Episode #02 - The Gladiators

Air Date: 09/20/74 / Production #B-502 written by Art Wallace Directed by Don McDougall

The trio of fugitives come across two men (William Smith & Marc Singer) beating the crap out of each other. When the older, bigger one (Smith) begins to win, Burke (James Naughton) decides to interfere and a big fight breaks out. In the melee, Virdon drops his precious magnetic recording disk (acquired in the 1st episode); the fugitives flee when an ape on horseback approaches. This turns out to be the local prefect (John Hoyt), a seemingly kindly and understanding elder chimp who has developed gladiatorial games for the local humans so that they can purge their pent-up hostility. The two fighters are actually father and son, training for the games. The older one is the local champe'en fighter. Oh, and, the games are to the death, of course (so much for kindly chimpanzees). Virdon feels it necessary to retrieve the disk, picked up by the prefect, so Galen offers to try, being the one who can walk in unmolested, but the other two manage to get themselves captured anyway. Meanwhile, Urko (Mark Lenard) sends in one of his gorilla henchmen to capture (er, eliminate ) the fugitives.
It seems like every sci-fi TV series has at least one episode revolving around the concept of gladiatorial combat (the original Star Trek had The Gamesters of Triskelion and Bread and Circuses). Such an episode instantly offers some intense action scenes; the fighting here is simply hand-to-hand combat and the winner is then given a sword to finish the job. In this case, Burke is matched against top fighter Tolar (Smith); though Tolar is bigger & stronger, Burke manages to outfight him using his training. But, he refuses to deliver the fatal sword thrust, plunging Tolar into a death-like shame. As Tolar, William Smith was a natural for the role, then in his prime as a massively-muscled actor usually cast as a villain. In this one, however, he also comes across as pitiable, a servant of apes who knows no other way to behave. His near-conversion near the end is actually quite effective and emotional. BoG's Score: 6.5 out of 10

Trivia of the Apes: an early role for Singer, who went on to star in The Beastmaster (1982) and the V mini-series and subsequent series.