Through the Time Barrier

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.

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 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.

Have you ever seen Lois Lane, Perry White and Jimmy Olsen dressed as cavemen living 50,000 years ago? Well, you can see it in this episode: a landmark one in that it's the first one in Season Three which marked the beginning of this TV program being shown in color.

It's nice color, too, showing Superman's outfit in all it's red-and-blue splendor. Also shown were Lois Lane (Noel Neill)'s figure in a revealing outfit. She had a nice pair of legs, as it turns out. How did they all get in this predicament?? Well, none other than the work of "Professor Twiddle" (Sterling Holloway.....who else?), who tries out his time machine and sends everyone back in time 50,000 years. Included in that group is Clark Kent (who wouldn't wear the caveman outfit) and a crook "Turk Jackson" (James Hyland) who thinks he's figured a way out of getting out of a long jail sentence.

This episode has to be seen to be believed. Two actual cavemen enter. They look like your Aunt Edna and Uncle Charlie. Almost all the scenes are from a paper-like cave. We don't see too much else. This isn't exactly Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park." On the budget allowed on this series, we are lucky we saw the fake cave. Anyway, all of the parties return safely to 1954, thanks to Superman, of course.

Actually, this was a fun episode to start the new, colorful season. It's always fun to see Holloway in his usual mad-but-harmless scientist role, even if he has different names each time.

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.