When good comes from evil

L
ife, as I have remarked more than once, is at heart a human drama. And not just any drama, but one shrouded in mystery. Oftentimes, it seems as if the act of living provides us with more questions than answers, which is rarely satisfying to anyone; it is frequently that lack of answers that causes some people to conclude that there is no meaning to life at all, that it’s simply a matter of random chance that determines what happens to us. Why, we ask, do bad things happen to good people while good things happen to bad people? Why does God allow evil to exist in the world? It's a question that's shattered the faith of more than one person over the millennia, and continues to do so to this day - perhaps especially in this day.

Sometimes we find explanations to these kinds of questions difficult to come by, and often it's easier (and more effective) to illustrate a point than it is to explain it. Likewise, those illustrations will often come from unusual places; in this case, the classic Doctor Who episode "Genesis of the Daleks," which first aired in March, 1975. It is a brilliant science fiction story that deals, as sci-fi often does, with big issues thinly disguised in different wrappers. With "Genesis of the Daleks," we find as near as possible a perfect demonstration of the Christian explanation regarding the existence of evil, and what, in fact, it's good for.

"Genesis of the Daleks" begins with the Doctor (Tom Baker) being intercepted by a fellow Time Lord, who intends for the Doctor and his companions to take on a secret mission. As usual, the Doctor resents this interference by the Time Lords in his life, but his interest is piqued when he's told the subject of the mission: Daleks.

In short, the Time Lords plan to transport the Doctor, Sara Jane (Elisabeth Sladen) and Harry (Ian Marter) back to the planet Skaro at a time just before the creation of the Daleks. Once there, the Doctor's assignment is to prevent the Daleks from achieving their eventual domination and enslavement of the universe. To do this, he has three options: stop the creation of the Daleks before it can be completed; slow down their development if it cannot be stopped; or at the very least, determine what their weaknesses are, so that they can be better defended against.

As the story proceeds, the Doctor is left with a single choice: he can destroy the Dalek incubation room where the mutated creatures are being prepared for installation in their pepper-pot containers. Working quickly, he wires the room with explosives. And then arrives the moment we’ve waited for from the beginning of the story. The Doctor holds in his hands two wires: touch them together and the explosion will destroy the incubation room, destroying forever the Daleks and their reign of terror and death. And yet the Doctor hesitates.

“What are you waiting for?” Sarah Jane asks him. “You can’t doubt it.”

“Well, I do,” the Doctor replies. “You see, some things could be better with the Daleks. Many future worlds will become allies just because of their fear of the Daleks.” To Sarah Jane’s objection that this isn't how things work, the Doctor points out that the responsibility for this act rests on his shoulders – his soul, really, although he doesn't use that word – and no one else’s; he then poses a question of his own. “Listen, if someone who knew the future pointed out a child to you and told you that that child would grow up totally evil, to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives, could you then kill that child?”* It’s true that, as the Doctor says, “Hundreds of millions of people, thousands of generations can live without fear, in peace, and never even know the word Dalek” if he simply touches the two wires together, and yet – does he have the right? It’s not like killing a bacteria, wiping out a disease; this is an intelligent life form. If the Doctor does it, he becomes a perpetrator of genocide, no different from the Daleks themselves.

*That is, of course, the same argument made by Ezra Lieberman, Ira Levin’s Nazi hunter in his novel The Boys from Brazil. Kill all the Hitler clones Mengele has created – all of whom happen to be young boys, by the way – and you’ll prevent one of them from growing up to become another Hitler. Lieberman, like the Doctor, is unable to do it, and for the same reasons.

Ultimately, the decision is taken out of the Doctor's hands, through yet another plot twist. As the story ends, one of the Daleks inadvertently sets off the explosion. Although the room has been destroyed, Daleks outside the room continue to live, and the best the Doctor can hope is that they've bought some additional time to prepare for them - perhaps a thousand years or so. The Doctor and his companions manage to escape Skaro with their lives, which under the circumstances may be the best they could hope for. And yet there’s no doubt they’ve failed in the mission on which the Time Lords sent them, to prevent the genesis of the Daleks.

Or have they? “Failed?” the Doctor asks. “No, not really. You see, I know that although the Daleks will create havoc and destruction for millions of years, I know also that out of their evil must come something good.”

