Saturday Action Matinee

The Resolution: Bruce, Skeets, and ace G-man Marvin are in the Indian’s wicker basket elevator (yes, you may snicker) when the Indians above chop through the rope! The basket plummets! Fortunately, it falls directly on a tree and holds, so everyone aboard can climb into the tree and shimmy down to safety. Wait, which is there a tree directly beneath the basket elevator?

The Narrative: Good golly, I’m getting tired of this “back and forth between three or four locations” storyline. The three of them hike back down to Ghost Town to get Mary and Kent, who in the meantime have discovered the counterfeiter’s plates which they left behind while they took the first load of people up to the cabin. Bruce is supposed to take Kent, Skeets and Mary back to the Scout camp while Marvin snoops around a little bit, but it just so happens that the path to the camp runs right beside the mountain road the counterfeiters use to come back down the mountain (and get a flat tire, which gives them an occasion to get out and talk about things they already know just so Bruce can overhear it). Bruce uses Mary’s compact mirror to signal back down to Marvin in Ghost Town (via Morse code) to be ready for the counterfeiters. Marvin gets the drop on the two of them, ties one up, and forces the other to drive him (yup) back up the mountain to the cabin.

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The Preamble: My triumphant return! Because doggone it, you can’t put off the Boy Scouts forever. Though I would have been back to this serial even earlier if there were cookies involved. The Boy Scouts need to sell cookies. Or jerky. Something yummy.

The Resolution: A big ol’ waterfall — every river has one! — was just about to swallow the canoe containing Scout Leader Bruce, fellow Scout Ken, and Mary Scanlon, who were drifting downriver to see if Mary’s brother Skeets had drifted the same way. In a show of honesty, there’s no cheat to get out of the cliffhanger. The canoe goes over the falls with all three inside. It even breaks immediately on impact with the water! And how do the three escape? They simply swim to shore like nothing’s wrong. Now, I expect that kind of sturdy indestructibility from Boy Scouts, but Mary’s a girl, and that means she’s more tender and fragile and stuff, so I don’t know.

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Because of some recent medical troubles, I don’t have sufficient stamina to keep up with all of my web ventures, so I’m sorry to say that Saturday Action Matinee will be on an indeterminate hiatus as I recuperate. Please stay subscribed to the RSS feed so you’ll know the exact moment that I spring back into action.

For this chapter, try to keep up. I don’t want these recaps to grow to gargantuan length, but especially this time out there’s plenty of happenings shoved into the one installment, and I don’t want to leave out anything that might turn out to be important down the road. Much of what happens is silly, admittedly, but that’s never stopped us before. And anyway, this time out we get to see many more of the central scouting skills on display.

For instance, tracking. When last we left Bruce Scott, Boy Scout Wonder, he and a few other Scouts had tracked the eagle who had stolen the satchel with their two-way radio. Bruce circles one direction while the other couple go around the hill the other way (which, I think, betrays a certain two-dimensional character to their tactics, given that eagles have the entire sky open to them); Bruce falls through a hidden pit trap, and is quickly encircled about by Indians.

The other Scouts, coming around the hill, see the chase and capture, and run back to camp for reinforcements. They manage to convince the rest of the troop surprisingly easily that, no really, there are Indians up here in the hills! Even Marvin, Ace G-Man who’s just arrived back at their camp, utters only one “Indian? Impossible” before nevertheless accepting their assertion and throwing in with them to help rescue Bruce. I was expecting a little more skepticism; being captured by Indians in 1939 is only one degree more plausible than being captured by Bigfoot.

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Huh. Interesting. According to the screencrawl recap that starts this chapter, Pat Scanlan is a former government engraver. That’s good information to have, but it still doesn’t seem kosher to insert new information in the recap. That’s even lazier storytelling than the revision of last week’s cliffhanger to get the hero out of certain death! Maybe that’s the producers’ way of making sure that people read the danged crawl each time. After all, someone put a lot of work into writing a concise summary of the previous chapters, and it’d be a shame for their effort to be wasted, so they’ve put an “easter egg” of info in each one. I’ll keep you updated in future chapters as to whether this trend continues to hold true, as I’m sure you’re anxious to know.

So where were we? That’s right, the Incans (referred to as “Indians” for the time being) have released a booby trap consisting of logs, rocks, and half the non-snow avalanche footage produced in Hollywood to that point to block the road beneath and keep the cars from coming up into what they consider “their territory.” Never mind that they apparently didn’t mind when bulldozers and other heavy equipment invaded “their territory” to build the road in the first place. The first car, carrying gangster Turk and his cronies, makes it past before the avalanche strikes the road; Heroic Scout Bruce half-climbs, half-falls down the slope to warn off Marvin in the following car, and the he stop just in time — literally, with boulders resting against his bumper.

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Before I bring you up to speed, I need to point out a few problems with the screencrawl that jogs our memory on how things stood at the end of Chapter 1. According to the crawl, the map Skeets Scanlan had (which was indeed part of the letter that his father Pat Scanlan received from his brother) was one to a cache of counterfeit money and plates. Hey, wait a second! That’s information we haven’t received in the filmed narrative yet! Last we knew, the boys had found thousands of twenty dollar bills; that’s it. Also in the crawl, the high priest of the hidden cave-dwelling Incans is given: Lukolu. Because heaven knows, we couldn’t live without that information, simply calling him the “grand poo-bah” or something.

