Episode no. Season 5
Episode 33 Written by Rod Serling Production code 2632 | Directed by Richard Donner Featured music uncredited Original air date May 15, 1964 | |
"The Brain Center at Whipple's" is episode 153 of the American television series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on May 15, 1964 on CBS.
Contents
Plot
In 1967, Wallace V. Whipple, owner of a vast manufacturing corporation, decides to upgrade his plant to increase output by installing a machine named the "X109B14 modified transistorized totally automated machine," which leads to layoffs. Some former employees try to convince him that the value of a man outweighs the value of a machine, but their protests fall on deaf ears. Eventually, the board of directors find him neurotically obsessed with machines and retire him. Whipple joins his former plant manager (whom Whipple had replaced with a machine) at the bar opposite his factory and expresses deep sorrow at his misfortune ("It isn't fair, Hanley! It isn't fair the way they...diminish us"). A robot now runs his office.
Cast
Opening narration
"These are the players with or without a scorecard- in one corner a machine, and in the other one Wallace V. Whipple, man. And the game, it happens to be the historical battle between flesh and steel, between the brain of man and the product of man's brain. We all may book on this one and predict no winner, but we can tell you for this particular contest, there is standing room only in the Twilight Zone."
Closing narration
"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 and not thoughtful; and sometimes, as in the case of Mr. Whipple, he can create himself right out of existence. As in tonight's tale of oddness and obsolescence, in the Twilight Zone."