This is one of the pivotal moments in the history of Doctor Who. We already knew how it would turn out; the BBC isn’t about to kill off the cash cow that is the Daleks. But in resolving the situation, the Doctor, who in all of his incarnations has witnessed first-hand more Dalek-caused death and destruction than it would ever be possible for anyone else to experience, who knows the millions of years of “havoc and destruction” that awaits because of the Daleks, still remains confident that good will ultimately emerge from even the worst of circumstances. It is a profound statement; in effect, an explanation for the existence of evil.*

*Two profound statements, in fact, the other being the sanctity of life – even Dalek life.

Granted, there’s an entire theology dealing with good and evil – Original Sin, free will and the like. But in some ways the simplest answer remains the best, and this is what the Doctor presents. Note the force of his statement - some good must come from the evil of the Daleks. Planets and nations will come together as a result of them, and perhaps it will foster understanding between different races and species. People who would otherwise remain apart will meet because of them, and some of them will marry and have children, and some of those children might, propelled by the threat from the Daleks, come up with inventions that will greatly benefit the brotherhood of man. One need only look in our own time at the many scientific achievements that resulted from the space program, which itself was a part of a Cold War being fought against dictators responsible for the deaths of many millions of people. You can create your own scenarios, but the point remains the same.

Ultimately, all that's required to understand the nature of good and evil is faith - faith that evil is not the end-all and the be-all. Indeed, the Doctor's refusal to commit genocide, even in what would appear to be a good cause, speaks to the importance of one remaining true to himself, regardless of the costs. Christians might think of this as the sanctification of the individual, the ability to reach into inner depths that might not otherwise be exposed save the existence of such a threat. For a program such as Doctor Who, one that frequently looks at religion with a cynical eye, the message that comes from "Genesis of the Daleks" is a surprisingly affirming one.

But then we really shouldn't be surprised. It's a point I've made more than once here, that inadvertent prophets can be found in the unlikeliest of places, It also reinforces another point: the truth is always the truth, no matter how you package or present it. Bishop Sheen probably couldn't have said it any better. TV  

What's on TV? Saturday, June 13, 1970

The listings this week give us a blend of old and new, which you can see right off the bat with the Saturday morning offerings. The familiar favorites, The Jetsons, Bugs Bunny, Underdog, and The Flintstones,* mingle with newer shows like Cattanooga Cats, The Banana Splits, and Here Comes the Grump. The Flintstones joins The Monkees and Jonny Quest as former prime-time programs moved to Saturday morning. And then there's Wacky Races and its two spinoffs, Dastardly and Muttley and Penelope Pitstop.

*Interesting, isn't it, how The Flintstones started off as an animated version of The Honeymooners, kind of a sophisticated adult cartoon, and winds up listed as a kids' show?

The prime-time lineups are all in color now (except for an occasional movie), and you'll notice that ABC's completely lost its affiliates following Lawrence Welk; of the three we have here, only one carries the Durante and the Lennons show. I wonder how many affiliates nationally took that show?

Enjoy. The listings are from the Minnesota State Edition.

This week in TV Guide: June 13, 1970

I feel as if I've given kind of short shrift to the programming part of this feature over the past couple of weeks, so this week we're just going to look inside the cover and see what's on. For all our forays into history and sociology and the like, this is still a TV website, after all.

Variety shows, for instance. After all, we have a variety show star - Johnny Cash - on the cover this week, and maybe later on we'll check out what William Price Fox has to say about him. For now, though, we'll be content looking at Wednesday night's show (ABC, 8:00 p.m.), which features guests Jimmie Rodgers, Jerry Lee Lewis (singing "Great Balls o' Fire," of course), and Vikki Carr. Cash's cast of regulars is almost as impressive as the guest list on any other show: June Carter, Carl Perkins, the Statler Brothers, and the Tennessee Three. I'm not a country music fan, and even I know that's a powerhouse lineup. Johnny is up against NBC's Kraft Music Hall, airing at the same time; it's "An Evening with Burt Bacharach," and the famed songwriter welcomes Dionne Warwick (who did mighty well by the Bacharach/David songbook), Joel Grey (a hit on Broadway for Cabaret), and French singer-guitarist Sacha Distel, and while that's good, I think Johnny's on the money this week.

