Recap
Wallace V. Whipple is a businessman always looking to the future. He sees that he can increase productivity, and cut costs at the same time by automating his business. This will put thousands out of work, but Whipple doesn't seem to mind. An employee, Dickerson, confronts Mr. Whipple and tries to help him see what it is he will be doing by ridding the business of human employees. Dickerson tries to destroy the computers and Whipple has him arrested. Whipple himself is found to be unnecessary by the computer and is fired, and replaced by a robot...
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Episode Notes
Dion Hansen was also in "Uncle Simon."
Richard Deacon may be best known for his roles as Fred Rutheford on Leave It To Beaver and Melvin Cooley on the Dick Van Dyke Show.
Ted de Corsia was also in ''The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine."
Episode Quotes
Opening Narration
Narrator: These are the players, with or without a scorecard: in one corner, a machine; in the other, one Wallace V. Whipple, man. And the game? It happens to be the historic battle between flesh and steel, between the brain of man and the product of man's brain. We don't make book on this one , and predict no winner, but we can tell you that for this particular contest there is standing room only - in the Twilight Zone.
Dickerson: I've worked at this plant for 30 years! And I've been a foreman for seventeen of 'em! In my book, that gives me some rights, Mr. Whipple!
Wallace V. Whipple: Well, you've got the wrong book, Dickerson! My book reads as follows: You're drunk and disorderly and trespassing on private property and therefore subject to arrest!
Dickerson: Tell me somethin', Mr. Whipple! When you're dead and buried, who'd ya get to mourn for ya?!
Wallace V. Whipple: Shall I tell you the difference between you and it? That machine costs two cents an hour for current. It gets no wrinkles, no arthritis, no hardening of the arteries! That one machine is a lathe operator, a press operator. Two of those machines replace a hundred and fourteen men who take no coffee breaks, no maternity leaves, no vacations with pay! And that, in my book Mr. Dickerson, is worth considerably more than you are.
Dickerson: They shoulda stopped you a year ago! Somebody shoulda held you down and put a bit in your head and poured in some reminders that men have to eat and work! And you can't pack 'em in cosmoline like surplus tanks or put 'em out to pasture like old bulls! I'm a man, Mr. Whipple, ya hear me?! I'm a man! And that makes me better than this hunk of metal! Better! betterrr! Betterrrr.... (Dickerson takes a crow bar to the computer and it bursts into flames. Dickerson falls over, seemingly dead, as Whipple grabs gun from security guard and shoots him.)
Closing Narration
Narrator: There are many bromides applicable here - too much of a good thing, tiger by the tail, as you sow so shall you reap. The point is that too often man becomes clever instead of becoming wise, he becomes inventive but not thoughtful - and sometimes, as in the case of Mr. Whipple, he can create himself right out of existence. Tonight's tale of oddness and obsolescence from the Twilight Zone.