hang suspended in the air. Inside the hall, extras trying to stand perfectly still can't help wobbling around a bit, and the agents hear something that sounds a lot like the Trek communicator chirp, which Midas describes as the individual sound waves from people talking. Artie lets Midas in on traps that would have proven ineffective against him anyway, counting on pressure plate-activated gates to possibly get him. But the agents' formula starts to wear off, Midas sees the gates starting to close at relatively high speed, and he leaves Jim and Artie to be trapped in them while planting some jewels on West to make them look like the thieves.
While the agents appear to be caught red-handed by Baines, when we return from the break they're back on the job, sneaking into Stately Midas Manor. Artie distracts the manservants while Jim makes his way to the upstairs lab. When Lucretia won't shoot West, Midas starts to swig his formula, only for Jim to punch him and take some himself. In their battle before the frozen damsel, they start to feel the side effect of air friction before Jim's formula begins to wear off, and Midas stumbles into a table where alcohol spills on him. With Jim back to normal speed, he and Lucretia watch an otherwise invisible Midas burst unconvincingly into flames. When Jim finds the two manservants trussed up downstairs, he asks how Artie did it...
Artie: Oh, I cheated. I...I used force!
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The Binge also skipped the last two episodes of Season 1, "The Night of the Murderous Spring" (April 15, 1966; a Loveless episode!) and "The Night of the Sudden Plague" (April 22, 1966). Onward to a partial viewing of Season 2!
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Nice. I didn't know Jagger ever sang with the boys.
He's singing along in the "All You Need Is Love" broadcast, but I don't know offhand if his voice is actually on the recording.
But they still haven't followed my suggestion of putting it in the water supply.
[Cue '60s Joker motif]
This is a good one. I don't recall hearing it before.
It's new to me...I included it because it's the single edit of a track from Rundgren's
Something/Anything? album, which is on the list.
The son of a legendary folk singer who'd previously gotten on our radar for starring in
Alice's Restaurant and his filmed role at Woodstock scores his only Top 40 hit.
This is not awful, but the 60s Bee Gees are all done.
Indeed, we shouldn't be hearing more from them in 50th Anniversaryland for a few years. They'll return sporting a completely new sound.
I have this, but it's not one of their more familiar hit singles.
This one I have some firsthand recollection of from back when it was on non-oldies radio. It's an account of how Nelson thought he was being booed by the audience when he performed a Stones song at a Madison Square Garden concert featuring '50s rock & roll artists in October '71, though it's thought by some that there were other circumstances he wasn't aware of behind the booing. In addition to the obvious references to John and Yoko, I read that the line about "Mr. Hughes" was a more oblique reference to George Harrison.
That was disappointing. I was expecting the band to save Mannix by beating the thugs with their guitars and drumsticks.
"Neil
SMASH!"
You didn't address the most pressing issue--should "Buffalo Springfield" be treated as singular or plural?
Interesting. I think the only Beatles song I find annoying is "Norwegian Wood."
And that one is my favorite...