Now, where were we? Oh, yes; Bruce, HSIC (Head Scout In Charge) had dashed toward where Hal Marvin’s plane was plunging to earth. Just before the plane crashes, Bruce ducks behind a log — on the wrong side, actually, for it to shield him from the crash and explosion. But he gets up unscathed, as the plane crashed just far enough away for him to be unharmed. Not only that, but though the plane is now a fiery ball of tinder, Marvin was thrown clear in the crash, just far enough for, say, the actor to have said, “I’ll get this close, but not an inch closer!” As Marvin’s only semi-conscious, Bruce throws him over his shoulder to get him to safety. (Young Jackie Cooper is a husky lad, it’s true, but I strongly suspect stunt-doubling.)

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Gather ’round and hear a tale of yesteryear, a tale of the days when the Boy Scouts were a lot more popular. No, seriously; there really was a heyday for Scouting in the U.S. of A., back when clean living and discipline were more than quaint relics of geekery. I think it also may have something to do with the hats that Scouts wore — those Smokey The Bear hats are bitchin’, and I don’t think enrollment’s ever been the same since they were ditched.

This serial takes advantage not only of the general popularity of Scouting at the time, but also of related stock footage. Our opening scenes are for appear to be authentic footage of a huge Scout Jamboree in Washington D.C., complete with President Roosevelt waving to all the assembled boys from his motorcade. The tableau is overseen by a radio announcer in an biplane circling over the Washington Monument (I have no idea how he made himself heard in an open seat right behind the prop) being flown by ace Scouter Hal Marvin (William Ruhl), who impresses the assembled Scouts with some skywriting.

Among the impressed are the Scouts who are going to be our stars, a troop from Martinsville, led by Scoutmaster Hale (Jack Mulhall) and his Junior Assistant Scoutmaster, Eagle Scout Bruce Scott (Jackie Cooper). I know Cooper best for his role as editor Perry White in the Christopher Reeve series of Superman movies, and I was surprised at how little Cooper’s face changed in the next four decades. (By the way, when he made this serial at age seventeen, he already had thirty-four - ! - movie credits.)

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Now, I can understand why Andotus is upset. As we saw at the end of the last chapter, he’s dangling on the end of a rope over the side of a subterranean chasm (or sub-Skarosian, I suppose), with the other end tied around Ian’s waist on a small stone ledge above. Ian’s not anchored to anything, and Andotus’ fall as he tried to leap the chasm has knocked Ian off his feet as well, and now only his failing fingertips are keeping both of them from plunging into the darkness below. But Andotus is screaming, “I can’t hold on!” And that makes no sense. He’s got a rope tied around his waist. Holding on’s not an issue. Not that that helps him; the sides of the chasm are sheer, with no handholds to help him clamber back up, or at least take the weight off Ian’s midsection.

Even when Ganatus creeps his way back around the narrow ledge to help, he can’t do much more than pull the sleeve of Ian’s jacket; their hands are too sweaty to hold tight. (Indian grips. The Thals have never invented Indian grips.) In desperation, Andotus pulls out his pocketknife and sacrifices himself for the team, doing a good approximation of the Wilhelm scream on the way down. I have always hoped, should I ever have the misfortune to plummet to my death, that I would have the presence of mind to do a Goofy/Tom-n-Jerry kind of “Wa-hoo-hoo-hoo!” on the way down.

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As you will recall, there are now two separate parties working to get the Thals into the Dalek city as part of a sorta pre-emptive strike. (Well, and also to get the Doctor’s fluid link component for the TARDIS, so they can get the heck out of Dodge.) One party, containing the Doctor, Susan, Alydon, and Alydon’s main squeeze (sorry, I don’t remember her name — how sexist of me is that?), plans to cause a distraction at the front gate of the city. The second, containing Ian, Barbara, and various other Thals, plans to trek through the radioactive swamp to the mountain cliffs on the far side of the city, and find some means of entry there. It’s the latter party for whom this episode is named “The Ordeal,” as they really get the tough work.

Take, for example, the huge roaring whirlpool that appeared suddenly in the pool beside which they were camped last time. One of the Thals was at the water’s edge filling their waterbags (with the radioactive swamp water — eww) when the whirlpool started, um, whirling…

And by the time everyone else gets there, he’s nowhere to be found. Grimly, they go forward with their quest. (I don’t know how a whirlpool reaches out and grabs someone on the bank. Maybe it’ll be a plot point later. But I doubt it.)

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So. Without the fluid link, the TARDIS and its occupants are stranded. I think it’s something of an understatement when the Doctor says, “I’m afraid my little trick has rather rebounded on me,” but at least he’s acknowledging his fault. And as one of those signposts of how far Western culture has changed in the last forty-odd years, Ian and Barbara don’t immediately leap upon his confession of responsibility and rip him a new one. Why, no one even boasts of the lawsuit they’ll file if they ever get back! Do I even recognize this alien culture?

The fact remains, though, that without the fluid link, which is somewhere back in the Dalek city, they’re utterly screwed. Not just stranded; the best guess of both the time travelers and the Thals is that the Daleks will perceive them as a threat and find some way to leave their city in an offensive action. The Doctor, being terribly pragmatic (not to mention disconcertingly selfish), immediately decides that they should manipulate the Thals into fighting for them so they can regain their missing piece, and Barbara wholeheartedly agrees. Ian, on the other hand, isn’t willing to have any of the Thals die on his behalf (I’m guessing that witnessing the death of the former Thal leader Temmosus may have a bearing on his stand), and Barbara sides with him. It’s only when all four of them agree that the Daleks are likely to come out to exterminate both groups that they decide they have to push the Thals to fight — not just for the time travelers’ sakes, but also for their own.

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