This is a great TV night, depending on your tastes, and speaking of country music, CBS still has Hee Haw as part of their schedule, and at 6:30 p.m. Sonny James and Tammy Wynette join Buck Owens and Roy Clark and the regulars, including Grandpa Jones, Sheb Wolley, Jeannine Riley - practically the Grand Ole Opry right there in the studio. Country singers never did shy away from appearing on television when they had the chance; as rock music gets bigger and the stars appear on TV less often, shows like these will be where you can go to see the biggest names. Even NET gets into the act, with B.B. King on NET Jazz (7:00 p.m.). That's followed at 7:30 by Bob Cromie's long-running Book Beat, with philosopher Mortimer Adler discussing his new book, The Time of Our Lives, in which he argues for a moral and educational revolution in society if man is to truly achieve personal happiness. All I can say is that he picked a good time to discuss it.

Later in the evening - see, it really is packed, isn't it? - ABC follows Cash with Engelbert Humperdinck, their second British import, and while a lot of people see him as a Tom Jones-wannabee, he's got a credible lineup of his own, with Phil Silvers, Paul Anka, British music-hall star Millicent Martin, and singer Dana Vallery. That's not bad. I know what I would have been watching that night, though - WTCN, the independent station, has live boxing from Madison Square Garden in New York, a heavyweight bout between Jerry Quarry and Mac Foster. Foster comes into the fight as the #1 ranked contender, but Quarry knocks him out in the sixth round, earning him a shot at Muhammad Ali later in the year. (Quarry was the only boxer of the top ten heavyweights willing to give Ali a shot.) Boxing in prime time, which had been commonplace a dozen years ago, was a real rarity by 1970, generally only seen in syndicated broadcasts like this.

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And now, back to the beginning of the week. You'll recall that a couple of weeks ago I talked about the KQED Auction, the annual fundraising effort by the Bay Area's public television station. This Saturday, back home in the Twin Cities, it's the final night of KTCA's Action Auction, beginning at 6:00 and continuing "until all the merchandise is sold," including anything that hasn't already sold, plus items donated during the week. (If it's anything like the auctions I watched, it'll wrap up around 4:00 a.m. or so.) The proceeds from this year's auction will be used by Channel 2 to maintain a weekend broadcasting schedule. This is so clearly in the public interest that TV Guide even gives you the phone number to call if you want to place a bid.

Also this weekend: ABCs Wide World of Sports presents (live and tape) satellite coverage of the 24 Hours of LeMans, beginning at 4:00 p.m. Saturday and concluding at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday. Back in the late '60s, at the height of Ford's campaign to unseat Ferrari as the dominant force in the world's greatest race (via the famed Ford GT), ABC's live coverage included the race's start and finish, which would have been around 8:00 or so in the morning. (I know this because I got up to watch it.) This year, by contrast, the entire 24 hours will be shown on Velocity, in case you'd care to watch the whole thing.

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Sunday morning has been the traditional province of religious programming, but times have changed, as Edith Efron notes in her article on how "social concerns overwhelm spiritual ones in the networks' religious programming." This can be seen in, for instance, CBS's long-running Look Up and Live (9:00 a.m.), which this week features "The Secular Sisters," described as former nuns who recently started their own community, reflecting their "change from a religious order to a 'lay community of religious persons.'"

Efron cites socially conscious programs like these, dealing with the generation gap (see Insight, 11:00 a.m., KCMT, in which "a rebellious teen-ager turns hippie"; Lloyd Bochner plays the teen's dad) the need to communicate (on This is the Life, 11:00 a.m., WDSM, another teen "finds adjustment difficult when his older brother returns home from prison"), the changing role of the church (for example, Town Hall Meeting, 10:00 a.m. KSTP - "Is Mass Evangelism the Answer to the World's Conversion?"), and Navaho poetry (no description needed). The problem with programs like this, points out Efron, is that "the theme of the individual and his relationship to God and the supernatural has been strangely missing."

Networks are enthusiastic about this "living church" programming; CBS's Pamela Ilott says that "the times call" for this "revolutionary social action." ABC's Wiley Hance, producer of Directions, notes that religious programming has been moving to the left for some time. "Those in control have been liberals. And some of the youth groups we've had on these shows are real incendiary revolutionaires. We did one four-parter on the black church, in which one black minister just about advocated black revolution. He came out for hiding arms in churches."

