10/16/08: “The Hundred Days of the Dragon” (1963)There’s a popular argument that
The Twilight Zone was the liberal sci-fi/horror anthology series, while
The Outer Limits tilted toward conservative views. We’re not so sure. Both shows shifted between paranoia and gullibility as the greater evil when it came to alien invasions or earthly politics. Sometimes the shows just got confused—but that could be fun, as noted in our entry on
The Outer Limits’
“The Architects of Fear.”We also have to credit
The Outer Limits for an episode about the scariest kind of alien invasion. This is probably a good time to choose paranoia over gullibility, and “The Hundred Days of the Dragon” is an old-fashioned Red Scare that seems terribly relevant. We’ll let the opening narration set the scene, since that’s why it’s there:
Somewhere south of the Mongolian border, and north of the Tropic of Cancer—in that part of the world we call the Orient—a slumbering giant has shaken itself to wakefulness. Passed over in most histories as a nation forgotten by time, its close-packed millions in the short span of twenty years have been stirred to a fury by one man: Li-Chin Sung, a benevolent despot in his homeland. Sung stands as an irresponsible threat to peace in the eyes of the rest of the world.Then the narrator introduces us to William Lyons Selby, “candidate for the Presidency of the United States—predicted by every poll, survey, and primary to be a certain winner in the forthcoming election.”
Selby must be a pretty good guy, since the narrator feels free to use the candidate’s middle name. We’re not sure if this Orient nation is afraid of Selby’s views, or if he’s just targeted as the frontrunner. The important thing is that Li-Chin Sung has a device that’s like a big waffle iron, and they can put some evil Oriental agent’s head into the thing to turn his face into a dead ringer for another person.
Which is what the evil Oriental power does to create a fake Selby, before assassinating the original and slipping in the devilish double to replace the newly-elected President.
Things are looking good for the Commie agent, but Selby’s daughter finally gets suspicious. She attempts to convince Vice President Pearson about the fake President. From there, the episode plays like a straight political thriller. The whole tone is more like 1942’s
Black Dragons, with young Vice President Pearson as a reliably wooden lead. The ending is also similar to
Black Dragons, since the weird saga is mostly resolved through the incompetence of the Commies.
This episode still ends on a twist. The fake President Selby is exposed, but that happy ending comes with a chilling finish. Our narrator returns to tell us something about the incoming President Pearson:
To Theodore Pearson, not even so monstrous a crime as the assassination of William Lyons Selby justifies an act of war—because there is no war as we knew it. Only annihilation. A great American has been killed in the service of his country. Now it is the job of those who continue to serve to carry on guarding our freedom with dignity and unrelenting vigilance.It’s going to take a lot of unrelenting vigilance if President Pearson isn’t willing to go after Li-Chin Sung and his putty-faced agents of evil. Maybe the poor sap will petition the UN to demand that Sung turn over all of his nation’s appliances that resemble a waffle iron. That’s not going to work. Were they making those
“We’re Screwed” t-shirts back in 1963?
Make it your own: This episode is from the same first season that included “The Architects of Fear.” In fact, it was the second
Outer Limits episode to ever air. That probably chased off a few eggheads. (The air date was September 23, 1963; a few weeks later, of course, a real Commie would assassinate our President.) Anyway,
The Outer Limits: Volume One box set can be found pretty cheap. Or—as seen by the graphic above—you can buy a cheap
old VHS copy of just this one episode.
