episode #05 - The Sixth Finger

Air Date: 10/14/63 writer: Ellis St. Joseph Director: James Goldstone

One of the more famous episodes: David McCallum plays a Welsh miner who volunteers for an experiment; he's kind of a typical rough 'n' tumble villager, but a local girl (Jill Haworth) sees something more in him. She introduces him to the recently-arrived scientist (Edward Mulhare) who has constructed a very special machine. Soon enough, the average man is evolved to where man will supposedly be in 20,000 years; but, it doesn't stop there: the mutation progresses on its own and, just a day later, he's where man will be in a million years. A unique glimpse into a far future - without leaving the 20th century.
McCallum (very soon to be famous in The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) is good as the average guy-then super mutant. The change in him, much more than just physical, is eerie and even scary - after the initial change, he can already read minds (telepathy); then he turns into something not even recognizably human, as far removed from us as we are from tree monkeys. Mulhare is also excellent as the superior intellectual - then outmatched creator. The ending gives us all an easy out - the evolved super being lacks patience to let the changes continue on their own and returns to the magic machine - but overall a challenging effort for sf TV. BoG's Score: 7.5 out of 10
NOTE:
the plot of this episode is very similar to a sf short story from 1931, "The Man Who Evolved" by Edmond Hamilton.

Outer Trivia: Star Trek TOS actor alert - Janos Prohaska, more famed for his monster suits on TOS, played the overgrown chimp in this episode.