Not everyone is impressed by this argument. Episcopal bishop Charles J. Kinsolving was outraged by a church grant to an organization whose director was jailed for violent assault. "I wonder how many people have to be shot, how many have to be tried, how many have to be pistol-whipped, how many have to be tried, how many sentences have to be given before a group is considered violent by the church."

Many times I write here about the ways in which television reflects the dramatic changes in society over the last half-century. Just as often, though, I note how the more things change, the more they stay the same, and this is one of those situations. Anyone who's read my series of pieces over at the other blog on the Church's dramatic lurch to the left under the reign of the current pope knows that what I've just described is almost exactly what we're seeing in religious programming today. Since we're all about TV here, I'm not going to take off on a sociopolitical/religious rant; I just want to note that if you want to know what's going on in mainstream religion today, just read this article. Even if it is almost 50 years old.

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Still on Sunday, at 9:00 p.m. NBC's episode of The Bold Ones features "The Lawyers" (Burl Ives, James Farentino, Joseph Campanella); this week, their client is Craig Stevens (whom I've liked ever since Peter Gunn), playing a gubernatorial candidate whose campaign hits the skids when he's charged with murder. Fernando Lamas directed the episode, which I assume is marvelous.

Monday it's time for another look at the burning issues of the day; NET Journal (8:00 p.m., NET) takes an absorbing but critical look at the United Nations and asks the question, "Who Speaks for Man?" (Of course, today that would have to be "Who Speaks for Humankind? but that's another story.) The world seems to be filled with warfare today - Vietnam, Biafra, Czechoslovakia, the Middle East - where's the UN in all this, and why is it impotent - if it is impotent?

On Tuesday, Marcus Welby, M.D. (9:00 p.m., ABC) gets drawn into the world of LSD, with a young dropout who returns home struggling with the effects of his drug use, but with his antagonism toward his father intact. Longtime TV viewers will not be surprised to find that the father in question is played by Nehemiah Persoff. The other great social issue of the time is Vietnam, and that's the subject of 60 Minutes, which has yet to become a Sunday evening staple - it's a special, and it's on CBS opposite Welby. Mike Wallace talks to both draftees and career soldiers to get their impressions of Vietnam both before and after their tour. 60 Minutes isn't ignoring drugs, though; Wallace's co-host Harry Reasoner looks at the growing number of young Americans in European jails on drug charges.*

*Not-so-fun fact: Four months after this airs, a young American named Billy Hayes is arrested in Turkey on a drug charge. His experiences in a Turkish prison are the basis for his book Midnight Express, which is made into an Oscar-nominated movie.

I mentioned Tom Jones above; on Thursday night (8:00 p.m., ABC) Tom welcomes Victor Borge, British comic actor Harry Secombe, and singer-dancer Paula Kelly. At 9:00 p.m. Dean Martin, in one of his last shows before the summer break, has his daughter Deana, Elke Sommer, Frank Sinatra Jr., Charles Nelson Reilly, and Don Rice.

And on Friday there's this terrific double-feature on WDIO in Duluth at 10:35 p.m. The first movie is a real classic: The Magnificent Seven, with an all-star cast including Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen. What do you follow that up with? Curse of the Faceless Man, starring Richard Anderson. "In the ruins of the city of Pompeii, the body of a faceless stone man is discovered." Somehow I suspect there's more to it than that, but I suppose I'll just have to check it out sometime to find out. It is on YouTube, after all.

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There's a lot more to this issue of TV Guide, too. For example, Robert Higgins does a profile of CBS's morning news anchor, Joseph Benti. However, since I talked with Joseph Benti myself last week (he's 86 and sounds great), I think I'll save this until I write about our conversation, which should be in a couple of weeks.

Something else I write about from time to time is my upcoming book The Electronic Mirror, which develops the ideas I talk about here, about how television reflects (get it?) the cultural changes we've undergone. The book will be out shortly before I appear at the Mid Atlantic Nostalgia Convention in September, but it has to be done before that. Right now I'm in the process of reviewing the second draft, and in order to get this wrapped up, I'll be taking the next couple of Saturdays off, dipping back into the well to look at classic TV guide pieces from the past. As was the case last month, I'll have new listings on Monday (one reason why I reprint the old reviews, back from before I did the Monday feature), and I might throw in an encore piece somewhere along the line. One thing I won't do, however, is let the blog go dark - it, and you the readers, mean too much to me for that.

