A Place In Time

Starring Malcom McDowell and Sarah Wellington

Written by Steve Newby for the program

Where do I know Malcom McDowell from? Well, Tank Girl of course! He plays the main antagonist, the guy with the fake head and the robot arm. Here, he plays a researcher, making a discovery on a desolated island about a rift in space and time, and a device that lets him swap parts of his world out for another. And then, his wife, disillusioned with life on the island and praying for a way out of the reality she’s been trapped in for twenty years. This is the last episode of the radio drama, chosen at random from the list. It feels like a fitting end for the show, two people passing through into the twilight zone of their own volition. If only these people weren’t so flaky. Malcom McDowells character, Matt, is always easily swayed from what he wants to do with the device, and his wife seems, well, hm.

This episode, while it has some interesting ideas, doesn’t quite land it for me. Marie, the husband of the scientist, being so hellbent on finding a better life that she destroys everyone elses seems almost a bit offensive in portrayal? Crazy wife sort of stereotype, if that makes sense. Also seems to conveniently forget the consequences of the gizmos core operations the moment she’s trapped in them. It doesn’t feel like a character like McNolty in A Kind Of Stopwatch, who has too much arrogance to think through the consequences, it feels like a character too foolhardy to think that those dire consequences may affect them in any way. Also, her willingness to stay in the Nazi dimension and her baby murdering aren’t great signs either. Seems like the moral is to stay in your dimension, you may not like what other yous are getting up to.

Uh-oh, sounds like a new thing to be paranoid about! I’m sure the other Olivias and Ambers and Melodys aren’t getting into too much trouble. Though the thought of what life would look like if we did anything different does come to us sometimes. If we hadn’t said this or went to that or talked to such and such. The conclusion we’ve reached is that we’ve lucked into a pretty good life for ourselves, and if we had access to any sort of time machine or parallel universe device like what we saw in this episode, the most change we’d do is to go back and remind ourselves not to forget to take our meds. It’s not too bad when we forget, taking them or not taking them shouldn’t have too much impact on our reality.

I appreciate the way these Twilight Zone episodes bring out the hypothetical questions we ask in our down moments, examines them and their consequences. I reckon that’s whats so special about the show, how it elaborates on these simple questions, these minute changes in reality. I like this concept, but I wish it was written by Rod Serling. This isn’t to downplay the work of Steve Newby or anyone else who worked on the episodes written exclusively for the radio program, but there’s something about those Serling plots, how they’re written, that tickles my brain in the way this episode didn’t. I’m not going to claim some old dead white guy could ‘fix’ this show, but I would be curious to see what he’d do with this plot. It needs one more clever hook, the unmentioned connect between our Maries distaste for children and another dimensions Marie murdering her own child is interesting, and made more interesting by it not being mentioned. It makes me feel smart for catching it, yknow?