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The Twilight Zone (TOS): “The Mirror”

Actor Peter Falk -- of all people -- got cast as a Latin American dictator who looked and talked like Fidel Castro. Unfortunately, the ending of the story -- as philosophically appropriate as it may be -- seems in retrospect to be more like wishful thinking on Rod Serling's part than anything else. After all, the real-life Fidel Castro lived to be an old man and ultimately died of natural causes. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of his many real-life victims.

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The Twilight Zone (TOS): “The Old Man in the Cave”

In the far-off year of 1974(!), a small group of people who somehow managed to survive a nuclear war were dependent on the word of a mysterious old man in a cave who had never been seen by anyone. The old man gave them advice that permitted the people to survive but not necessarily thrive.

One day a self-styled military man who claimed to represent a new central government came by and persuaded the people to ignore the old man's advice. As a result, everyone save the one holdout who still obeyed the old man ended up dying horribly as a result of ingesting contaminated food.

As usual, it can be assumed that the morale of this story is in no way applicable to today's events. In no way, I say. And not just because none of our current authority figures look anything like James Coburn...

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “Kerblam!”

Go, organics!

That line alone is the cleverest line that I can remember from this episode but unfortunately, the rest of the episode left much to be desired.

Part of the problem is that the show's writer took an excellent opportunity to satirize a popular corporation and how it contributed to the current trend toward dehumanization -- and then dropped the ball by bringing up yet another target whose presence, unfortunately, encouraged the audience to miss the writer's original point. I could readily understand the writer's desire to resist the temptation to write "The Robots of Death II" but unfortunately, his idea for a substitute was not much of an improvement. If anything, the writer's decision to sacrifice a sympathetic character in order to teach the bad guy a lesson made for a point point far more dubious than anything that happened in "The Robots of Death". As a result, it's hard to watch the resolution of this episde without getting a bad taste in one's mouth -- a very bad taste.

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The Twilight Zone (1985): “The Card”

A busy housewife and mother of three gets issued a credit card from a mysterious company called the Card and discovers the hard way what happens when she forgets to make a payment. The sad part about this episode is that it's still so timely -- and even more so every Christmas season.

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Dollhouse: “Belle Chose”

It's Eliza Dushku as both Kiki the lovable college student and a vicious serial killer. Good times.

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Dollhouse: “Instinct”

Echo is a wet nurse. And a mommy. Again, seriously.

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Dollhouse: “Vows”

Echo gets married. No, seriously.

And should I find it funny that I find it a bit hard to hear the word "glitch" used on this show without thinking about poor SpiderGwen?

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “The Tsuranga Conundrum”

If “Kill the Moon” was supposed to be Doctor Who's idea of a pro-life story, this episode is their version of a -- what? -- pro-choice episode? The little alien who threatens to eat everything did seem like an apt metaphor for the way little babies sometimes are. But surely that's just a coincidence, right?