Through the Time Barrier

The very first COLOR episode, and it's a winner. Co-star Noel Neill said many times the producers filmed the series in color (in the 50s) for posterity, and it wasn't until a decade later, when these special episodes were released. What everyone did not expect was the absolutely beautiful, rich color, even surpassing the quality of tv shows at the time.

Color is put to very good use here, a goofy story all us kids will never forget.

Number #1. Lovable Sterling Holloway (the voice of Disney's Winnie the Pooh), plays eccentric Professor Twiddle who has invented a time machine. You know what's next...

Number #2. Lois, Jimmy, Perry White and a dopey gangster go back into time, 50,000 BC, to prehistoric days. Yes, filmed on a low budget, so don't expect anything spectacular, still 100 percent campy. Catch the cardboard rocks.

Number #3. I agree with the last reviewer, Noel Neill's animal skin dress(!) is an eye opener, and yes, may have inspired Raquel Welch (about 10 years later) to wear the same thing in ONE MILLION YEARS BC.

Watching Superman get everybody out of this mess is a mini classic, worth every single minute. Absolute fun, topped by the one and only Sterling Holloway. Sterling commented in later years he was told he would never be a star. That said, it was his distinct voice that made him a household name, a favorite of Walt Disney. He had the last laugh.

Best dvd box set via Warner Brothers. Seasons 3 and 4 remastered color. 5 dvds. Released 2006. A wonderful gift for fans, take my word, complete with features and subtitles.

I wonder why Sterling Holloway's absent minded professor character isn't recognized by the other characters in this episode. He is still as unbalanced as ever and was featured twice. He brings a time machine to the Daily Planet offices and is ridiculed by a career gangster and humored by the others. The machine works and they are transported back to the dawn of man. The crook tries to take over and the professor reveals he can only go back in time, so they are stuck there. There are numerous sight gags where they are forced to wear animal skins. Perry White has a pair of red long johns on under his. Lois looks very nice. It is a battle to find a mineral that the professor needs to reverse the time sequence. Of course, since Clark is there, Superman is there, but he is incapable of going forward in time. There's a lot of explaining. The whole thing is really for laughs.

It is obvious that the producers of the series wanted to take full advantage of the use of the change to colour and changed the direction of TAOS from slightly film noir crime to pure fantasy. The first of the series has the regulars of the series travel back in time to The Stoneage via a nutty professor's time machine.

It's pretty cheesey fare and indicative of the series on the whole. Gone is any sense of real danger and the darker and relatively violent and suspenseful elements that pervaded the first two series.

However, as if in recompense, at least in this episode, you do get to see Noel Neill's shapely figure and a close up of her rather fetching upper thigh and even a glimpse of her panties. Seems that the censors of the day were unusually lenient - remembering that married couples were always seen in double beds and words like pregnant banned from TV in those days.

We in Australia didn't get to see the series in colour until 1975 but it was a wonderful sight to see Superman in his red and blue outfit. In fact it was in a Superman episode that was shown at an exhibition of colour TV that I first witnessed colour TV. What a strangely thrilling thing it was.

I'm going through a recently purchased complete series DVD set. So, I've already watched all the episodes that come before this one. This episode, however, is the first that I chose to review. This was the first color episode, and a pretty lame start to the 3rd season. Our main players transported back in time, to a prehistoric setting. The episode is literally saved by Noel Neill, sporting a cave woman version of a mini skirt. Considering that this episode was released in 1955, having Lois Lane show off her pretty legs had to be "pushing the envelope." I'm glad they decided to take the risk. Noel looked great! Unbelievably sexy! Everything else about the episode was completely disposable. Only Lois, or Noel, made it watchable.

It seems to be a fundamental principle of fiction that when you are struggling to come up with plots, you somehow incorporate the concept of time travel. That is what is used here, a bumbling professor arrives at the Daily Planet office of Perry White with a time machine. In this case, it is in a small box rather than the massive props used in other contexts. At the time he arrives a notorious gangster is in Perry's office about to sign a confession and turn himself in. The gangster trusts Clark Kent to be fair with him in his dealings with the law. When the group of Clark, Perry, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane and the gangster get in the elevator, the professor is there and activates his machine, sending them all back to 50,000 BC. In a puff of smoke and a bang, the entire group is sent back in time. There is misfortune on two counts, the first is that the professor does not know how to send them forward in time. The second is that the gangster has a gun and takes power over the group, forcing them into a cave and dressing in animal skins. Clark is exempted because the locals could not find an outfit his size. Of course, a way is found to reverse the process and every member of the group is returned to the proper time. The story is about as simplistic as the fifties episodes of Superman ever got. Jimmy shows a little more backbone than his usual "Golly" uttering self and Lois stands up a bit as well. The professor is a babbler and a bumbler, the type that can only appear in fiction. As a former professor, I have never met one this inept, they all have their research memorized. What makes this episode different from some of the others is the animal skin outfit that Noel Neill wears. I was astonished that it managed to get past the censors of the 1950's. In a scene where all succumb to cave gas, the viewer is treated to an (upskirt?) image when Lois is laying head directed away from the camera. Much has been said about the outfit Raquel Welch wore in "One Million Years B. C.," but that movie was made almost ten years later. Neill is just as hot, although she doesn't perform the same moves.