Speaking of those listings, we'll end this week with a few examples of something people have noticed on occasion - the habit that TV Guide has of abbreviating series titles, especially when they run a bit long. For instance; The Name of the Game becomes, according to TV Guide, Name/Game, similarly, Land of the Giants winds up as Land/Giants. (Oddly enough, Here Come the Brides gets printed in full.) Eddie's Father eliminates the Courtship, there's no Love in To Rome, Jeannie doesn't Dream, Voyage doesn't go to the Bottom of the Sea or anywhere else, and Disney's World isn't so Wonderful after all, apparently.

And that, my friends, is the kind of hard-hitting and insightful analysis you expect from this site. TV  

Around the dial

Hey, Hondo's back! Actually, it's Hal at The Horn Section who's back, and this week he's telling us about the November, 1967 episode "Hondo and the Judas," and some very sloppy work on the show's storyline continuity. Man, I just hate it when things like that happen - I pick, pick, pick on it. Just ask my wife.

At Comfort TV, David has a really, really good piece on how television is no longer "something to talk about." I recommend you read the whole thing, because this is an article that speaks to me in so many ways, particularly the idea of television as a shared experience. As David says, "Such connections, such common threads, are beneficial for a culture." The fact that we no longer have them does say something, doesn't it?

I mentioned last week that we're at the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. In a week or two I'll have more to write on that, but in the meantime, Andrew of The Lucky Strike Papers writes about the busboy who comforted RFK in some of his last moments of consciousness.

I kid you not - just before typing this, I was reading an article discussing how Formula 1 is considering reducing the length of its races to attract more viewers. What does this have to do with television? Well, at Garroway at Large Jodie writes about an early review of Today by H. L. Phillips that includes the thought that no television show should run as long as two hours. Have we always had short attention spans?

Did you know that Rocky & Bullwinkle had been revived? If I did know that, I'd forgotten all about it - good thing Martin Grams is around to remind us. Here's his review of the Amazon-based series, which I think I may have to check out after I'm done here.

Finally, a shout-out to Television Obscurities, which celebrated its 15th anniversary over last weekend. That's more than twice as long as this blog has been around, all the while putting out informative articles on obscure programs, as well as a titanic year-long look at a single season of TV Guide. Let's hope there are many more years to come! TV  

In honor of the World Cup

The World Cup, the biggest sporting event in the world, kicks off tomorrow in Russia, and so I thought it only right to take this very, very funny look at soccer as seen through the eyes of Monty Python's Flying Circus. If you're a fan of either soccer or philosophy, then I think you'll appreciate the utter absurdity of this situation.


"Beckenbauer" is one of the great German soccer players of the era; I think you'll recognize the rest of the "players." TV  

What's on TV? Friday, June 12, 1959

After a couple of weeks in the 70s, we're back to 1959 this week. You won't see all the stations you may be used to looking at in the Minnesota State Edition - KCMT, the infamous Channel 7 from my days in the World's Worst Town™, hasn't been born yet. What it does do is give me a rare chance to show every station that's in the issue, which is kind of cool. A couple of things you might notice: check out Anita Bryant on American Bandstand - that's not the Bandstand I remember. And the week's guest singer on Jack Paar's Tonight is Betty Johnson; one of her big hits was "The Little Blue Man," who was played by none other than Jack's sidekick, Hugh Downs. Anyway, have a good time!

This week in TV Guide: June 6, 1959

So what does happen when a show lays an egg, besides some clucking from network executives? (A little TV humor there.*) The show in question is Music Theater, the stars are Bill Hayes and Florence Henderson, the network is NBC, and the producer is David Susskind.

*Very little.

The series, which was broadcast live from New York, ran for just six weeks, and brings to an end what had been a very good season for Susskind, whose DuPont Show of the Month had run off a string of hits. David, what happened?

"We made an attempt to integrate song and dance with dramatic structure," explains the producer. "This is an integration that has been successful in the theater ever since Oklahoma! But we couldn't get television audiences to look at it in sufficient numbers to make it worthwhile for our sponsor. [Oldsmobile] So I myself made the suggestion that we kill the show."

