The Ray Bradbury Theater
Season 3

THE DWARF

A short-statured writer comes to a carnival to look at himself in the hall of mirrors, one of which makes him look normal sized. The hall or mirrors owner spies on him and makes fun to fellow stall worker Aimee. Intrigued, she follows the man, reads his work, befriends him and decides to buy a mirror to deprive the other stall holder of his gloating. This leads to a violent confrontation..

There is no genre element to this, just three interesting, flawed characters orbiting each other in strange relationships. As a result of concentrating on character rather than plot, this is one of the more fascinating of the stories the show has told to date. The fact that the story doesn't demean the titular character is also a big plus in its favour. The emotions on display are more complex and layered than is usually the case in this show and the lack of discernable plot means you never quite know where it's heading.

The noir atmosphere is maintained throughout and the performances are pretty good. This is a very good way to start off the new season.

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A MIRACLE OF RARE DEVICE

A pair of chancers happen upon a secluded spot with a miraculous view - a view people are likely to pay to see, a view that is as personal to each of them as their memories are.

Money is the root of all that destroys in this world, according to this episode anyway. The con artists who monetize the mysterious city mirage where no city exists in the first place create the miracle through being pure of heart (as if). Their angry rival who steals it from them fails miserably because he is only out for the money. Profit from beauty is apparently only OK when it is a sideline. Beauty created for profit is not permissible. At least not in this world.

Another terribly slight story, but this time around the characters are also slight and the resulting experience falls rather flat.

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THE LAKE

A young boy feels the first pangs of love when a girl offers to help him build his sandcastle, but she goes missing in a swimming accident. Twenty five years later, he returns to the lake where it happened only to find half a sandcastle built on the beach.

The sunny nostalgia for youth and first love that suffused The Emissary is once again in evidence in what is a fairly sweet tale of a summer of emotional awakening. The ghost story that is tacked on to it is ineffective, partly because there is not real threat implied and partly because the main character seems completely unmoved by what should be shattering events. This is a supernatural event, and an event connected to a deeply held trauma from his past at that, but he just puts his arm around his (current) girl and walks away. Presumably, the police would get around to talking to him about it later.

It's as shame that the ghost story here is undercooked, because the flashback actually deserved a better frame.

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THE WIND

Whilst a man enjoys an game of bridge with friends on a lovely calm evening, his colleague only a few miles distant is battening down the hatches of his house against an seemingly sentient and malevolent wind.

It needs to be said straight out that it is very hard to make wind seem dangerous on screen, unless it's of the twister or hurricane variety. For all Michael Sarrazin's panicky faces and a very dodgy backstory about a place in the Nepalese mountains where the evil winds come to work out their strategies, there's only so much fear that can be wrought by a few leaves being blown about. What could be made terrifying by words on the page is just banal and unthreatening on screen, right up to a denoument that fails to chill or surprise. This is one of the least effective of the show's episodes to date.

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THE PEDESTRIAN

In a city where the populace is doped into apathy by television, the act of taking a walk at night is a seditious and dangerous act.

As a commentary on technology turning humanity into controllable zombies, this story perhaps becomes more relevant with each passing social media platform release. The breaking down of connections as we stay at home and stare stupidly at our screens is a matter of current concern, probably even more so than when this episode first aired. The fact that this makes us more pliable to the faceless powers that be is also of increasing concern. The complaint about automated phone services is also relateable.

As a narrative, though, it is somewhat less successful. Two men go for a walk and discuss what is wrong with the world. That's not terribly exciting. The appearance of soulless patrol helicopters and ground vehicles perks things up and it is when the two men are cornered that things take a turn for the more interesting, as one of them observes that it is possible the system is fully automated and nobody is in charge any more. Would that we could have seen that explored more, but the running time does not permit it.

The script is also horribly wordy and pretentious, something that it is aware of and pokes fun at itself at one point. David Ogden Stiers makes for an engaging protagonist and manages to keep the worst of the script's excesses at bay.

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A SOUND OF THUNDER

A big game hunter travels back in time to face off against the greatest predator of all time - a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

A Sound Of Thunder is one of Ray Bradbury's most celebrated short stories, to the point where it was given its own movie, which mangled the story beyond all recognising. Here, there are no questions as to the respect the makers are going to pay to the story, but questions about whether the short running time can do justice to the story and whether the show's budget can do justice to the dinosaurs. The answer on both counts, sadly, is no.

Fortunately, the story comes off fine, with a decent adaptation crammed into the half hour running time. That doesn't really give us enough time to become familiar with the world in which it's possible to travel back in time to kill dinosaurs, which then makes the big twist at the end much less effective than it deserves to be. That said, the character study of a tour guide who openly drips disdain for the rich big game hunter is a tour de force from John Bach. He manages to make his infodumping dialogue much more effective than it deserves and gives the plot its chance to set up the big twist, even if that then falls flat. For his performance alone, the episode is worth watching.

The same cannot be said for the T-Rex. The model here is never even remotely believable as anything other than a cheap toy and it spoils what really ought to have been a jewel in the crown of the series. All in all, A Sound Of Thunder is a story that needs to be revisited now the technology has caught up with the imagination and originality of the plot.

