"Demon With a Glass Hand"

Production Order #41 and Broadcast Order #37 Shooting Days: 31 August-7 September 1964 First Air Date: October 17, 1964

Production Credits Writer: Harlan Ellison Director: Byron Haskin Assistant Director: Robert H. Justman Director of Photography: Kenneth Peach Composer: Harry Lubin Cast of Characters: Robert Culp as Trent Arline Martel as Consuelo Biros Abraham Sofaer as Arch Steve Harris as Breech Rex Holman as Battle Robert Fortier as Budge Bill Hart as Durn

Opening Narration:

"Through all the legends of ancient peoples—Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerian, Semetic—runs the saga of the Eternel Man, the one who never dies, called by various names in various times, but historically known as Gilgamesh, the one who has never tasted death... the hero who strides through the centuries..."

Plotline:

Trent, an amnesiac robot, is desperately looking for the three missing fingers of his glass hand (a talking computer), which are held by the fanatical Kyben: alien invaders from the future. The success of his assignment allows him to save humanity and know his real identity.

Closing Narration:

"Like the Eternal Man of Babylonian legend, like Gilgamesh, one thousand plus two hundred years stretches before Trent. Without love. Without friendship. Alone; neither man nor machine, Waiting. Waiting for the day he will be called to free the humans who gave him mobility. Movement, but not life."

Quote:

"I was born ten days ago. A full-grown man, born ten days ago. I woke on a street of this city. I don't know who I am, or where I've been, or where I'm going. Someone wiped my memories clean. And they tracked me down and tried to kill me. Why? Who are you? I ran. I managed to escape them the first time. Then the hand, my hand, told me what to do."

—Trent (Robert Culp)

Comments:

This is another time traveling episode (the trip is made possible thanks to a golden medaillon and a time mirror—at the beginning of Act I, Trent tied one Kyben soldier to a metallic fence which describes the time mirror as a stretched tight rubber band and when one medaillon is pulled off, the person returns instantly to the future) but with a strong war film leaning (Trent calls the Kyben, "super-patriots", a recollection of the German army of World War II) and the best season two due to Robert Culp's landmark feline-walking Spartan—Trent is a peacemaker Terminator ("the last hope of Earth", said the Kyben soldier)—and cerebral performance ("Tell me: What's it like? Is it quick, all of a sudden, like a switch-off? Or is it soft, slow... like jelly?" or "Try to beat the Devil!"), Harlan Hellison's tight script inspired by Gilgamesh's myth, Byron Haskin's silent film and film noir direction, the Baroque architecture of the Bradbury building—Trent is stuck up in there because of a force field ("a force bubble, it's an invisible barrier", said Trent to Consuelo) as Judith Bellero and Louis Mace during season 1—used as a set (which enhances the gloomy mood) and the odd music with shrill strains and distorted pianos which is Harry Lubin's best score ever heard for the last season. Harry Lubin's score reminds the hectic piano in Bernard Herrmann's "Hangover Square". Lubin also makes a use of theremin, organ and electric violin combined with echo and also makes reference to a three seconds cue from Igor Stravinsky's "Petrushka" (in "Petrushka's Room", Scene II; "Petrushka" is an opus about an immortal and unhappy puppet which feel love and it is assassinated, by the way—an obvious musical metaphor for Trent). One remarkable drama which deals with the theme of deep solitude, the inability to communicate and to have relationships and whose melancolic ending epitomizes it very well. As in "The Man Who Was Never Born", Trent, the leading protagonist from the bleak future, faces the dilemma of the end justifies the means: "To save all of man... I have to become a killer." Watch carefully the streetlamp prologue with the German Expressionist lighting or the straightforward shots of Trent's walking to the darkness out of the wet basement. I still enjoy the style of the Kyben which look like a blend between bankrobbers with stockings on their heads and die-hard irregular force ("I'm prepared to die!") straight from an arty silent film—see the black morbid eyes makeup that remind the skull of a skeleton: in short, Death, a grim reaper's army. One kamikaze and suicidal scene encapsulates well-enough the figure of the self-sacrified hero: Trent is ordered by the glass hand to let himself gun down by the Kyben. As in many episodes of the past season, there's a reference to the corridor obsession which is expressed by Trent ("I was in a dark place. Someone was calling my name, over and over ... down in a long corridor.") after its ressurection. I wonder if Trent is not a modern-day figure of Jesus Christ sent in the present to save humanity; the Kyben are the Roman legions invading another territory and crucify Trent by gunning down it and then it ressurects to free mankind--Trent and Consuelo are shot like in a religious Renaissance painting. The special effects of the Kyben's desintegration anticipate the one from Quinn Martin's "The Invaders". The shop mood makes me think of Stanley Kubrick's film: "Killer's Kiss", due to the disorderly heaping up of mannequins in the storeroom. I always feel a lot of compassion for the impossible and romantic relationship between Trent and Consuelo. During the intimistic scene, in the storeroom, Trent avoids a kiss from Consuelo; it's a strange way to react for an emotionless and mechanical being: it has all the evidents of a subconsciously deliberate mistake. Unfortunately, there's one incoherent aspect about the stiff glass hand: it bends as a natural organ. TV analogy: "The Twilight Zone" exploits the theme of the artificial man and its psychological side effects in "In his Image". Notes: Robert Culp is the voice of the glass hand.