Out of This World: Little Lost Robot

 "The wheels of Dr Calvin grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small."

This is the first episode I've ever blogged of this fourteen episode ITV series of plays from 1962, all science fiction, whether original or adaptations. It is also, barring a near-miracle, the last, as this episode is the only one to survive the junkings to which British television was so very prone. This being ITV, this time we cannot blame Pamela Nash.

I won't say much about thestory, which I recall from the original I, Robot short story. There is, it must be said, an odd change in that the robot with the modified First Law is said to be able to kill, which it is not: it can merely passively allow a human to come to harm. There was, I suppose, a fear that this, a stoiry of ideas, was too talky and lacking in action. Yet TV of this era was pretty much theatre with a big camera pointing at it. Talky is no sin.

Changes aside, I very much enjoyed this. It is a very early 's view of the future, of course: by 2039 we shall be orbiting Saturn and beginning to master hyperspace with our robot slaves, apparently. The robots themselves look... well, hilarious, and I say that with affection. The banks of computers, at lreast, look way cooler than real computers eventually would.

What makes this adaptation a triumph, however, is Maxine Audley's extraordinary performance as Susan Calvin. It's extraordinarily that she is, I think, still the only person to have played the part. Yet she will be a tough act to follow. This adaptation is, perhaps, just what it is. But it's a very nice little artifact. The intro from the actual Boris Karloff is just a bonus.

The Kiss of the Vampire (1963)

 "Made by grapes trampled by the feet of a peasant..."

Another Hammer. Why not? 

This isn't a well-known film, particularly. It has no stars, and makes do with Edward de Souza as leading man. It is essentially a collection of set pieces based around predictable horror film tropes which gradually reveas itself as a neighbourhood which exists to trap visting couples into surrendering the female of the pair, as a kind of droit de seigneur siruation, to the local lord, who happens to be a sexually magnetic vampire in the mould of Dracula- an aspect many films miss.

The tropes come thick and fast- the coupe, in their charming Edwardian roadster, break down in a sinister rutal area where the only buildings are sinister-looking edifices. The only local hoteliers are extremely sinister and mysterious. A bearded figure warns them to leave the area and ask no questions. This is a great film for horror film tropes bingo.

The twist is clever, though; the whole set-up is a cuning trap, and I love the scene where Gerald is gaslighted into believing, or nearly believing, that there never was a fancy dress ball (another trope), and that he came alone, without his wife. Gerald, an Englishman finding his wife seduced by some dastardly Mittel European foreigner, is fortunate to find that the bearded bloke is a kind of Van Helsing archetype, so they're able to defeat the vampire lord and his comical cult- with a chalk circle and vampire bats, naturally.

This film is delightfully bonkers.

The Prisoner: Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling

"For once I am dictating!"

Well, I can’t like them all. I know nothing of Prisoner fandom; is this episode disliked?

This episode stretches the format to breaking point. There’s no dialogue at the start, the Village appears only at the beginning and end, and Number Six is played by Nigel Stock in what must be a claim to fame; Patrick McGoohan hardly appears. Even more strikingly, the episode is centred around Number Six’s life in London, where his flat is suddenly his again, and he meets his fiancée and his boss/prospective father-in-law. Number Six is “wearing” a different body, yes, and disbelieved, but revealing so much about his life at home removes much of the mystery and would have been best left alone.

The conceit, of course, is the decidedly fantastic one of swapping minds between bodies, and there’s a nice twist at the end. It’s fascinating that Professor Seltzmann is played by eighty-one year old Hugo Schuster, who was born in Aachen in 1886, in Bismarck’s Germany and a subject of Wilhelm I, first kaiser of a united Germany. This sort of thing reminds you that the seemingly distant past was perhaps not so very long ago.

The episode lacks sparkle, though, and feels like filler to get them up to seventeen episodes. The format, outside the village without being based on a cruel twist, simply doesn’t work for the programme. And it’s McGoohan-lite. An eminently skippable episode. Please let there be no more like this