Back to the Planet of the Apes: ep 11 "The Tyrant"

 "The Tyrant"
Airdate: November 22, 1974

Written by Walter Black
Directed by Ralph Senensky
Synopsis: To foil the plans of a tyrannical and corrupt gorilla leader, who is trying to overthrow the chimpanzee prefect and gain control over a human farming district, Galen, Virdon and Burke risk making common cause with Urko.

Trey: I would almost say this is the best episode we've seen so far. 

Jason: We are in full agreement--including the "almost" qualifier.

Trey: It may still be, but the ending winds up being a bit rushed, I think compared to the first half.

Jason: Agreed. The climactic scene (which is also the final scene, our heroes have no time for a denouement and skedaddle abruptly), comes perilously close to descending into farce, a stark contrast to all that preceded it. I thought the episode took the series back to a tone of seriousness, with nary a wink or a nod to be found, and for the most part succeeds.  

Trey: We have, as the guest heavy, Percy Rodriques (known from numerous classic tv shows, including Star Trek and Wild Wild West) as Aboro, a corrupt gorilla commander with ambition. An ambition that allows him to be entrapped into agreeing to kill his old "academy pal" Urko by the wily astronauts and Galen.

Jason: Rodriques stands as one of the few guest stars to not only give a very fine performance, elevating the material with his presence and gravitas, but also to wring the maximum expressiveness out of his gorilla makeup. 

Only McDowall surpasses him in this esoteric category, but Roddy's had a lot of practice.

Trey: I agree. He has a great knowing leer with the prosthetics.

Jason: McDowall rises to the occasion, here, and the script offers him more opportunity to flex his considerable chops. Galen has gone undercover on several previous occasions, but never like this! McDowall's impersonation of Octavio is a master class in visual characterization for makeup-clad ape actors. But the whole ensemble performs at the top of their game. 

Trey: This one has a lot of action--and serious action. Is this the first on-screen murder of a human by apes since the pilot?

Jason: I think you're right. They've definitely served up numerous head wounds and casual threats of death, but rarely delivered on-camera. I kept anticipating the prone farmer would prove to be merely wounded, but not this time. Fights were frantic, brutal, and shot well. Hand-held camera wildness worked well in these moments. 

Trey: Exactly! It could be my imagination but this one seems more cinematically shot than previous episodes. More interesting angles are chosen by the director.

Jason: Every element of this episode seemed to be of higher-than-average quality.

Trey: Also, this is definitely the first time we've seen apes make a bomb!

Jason: That bomb comes perilously close to becoming a prop in a Warner Brothers cartoon. It's still a fun gambit, but rushed, as you say.

Trey: It called to mine mine Adam West's Batman's frantic attempts to get rid of a cartoonish bomb in the 1966 movie. 

We should note that Urko apparently abhors corruption among his officers, but possibly cheated on exams and definitely cheats at horse racing.

Jason: We have a lot of contradictory evidence on the ape concept of integrity. It remains poorly understood! Urko himself is some kind of narcissistic maniac, holding others to standards he never intends to uphold himself. 

I wish we could have seen the promised-but-never-delivered chat between old school chums Urko and Aboro. 

Trey: For 70s mass audience TV consumption, the series really leans into compartmentalizing the ape oppression. So much of it is down to "bad apples." The errors are corrected and/or the villains punished, so humans in a given area are left in a somewhat more benign ape servitude, and Burke and Virdon travel on. Never is the broader issue addressed or revolution as a goal suggested.

Jason: One would hope that the producers might have introduced such elements down the road, had the series persisted. The episodes we've watched so far don't suggest a broad plan, or even a consistent series 'bible'. Episodes vary wildly in tone, approach, and casually contradict each other in matters of worldbuilding. I understand that sequential stories were off the table, with no guarantee of episode order being honored in syndication, but the show seems needlessly incoherent in some pretty basic areas. I've had fun coming to my own conclusions about say, ape psychology, based on evidence presented, but this is far from ideal! That said, I really liked this episode and it's return to  more serious drama. Sadly, it can only hint at what might have been.