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Professor Mathers (Edward Mulhare) is doing experiments in evolution,
and for that he needs a human guinea pig, Gwyllim (David McCallum) - a
troublemaker who has some wild ideas about labour unions -, to put him
into his evolution machine and send him (genetically) 10.000 years into
humankind's future. Gwyllim comes out of it with a vastly enlarged brain
and the urge to learn everything. And he is also a telepath,
totally arrogant, and even shows a violent streak. But what's worse, once
infected with evolution (?), he evolves ever further, his brain
(physically) getting ever bigger and his ears getting all pointy.
Eventually, he gets so powerful it's dangerous, and he wants to go to town
on a killing spree to avenge himself. Then though, he evolves even further
and becomes a wise pacifist.
The wise pacifist now asks his girlfriend (Jill Haworth) to help him
evolve even more (using the evolution machine) - 1 million years into
humankind's future. But she rather wants him the way he was, and re- or
retro- or whatever-evolves him back to his original self. Oh well, one
can't have everything in one lifetime.
Now this is one silly episode. The story is ridiculous at best,
but the desperate urge to make this one Cold War propaganda by turning
Gwyllim (essentially the villain of the piece) into a supporter of labour
unions (a commie, in other words) and making his pacifist streak at the
end seem wrong is just pathetic. But of course, anti-communist and
anti-pacifist tendencies do pop up throughout the whole series, which
makes it charmingly out-dated at times and bluntly annoying at others.
This is a bluntly annoying episode.
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