It's not surprising that Music Theater would fail to draw an audience; many innovative concepts do, at least at first. (Remember Cop Rock?) One gets the sense of Susskind's frustration talking about the show, how he had wanted something "fresh." He stops just short of blaming the audience for the show's failure, but adds that "the defeat of this program was a blow to all future efforts to get out of the rut contemporary television is in."

There's not much about the show online, other than this nice article that suggests Henderson and Hayes made a very inviting couple on the small screen. They both went on to great success, of course; Hayes as one half of the soap opera power-couple with his wife Susan Seaforth Hayes, Henderson as the iconic Carol Brady on The Brady Bunch. And I wouldn't feel too sorry for David Susskind, either. As this week's article points out, Music Theater was succeeded on NBC by a sitcom called Too Young to Go Steady, starring Donald Cook and Joan Bennett. It's sponsored by Oldsmobile, telecast live from New York, and produced by—David Susskind.

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Speaking of quality television, the intrepid critic F.DeB (and I know one of you out there will know who that actually is) looks at what daytime television has to offer. A hint as to his thoughts? The article's title: "The Torture Starts Early."

There's no better way to begin than with this anecdote from Sam Levenson's morning show: "I got a letter here from a fellow in jail. 'I been watching TV all day now for a week,' he writes. 'And until someone put me wise I thought it was part of my sentence." Thus begins DeB's odyssey through the morass that is daytime TV—"treacly soap operas" with worried-looking chaps exchanging worried words with equally worried-looking ladies, and "foolishness" like Beat the Clock, Pantomime Quiz, and Day in Court.

And then there's Bill Wendell, onetime announcer for Ernie Kovacs, future announcer for David Letterman, and currently host of Tic Tac Dough on NBC. The question: "Name the city in Ohio known as the rubber capital of the United States." The contestant's hopeful answer: "Baton Rouge?"*

*It's Akron, by the way.

Perhaps the one story that sums up DeB's feelings the most is this exchange on County Fair, hosted by Bert Parks, who was "grinning away like a gargoyle." To a contestant who allows as to how he likes to sing, Parks tells him "Well, that's fine, because this lady likes to throw pies. Stick your head through this hole. Every time you sing the lady will throw a pie at you." She never hit him once, of course. I don't think DeB saw any hits the entire day.

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If I'm being perfectly honest with you (which is something I try always to accomplish, or at least to strive for), I have to admit there's not a lot to cover this week, which makes it a perfect time to look at some of the ads for the week's shows.

This one for Highway Patrol, starring Oscar winner Broderick Crawford, means business, don't you think? Not just the two cars ("Roadblocks!"), but the gun. Seriously, chief, I was planning on watching it anyway! I'm not sure which show had more violence though, that or Roller Derby. (now on Channel 9!) No matter what iteration of Roller Derby seemed to be on over the years, it was always the same teams, like the San Francisco Bay Area Bombers.

And then there's Rendezvous, a British-American anthology production that ran for a couple of seasons in syndication. According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, the show had a pretty good list of guest stars— Patricia Neal, Peter O'Toole, Bert Lahr, Gary Merrill, Mel Ferrer, Donald Pleasence, Leslie Dwyer, Lois Maxwell, and Kim Hunter. Unfortunately, none of them are pictured in the ad, but then you can't have everything, can you?

This ad is for a local program, Town and Country, which aired for several seasons on KDAL, Channel 3 in Duluth. I've typed this listing so many times over the years, I don't think my muscle memory will ever fail: TOWN AND COUNTRY—Becker

Imagine the kind of excitement that the winner of this will get. Not only autographed photos of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, but a phone call from the King of the Cowboys himself! That had to be a thrill.

John Daly: the man who knows his news, and that's his line. ABC's evening news lacked the affiliate coverage of the other networks; WTCN, the ABC affiliate in Minneapolis-St. Paul, didn't carry it, for example. Too bad; I'd like to see what a Daly newscast looks like.

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In this era before universal Daylight Saving Time, it's interesting to see the various differences in programming, especially when it comes to live events like baseball. For example, CBS's Saturday Game of the Week between the Yankees and Indians begins at 12:45 p.m. Central time in Minneapolis, Duluth, and LaCrosse, Wisconsin. But if you're living in Mason City, Iowa, you see the game on KGLO at 11:45 a.m. It's got to be the difference between who's on Daylight Saving Time and who isn't; Mason City didn't spring ahead, and therefore they're still on Central Standard Time. That kind of thing had to be hard to keep track of, not only in television, but in life as well.

