Episode #05 - The Legacy

Air Date: 10/11/74 / Production #B-504 written by Robert Hamner Directed by Bernard McEveety

The trio of fugitives come across a decaying city, which turns out to be what is left of Oakland. Inside what was the Science Institute, they uncover a still-working computer which presents a holographic image of an elderly speaking scientist (Jon Lormer). Unfortunately, the power goes out after about a minute; Virdon & Burke concoct a plan to build a battery but are interrupted by a gorilla squad; in the chase, Virdon is captured. Since Urko (Mark Lenard) soon arrives, Virdon expects to be killed immediately, but, instead, he is placed inside an old castle-like home with a human woman and boy (Jackie Earle Haley). Zaius (Booth Colman) has also arrived and his plan is to gain information from Virdon using the female and boy, whom he thinks will replace Virdon's wife and son temporarily. The boy, who has scrambled all his short life for such basics as food, is all too eager to obtain info from Virdon, but Virdon's fatherly approach soon begins to affect him.
The scenario in this episode, and especially the locale, is virtually a duplicate of the episode The Trap, which also took place in a dilapidated city; the old city here looks just the same, though the characters react as if it's a different city. There is also a nagging discrepancy: the holographic scientist indicates the same futuristic technology as the old magazine which was found in the first episode, but the wrecked buildings are obviously 20th century. Something doesn't add up - and it's related to budget, surely; there was just no way to show ruined buildings from the far future of the 26th century. In the end, a full-sized computer room is located, but even this appears as 20th century technology. Overall, the episode is slow, dominated by a central act of Virdon hanging out with his new family and Burke building a battery. There's also a sense of waste - the heroes finally find what Burke terms a goldmine, but it's all destroyed by the apes before they can get any use out of it. BoG's Score: 5 out of 10

Trivia of the Apes: an early role for Haley as the kid; he went on to The Bad News Bears, Damnation Alley (1977) and, much later, one of the Watchmen (2009). There's sudden stock footage of a fiery explosion at the conclusion, probably footage from Operation Crossbow (1965), and it's done strangely since it suggests that Zaius and the gorilla soldiers were caught in it.