equesrosa

Perhaps not Cadfael's strongest effort as a detective but fascinating nonetheless as near-continuous rain, thunderstorms and rising waters threaten to swamp Shrewsbury and environs. There was some fine interplay between Derek Jacobi and the guest stars - an arrogant lord exerting his property rights, an equally arrogant prior in search of a favor, yet another novice hearing voices and seeing visions and a slave girl with an angel's voice.

One unusual thing about the episode was it began with a voice-over narration. I'd have thought that by the start of this final season of Cadfael, viewers would have enough sense of the time and place to render the narration superfluous. A minor quibble -- very distinct shadows on the ground in some scenes where it was absolutely pouring rain.

A complaint - background music that became intrusive, perhaps because rather than the instrumental music, this episode featured a lot vocal music. At times it went on long enough to appear to be substituting for dialog or scene changes. The music was lovely and the voices superb but the end result was noisy what with the storms, the sloshing around, the wagon and horses, etc.

Yes, there was a plot to assassinate President-Elect Abraham Lincoln as he travelled through Baltimore on his way to Washington, D.C. and his inauguration. And yes, Allan Pinkerton and his operatives foiled the plot, a bit of detection that helped reinforce Pinkerton's reputation as a detective. But nearly all John Brown's disciples had been killed in the raid on Harpers Ferry some 15 months earlier, or tried and executed. By Feb. 1861, the five who escaped or others who'd not been at Harpers Ferry would hardly have risked capture in Baltimore, a hotbed of Southern sympathizers, for an assassination attempt which could as easily have backfired. The Nov. 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln had already been received by the slave-holding states as tantamount to a declaration of war; who knows what the reaction to Lincoln's death prior to the actual start of hostilities would have been by wither side -- regardless of who pulled the trigger or set off the bomb.

I found the responses of Doug and Tony to Abraham Lincoln surprisingly muted; sure they were concerned about proving their innocence, but I expected a bit more awe that they were in his presence. Ditto for the crew back at the Time Tunnel. Are the general and the scientists getting jaded about seeing the giants of history in front of their eyes? Also the show should have provided a better explanation for the Tunnel's momentary jump to the actual Lincoln assassination in 1865. As the episode played out that foreshadowing seemed unnecessary, especially as it was presented inaccurately -- Maj. Henry Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris were in the box along with the Lincolns and the shooting took place while the theater was darkened for the play onstage. We can read Thomas Mallon's novel, Henry and Clara, for a highly readable and detailed account in a work of fiction; but the 1966 writers also had access to numerous works about Lincoln's assassination (one of the most written-about subjects in U.S. history).

The guest cast was uniformly good and the script was closely focused on the situation in Baltimore. General Kirk and the scientists seemed to have much less screen time than in the other episodes I've seen. Their one extended scene (with the boy who was transferred along with the ticking bomb) seemed concocted mostly to give the actors something to do. The choice of R.G. Armstrong to play Allan Pinkerton was inspired -- Armstrong closely resembles photographs of Pinkerton taken in the early 1860's except that the actor is much taller than the detective was. In an 1861 photo held by the Library of Congress, Lincoln towers over Pinkerton and General McClellan who stand on either side of the President. Since McClellan's nicknames included "Little Mac" and "Young Napoleon" the famous detective must have been on the short side, too.

Amazingly, after 11 episodes in which Ann wears what appears to be the same drab tweed dress under a white lab coat, she finally gets a new outfit -- a blouse with a ruffled collar and a skirt (both in a vivid shade of green) -- underneath the lab coat.

Still, attempting to present real historical figures - Pinkerton and, particularly, Abraham Lincoln - was a risky move. It's one thing if Michael Rennie doesn't match the Titanic's actual Captain Smith but another to tamper with the Lincoln image and persona. So the show's producers, writers and director deserve credit for making the attempt even if they changed the sympathies and motives of the would-be assassins.

If only Time Tunnel had stayed with the formula used in The Last Patrol or the story about the eruption of Krakatoa, this episode might have been more successful. Instead Massacre tries to increase the drama of the story and the visual effects on screen and fails to do either.

Rather than Tony and Doug getting caught up in the flow of the actual event as participants (which they did in both the aforementioned episodes), most of the episode has the pair trying to convince the Indians and the Cavalry to call the whole thing off. Any viewer with a bit of knowledge about the American West knows the Battle of Little Bighorn happened, so dramatic tension is destroyed, not created.

Likewise, the visual effect is negated by an unnecessary bit of borrowing. Viewers are treated to scenes taken from a fairly big-budget movie Western. Result -- the original scenes shot for Time Tunnel look like home movies. Worse, all geographical veracity is lost since the "borrowed" material takes place in the desert Southwest. Surely there must have been someplace nearby with a broad grassy field (and without mountains or an ocean) that could have been used? Add to this the dreadful wigs and the hazel and blue eyes of various actors playing Indians and this episode is the worst of the first ten I've now seen.