episode #26 - Execution

air date: 4/1/60    written by Rod Serling, based on a story by George Clayton Johnson    Directed by David Orrick McDearmon

One of the early time travel tales from the Zone: a killer (Albert Salmi) in America's 19th century midwest is in the process of being hanged when he disappears, to the astonishment of the hanging party. It turns out, the violent man has escaped his sentence due to a 20th-century inventor (Russell Johnson), who has used his new time machine to whisk the cowboy away to his high rise office/laboratory. Unfortunately, the inventor has picked the wrong man to pluck out of his time and soon pays for it. However, the badman does not get away with much - he obviously does not fit in the 20th century and this becomes painfully clear both to him and the audience very rapidly, in the next few minutes. This has a standard TZ twist at the end. BoG's Score: 6.5 out of 10


Trivia From the Zone: actor Johnson is best known for his gig on Gilligan's Island, as a similar professor, but he also returned in another TZ time travel episode in the next season, Back There. Salmi also returned to the Zone in the 4th season's Of Late I Think of Cliffordville.