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The Wild Wild West :: The Night of the Howling Light (01x14)
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Episode Information |
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| Title: | The Night of the Howling Light |
| Episode #: | 01x14 |
| Production Number: | 3224-0125 |
| Original Airdate: | Friday December 17th, 1965 |
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Episode Summary |
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Shortly after returning from Washington with a vitally important message from President Grant to Chief Ho-Tami, James West receives a telegram calling him to the Samaritan Hospital, where his friend and fellow agent Artemus Gordon lays gravely injured. Arriving, Jim sees a doctor cover a body with the sheet, but when Jim examines the body, a plume of gas knocks him cold! It’s all part of a sinister scheme to ensure that Jim West delivers a message of an entirely different sort to the chief – a message that will ensure bloodshed for years to come! If Dr. Arcularis can bend Jim to his will, the agent will murder the chief, very publicly, setting off a war between the United States and an army of Indians a hundred thousand strong!
| | There are no foreign summaries for this episode: Contribute | | English Recap Available: View Here |
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Guest Stars |
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Episode Notes |
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Corner Slides
Lower Left: Ahkeema enters the lighthouse headquarters of Dr. Arcularis!
Upper Right: Light flashes from Ahkeema’s tie bar into West’s eyes...
Lower Right: Jim has shot Ahkeema, and stands confused as Ho-Tami stalks him!
Upper Left: The lighthouse at Barrows Point
| The "howling light" of the episode title refers to the piercing beam and mournful foghorn of the lighthouse where much of the story occurs. More generally, it refers to the techniques of unpleasant sensory overload to which Dr. Arcularis subjected his "patients."
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Episode Quotes |
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Doctor Arcularis: (as Jim fights the effects of a drug) Amazing! But I think you’ll find you are quite incapable of firing that gun. In fact, I find it difficult to believe that you’re still holding it.
| (Ahkeema has just emptied a revolver, putting a bullet through each pip on a six of spades).
Artie: Very fancy shooting!
Ahkeema: You should see me perform with a bow and arrow. Or a tomahawk.
| Ahkeema: Four years of college taught me respect for calculus, Blackstone, and Shakespeare. And nothing but contempt for the white man’s vices.
Artie: There’s one thing your four years of college didn’t teach you, Mr. Ahkeema.
Ahkeema: What is that?
Artie: Good manners.
| Ahkeema: Old Indian proverb - Insult an Osage brave only when you are weary of life.
| Ahkeema: (about Chief Ho-Tami) In a world of pygmies, he is a giant. Only a giant could have persuaded our tribes to lay down their arms and join together in one great confederation as a first step toward peace.
| Jim: Of course. A lighthouse.
Dr. Arcularis: A poor thing, but, my own.
Jim: I thought the government owned lighthouses.
Dr. Arcularis: Ah, but you see, I own the lighthouse keeper. Meet Joshua Trowbridge. Not very long ago I chanced to pay a visit to his lighthouse, and was impressed by its quiet, isolated charm. And I... how shall I put it... persuaded Mr. Trowbridge to allow me to move in with him.
| Dr. Arcularis: As a student of knighthood, you must be familiar with the ordeals those worthy gentlemen endured to purify themselves. Well, Mr. West, this... will be your ordeal. At first the enforced exposure to the light will be almost unendurable. But then you will find out that it gets... worse. Much worse!
| Jim: It’s too bad you weren’t around during the Inquisition. You would have been very good at it.
Dr. Arcularis: Yes, I’ve often regretted that.
| Dr. Arcularis: Ho-Tami has told his people that James West, the man he sent to Washington to ask the President for an honorable peace is a friend to their cause. So what happens when West cold-bloodedly guns down Ho-Tami in full view of everyone?
| Dr. Arcularis: You are a strong man, Mr. West. But I promise you that in less than ten days time, you will fire three or four real bullets into the clay Ho-Tami... and then, into the real one!
| Ahkeema: (somewhat bitterly) The triumph of science over bravery.
Dr. Arcularis: Bravery? To a scientist, that is a sentimental term signifying nothing!
| Artie: Now, where is he?!?
Sikes: They’ll kill me if I tell you...
Artie: And I’ll kill you if you don’t. The only difference is, I’ll do it now.
| Ahkeema: Bury... the knife... in me. Not in West. He is a brave man – his death will serve no purpose now.
Ho-Tami: Brave?!?
Ahkeema: It... was I... who wanted you dead. By his hand.
Ho-Tami: Why?!?
Ahkeema: To stop you from delivering our people into slavery.
| Ahkeema: (his final words) They will begin their whittling down... everything granted us at the peace table, and in the end... nothing... nothing but wretched little reservations where our proud people can starve in peace, and rot in peace...
| Arcularis: Indra! Fetch my casebook! I want to record to the second the exact length of time it takes for Mr. West and his friend... (Indra ignores him. She has defeated his conditioning.)
| Artie: What are they doing?
Jim: They’re trying to break out and get to the doctor. I guess they want to kill him. We’d better go down and stop them.
Artie: Ahhh... Why?
Jim: Must be some reason.
Artie: I can’t think of any.
Jim: It is a problem.
Artie: Um-hmmm...
(The door bursts open. Arcularis begins to cry out and scream.)
Artie: Say... do you suppose that a woman could be conditioned so that she’d never nag, never complain, never be anything but sweet and warm and understanding? Kind?
Jim: You’ve got a reason!
(The agents race for Arcularis' lab)
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Episode Goofs |
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How did Artie not know when Jim was hanging from the landing? It might be that Artie's conditioning dulled his perceptual powers, but Arcularis was directly below and could easily have seen Jim vault over the landing and hang beneath it. Yet Arcularis never warned his programmed killer.
| Dr. Arcularis claims Artie was nearly as difficult to condition as Jim, but Artie was conditioned in less than a day (Ahkeema says that Ho-Tami will be in St. Louis the following day on the day that Jim finally breaks). Jim was initially kidnapped a week prior to Ho-Tami's visit to St. Louis. It therefore took six days to condition Jim, and less than one to condition Artie - hardly the definition of "nearly as difficult."
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Cultural References |
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The European scientist to whom Dr. Arcularis refers is probably Dr. Ivan Pavlov, famous for his work conditioning dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell, by sounding the bell when delivering food to the animals. Arcularis' claims notwithstanding, there is no evidence that this association technique works on more intelligent forms of life, or that it may be used to break someone's will and turn them into a puppet.
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Episode References |
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The words of Ecclesiastes, specifically "a time to live, and a time to die" make their first "The Wild Wild West" appearance here, but they will appear in the dialogue of other villains later in the series.
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Analysis |
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When the naval officers came to investigate Jim's SOS, Jim sat bound and gagged just yards away. Why didn't he rock the chair or make some sort of sound? Even if the chair was too sturdy to rock, Jim could have made guttural noises through the gag. We must assume that either Dr. Arcularis threatened to kill the naval officers, and Jim did not wish to see them die, or that the small storeroom was soundproof or effectively so. The former makes more sense; there is little reason to soundproof the storeroom of a lighthouse.
| Why did Arcularis use Sikes to help kidnap Jim West, and not one of his own conditioned puppets? Had he used a puppet, Artie could never have learned about the lighthouse. Two possibilities exist. First, Arcularis might not have wanted to trust such a puppet so far from his guidance. If that individual broke his conditioning, Arcularis' plans would be ruined. Second, and more likely, is that Arcularis wanted Artemis to find the lighthouse - at the proper time. This is supported by Arcularis' conversation with Jim, in which he reveals that he expects Artie to appear at any moment.
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