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THE WONDERFUL DEATH OF DUDLEY STONE

Dudley Stone is a powerhouse of an author, with novels, poetry collections, plays, films, essays and lecture tours to his name. When a struggling author comes to a book signing to kill him, he seems strangely excited by the idea.

An insight into the minds of writers and champions both, this episode contains no genre elements, but concerns itself with character over plot in the same way that The Dwarf did, and is all the better for it. John Saxon takes time off from playing bad guys to create a fascinating study in the shape of the super successful Dudley Stone. His motive for wanting to 'die' are far more fascinating and nuanced that the struggling writer's hatred of a man who is taking up all the air in the room, achieving with apparent ease all that he has failed to acheive through years of pain and struggling. The combination of the two create a collision that is interesting to watch play out, though the structure of the story, created to fashion something of an unnecessary twist in the tail, doesn't make the most of the drama. The framing device of a memorial gathering is too artificial in a story that centres around such an interesing, nuanced and real-feeling character.

It would be interesting to know which of the two characters Bradbury most identified with.

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THE HAUNTING OF THE NEW

Grindell is the place where Nora held the most extravagant, decadent of parties, so her one-time lover is surprised when she calls him up out of the blue to tell him that the place is his if he wants it. And if it wants him.

The excesses of youth become the regrets of adulthood and in this story those regrets are manifested in the shape of a possessed house. The 'new' that is being haunted, the rebuilt house is made fresh and refuses to take on the sins of the past, just as Nora herself wishes she could make herself over and become fresh and new again.

This is Susannah York's episode. From the moment we encounter her in flashback at one of her parties, we are captivated, just as the writer protagonist was. The mischeivous sparkle in her eyes as she welcomes the newcomer to her revelries is contrasted by the sad and tired, but not beaten, woman ejected from her own pleasure dome. She towers over the story and when she is not on screen, the episode suffers from her absence.

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TO THE CHICAGO ABYSS

In a world that has lost all hope following a great war, one man defies the edict against remembering the past, speaking of the simple wonders that once were. For this, he is reviled by the younger generation that don't remember and hunted by the police, but there are those who wish to hear his words, and the hope they contain.

It's an odd title, since the only reference to the Chicago Abyss is shoehorned in at the end and has nothing to do with the story being told here. The harkening back to better times in the face of oppression is not an unusual theme for Ray Bradbury (see, for example, The Pedestrian, to which this makes something of a companion piece) and the protection of forbidden knowledge reached its ultimate state in the Fahrenheit 451. Those themes are distilled down to a nicely dramatised short form here. There is excitement and threat in the police pursuit and drama in the violence meted out in the face of the elderly hero's words at first. Then there is hope as he discovers there is an audience for his memories, and the hope of a better future that lies within them.

Harould Gould is perfect casting for the central role of the old man destined to become something of Messiah. Possibly when he gets to the Chicago Abyss we have heard so little about. Titual aberration aside, this is one of the most successful episodes the show has created.

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HAIL AND FAREWELL

A man who stopped growing up at age 12 regales the latest adoptive parents with how he took his affliction and translated it into a lifetime of bringing some peace and happiness to people.

People not growing old and being forced to move on every few years to prevent being detected is not a new idea. That the hero is a child makes the whole process harder for him, but it doesn't make the story any the more interesting. There are some bullies to be dealt with, and a young love who is now the mother of child his age, but these are interesting themes that the story doesn't have the time to truly examine. It tells of his journey, but not of the emotional toll that has taken from him as a result.

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THE VELDT

Lydia and George live in the ultimate high-tech home with their children Peter and Wendy. One of the centrepieces of the house is a nursery where holographic images of stories can be projected. Recently, however, the genius level intelligent children have modified the playroom to display images of the African veldt, with a focus of the natural violence of kill or be killed nature.

The Veldt is one of Ray Bradbury's most famous stories and was one of three picked out to be dramatised in the film production of THE ILLUSTRATED MAN. This version suffers in comparison from some very poor back projection and matte effects used in order to bring the high-tech playroom to the low-tech TV screen. It also suffers from a screenplay that doesn't manage to capture the creeping dread the parents feel or, for that matter, that has all the characters acting in a consistent manner. The child psychologist who visits veers wildly from "it's just a phase" to "you must shut down the whole house" to "shutting down the whole house might be a bad idea" in just a couple of scenes. The children also aren't given enough screen time to be truly creepy.

Considering the source material, this episode is a missed opportunity.

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Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar!

An ordinary man becomes worried by the aberrant behaviour of his neighbour. Could it have anything to do with the mushrooms the neighbour's son is growing in his basement? The same mushrooms his own son is growing.

A different kind of alien invasion, riffing slightly on the whole INVASION OF THE BODYSNATCHERS routine, this episode plays on paranoia and the idea that evil hides in the most banal of places. Something of the humour of the piece might be lost by generations who never knew the joy of ordering ridiculous project packs from dodgy comic books. No child today would ever be dragged away from their playstation to play with mushrooms, but it was a simpler time

Charles Martin Smith returns to the series and manages to make a solid centre to the story, proving to be just the right amount of sceptical, easily swayed and, in the final challenge, weak. Though it doesn't have a completely believable ending, it is a passable condensing of the bodysnatcher trope.

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