Speaking of KGLO, at 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Ken New interviews the newly crowned Miss North Iowa of 1959! A quick look at the Mason City Globe-Gazette tells us that 85 young women are seeking the title, so the winner has managed to survive some stiff competition. (As to whether or not it was worth preempting Badge 714 though, I 'm not sure.) I'm always hopeful that though a quick Google search, it will emerge that Miss North Iowa wound up being Miss America, or went on to a great career, or fame, or something of the sort. No such luck here, though, or if it did happen, there's no record of it online.

And on the late night beat, Betty Johnson is the guest singer for the entire week on NBC's Jack Paar Show. I would assume she must have sung "Little Blue Man," the blue man in question being played by none other than Jack's sidekick, Hugh Downs.

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Finally, the story of Bill Baird and his puppets. On Monday at 10:30 p.m., Channel 3 Extra presents a 15-minute puppet show by Bill and Cora Baird.

At first I wondered what the famed Baird Marionettes would be doing on a local TV program. By 1959 the Baird Marionettes had appeared all over the county from television to nightclubs, and Baird had been nominated for an Emmy for the television special “Art Carney Meets Peter and the Wolf.” There would later be a tour of the Soviet Union, performances at the New York World's Fair, and an appearance in The Sound of Music (the goatherd scene).

And yet here they are, on a 15-minute local program. Had it originally been a network filler? Could it have had anything to do with the Miss North Iowa pageant? And then: do the Bairds have some connection to Mason City? Stranger things have happened, and sure enough, according to the always-reliable Wikipedia, Bill Baird grew up in Mason City - who knew? Not only that, he maintained his roots there, and there's an exhibit of his puppets in one of the city's museums. He's pictured here with one of his more famous creations, Charlemane the Lion. Was Charlemane part of the show that Monday night? Were they at the Miss North Iowa pageant? I don't know the answers, but then I didn't know the Bairds were from Iowa either, which just goes to show that you learn something new every day if you're not careful. TV  

Around the dial

Afine roundup of classic TV bits and pieces awaits us, so let's get right to it.

We'll start at The Twilight Zone Vortex, where Jordan reviews the submarine drama "The Thirty Fathom Grave," one of the weaker of the frequently-weak hour-long TZ episodes. Ironic, since I just finished reading Erik Larson's book about the Lusitania, Dead Wake, which - of course - has a lot to do with submarines. It's a better story.

David at Comfort TV remembers the shapely, talented Arlene Martel, a familiar face from many a television show in the 60s, 70s and even 80s. Of course I remember her best from her several appearances as Tiger in Hogan's Heroes; my friend Carol Ford, who interviewed her for her bio of Bob Crane, remembers her as a lovely, very nice woman.

Another visit to the Hitchcock Project at bare-bones e-zine: this week, Jack reviews season seven's "You Can't Be a Little Girl All Your Life," written by Stanley Ellin. This is an episode I haven't yet seen, and against all odds I've managed to refrain from reading Jack's review. That may just be temporary, though - check back next week...

Ooh, combining Doctor Who and The Prisoner! That's the story at Inner Toob, and it's a very funny pictorial view of some of the Doctors inhabiting the world of Number Six. Go take a look - remember, a picture says a thousand words!

Cult TV Blog takes a second - and even third - look at the Roger Moore years of The Saint, and comes away with a new appreciation for his performance. John also notices some differences between Moore's B&W Saint and the color years.

Television's New Frontier: the 1960s looks at the 1961 season one of my favorite Westerns of the 1960s, Wanted: Dead or Alive. There are, as always, some fascinating tidbits about this show, and the actors in it - including the charismatic star, Steve McQueen.

This week was the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Five years ago, I took a look at the coverage on television and especially radio, and how it evokes an earlier time. Yesterday I had a very pleasant conversation with Joseph Benti, the CBS anchorman who led that early-morning coverage on the network; I'll have that up in a couple of weeks.

Plus, a reminder that if you enjoy reading my essays on classic television, I'll be appearing at this year's Mid Atlantic Nostalgia Convention in Hunt Valley, Maryland on Thursday, September 13, at 11:00 a.m. discussing TV Guide as "America's Time Capsule." More on that later!

And more on TV Guide tomorrow! TV