Tales of Tomorrow (TV Series) Past Tense (1953) User Reviews

TALES OF TOMORROW: Past Tense {TV} (Don Medford, 1953) ***

[Bunuel1976 · 7/10 · 24 October 2013]

This is another good entry in this interesting series: linking it to the recently-viewed H.G. Wells adaptation THE CRYSTAL EGG (1951) is the fact that, here, we deal with the invention of a time machine (obviously the title of one of the most popular works by that visionary author). The star of the episode under review, then, is a veritable genre icon i.e. Boris Karloff; he plays an altruistic scientist who decides to go back a few decades in time so as to give to the world the benefits of penicillin, in the hope that untreatable sickness can be cured and lives saved…or, so he thinks, since the elderly man's plea for his drug to be tested on terminal cases is misunderstood at every turn! Even worse, Karloff's shrewish wife looks with equal mistrust upon his time-travelling device and threatens to destroy it; that said, the protagonist's own motive is not above simple profiteering – and, while the viewer is apt to sympathize with his plight, one also feels that the doctor's ultimate fate is a bit his own doing, given that he would not take no for an answer! In spite of the repetition (Karloff's arguments with his wife and his striving to convince unenlightened 'colleagues' about both the 'miraculous' remedy he is promoting and his own 'unrecorded' origins) and studio-bound look (for obvious reasons, never do we venture outdoors), the premise is sufficiently engaging throughout – and, needless to say, Karloff's commanding presence (and soft-spoken delivery) always constitutes a pleasure to the undersigned. Amusingly, this being a live telecast, an actor badly flubs a line early on and – boldly – keeps repeating it until he manages to get the correct wording across!

Interesting...but also a bit flawed.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 3 September 2012]

A very common theme in "Tales of Tomorrow" was time travel, so "Past Tense" isn't all that original in that sense. However, it is a nice diverting episode PLUS you get to see Boris Karloff on the show! Boris Karloff plays a rather different sort of scientist in this episode. While he is working on a time machine, his motives aren't 100% pure. Nope. This guy wants to make lots and lots of money capitalizing on what they've learned by 1953. Being a doctor, he decides to go back to 1910 and sell them the formula for Penicillin! But, like in so many shows about time travel, he finds he has a VERY hard time changing the past! However, it's not that simple. Despite being very smart (after all, he built a time machine), he behaved stupidly when he went to the past. They didn't believe him and he gave them no reason to. Had he done some research and made some great predictions (such as an earthquake), they would have believed him. Or, if he'd brought more than just Penicillin! Flawed but interesting.

Totally Lacking in Irony

[Hitchcoc · 4/10 · 11 August 2013]

I guess Boris Karloff could use a buck or two so he agreed to do this show. This is another one of those episodes where a couple minutes of thought could have led to at least an effort to make the plot interesting. Boris has created a time machine and has plans to introduce wonderful things from the future (1953) into other times. The target item is penicillin which he hopes to introduce to medical people, making a fortune in the process. Unfortunately, he is seen as a crackpot. Because a true explanation of his gift makes him sound crazy, he can't pull it off. The thing that is lacking is that he never has a chance. A character has to at least have some hope of succeeding. It's not here.