Spring 2020, Issue No. 19.3½
TIME TRAVEL NEXUS PRESENTS . . .

Streaming Time Travel Films: Spring 2020
Part III½: A Few 50s TV Shows to Stream

—This is just a quick note to say that up in the ITTDB Citadel, we’re still working on Part IIII of the big list of Spring 2020 streaming time travel films. We plan to send Part IIII your way next Thursday (May 21) along with a reminder about why genuine time travelers never, under any circumstances, use that other Roman symbol for the number IIII.

Meanwhile, we hope you’ll enjoy the films in the first three parts of the list:

Part I: Netflix films in Spring 2020

Part II: 99+ films from Amazon Prime Video

Part III: Hulu, Disney+, and some new Amazon films

And just in case you’ve already watched all those films, here are a few streaming episodes of 1950s TV shows—all precursors to The Twilight Zone—that featured time travel. Enjoy!

Note: Click on any bold text below to go to the streams, mostly from YouTube. Thanks!

Studio One

Almost every week for a period of nearly eleven years (7 Nov 1948 to 29 Sep 1958), Studio One presented a black-and-white drama to CBS’s television audience. We can claim some of the tv plays as our own in the sf genre, and at least two included time travel (a “Berkeley Square” remake on 20 March 1949, and “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” on 19 May 1952).

One other sf connection comes from Studio One clips of William Shatner (in “The Defender”, 1957) which were used to portray a young Denny Crane in an episode of Boston Legal (“Son of the Defender”, 2007). 

The Connecticut Yankee episode is now streaming on YouTube, but I haven’t seen Berkeley Square:

• Studio One [20 March 1949]: Berkeley Square [not streaming]
• Studio One [19 May 1952]: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s court

You’ve heard of the transmigration of soul; have you ever heard of the transposition of a man’s body in time and place?

Lights Out

I wonder whether Lights Out was the earliest sf anthology tv show. The first four episodes were live broadcasts on New York’s WNBT-TV (NBC) starting on 3 Jun 1946. It was renewed by NBC for three seasons of national broadcast starting 26 Jul 1949, and I spotted at least two time-travel episodes, the first of which is on YouTube:

• Lights Out [2 July 1951]: And Adam Beget (from a 1939 radio episode of Arch Oboler’s Plays).
• Lights Out [30 December 1951]: Of Time and Third Avenue (from an Alfred Bestor story) [not streaming]

You don’t understand. Look at the short, hairy, twisted body—the neck bent, the head thrust forward, those enormous brows, the short flat nose . . .

Tales of Tomorrow

When Theodore Sturgeon and Mort Abrahamson sold the idea of this anthology show to ABC, they had the backing of the Science Fiction League of America, giving ABC first shot at any stories written by league members. They took good advantage of the deal, including stories by Fredric Brown, Arthur C. Clarke, C.M. Kornbluth, and others including Henry Kutter and C.M. Moore’s “What You Need”. That excellent 1945 story involves future prediction without time travel, but I included it in my time-travel list just because I liked it so much (and it was later made into a Twilight Zone episode, too). Hence, I’ll count the Feb 1952 airing of that story as the first time travel in Tales of Tomorrow. There were at least four other see-into-the-future-or-past episodes, but I won’t include them in the list below. After all, one must have standards!

In general, I’d place the stories on the more horrific end of the science fiction scale:

• Tales of Tomorrow [8 February 1952]: What You Need (by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore)
• Tales of Tomorrow [30 May 1952]: The Little Black Bag (by C. M. Kornbluth)
• Tales of Tomorrow [18 July 1952]: Ahead of His Time (by Paul Tripp)
• Tales of Tomorrow [19 September 1952]: The Chase (by Mann Rubin) [not streaming]
• Tales of Tomorrow [13 February 1953]: Another Chance (by Frank De Felitta)—stars Leslie Nielson
• Tales of Tomorrow [3 April 1953]: Past Tense (by Robert F. Lewine)—stars Boris Karloff

After my treatment, you’ll awake. You’ll find yourself in a room a thousand miles from here and back seven years in time. You’ll have absolutely no remembrance of these past seven years. The slate will be clean.

Superman

In the first episode of Season 3, “Through the Time Barrier” (23 Mar 1955), Professor Twiddle’s time machine takes the staff of the Daily Planet back to prehistoric times. I don’t know whether there was any other time travel in support of truth, justice and the American way.

• Superman [23 April 1955]: Through the Time Barrier

Time! That’s just the point . . . I’ve conquered it!

Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse

Serling wrote this one-hour time-travel episode as a pilot for a one-hour anthology show, but after it was filmed, Willaim Dozier at CBS requested a change to a half-hour format. So, “The Time Element” was shelved while Serling worked on a new pilot (which also had a stormy history). Meanwhile, Bert Granet, producer of the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, caught wind of the original Serling pilot and quickly snapped up the production for which he had to then fight hard with the Westinghouse bigwigs in order to air.

The story involves a time traveler, Pete Jensen, who couldn’t stop the attack on Pearl Harbor, but he certainly made his mark as the Twilight Zone precursor.

• Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse [24 November 1958]: The Time Element

Hope that you enjoyed some of those. Until next week, keep on travelin’! —Michael