The Time Element was intended to serve as a pilot for the series Rod Serling was planning, the series which would become The Twilight Zone.
Thirteen years after the end of World War II, a man named Peter Jenson (William Bendix) visits a psychoanalyst, Dr. Gillespie (Martin Balsam). Jenson tells him about a recurring dream in which he tries to warn people about the "sneak attack" on Pearl Harbor before it happens, but the warnings are disregarded. Jenson believes the events of the dream are real, and each night he travels back to 1941. Dr. Gillespie insists that time travel is impossible given the nature of temporal paradoxes. While on the couch, Jenson falls asleep once again but this time dreams that the Japanese planes shoot and kill him. In Dr. Gillespie's office, the couch Jenson was lying on is now empty. Dr. Gillespie goes to a bar where he finds Jenson's picture on the wall. The bartender tells him that Jenson had tended bar there, but he was killed during the Pearl Harbor attack.
I don't know that having to listen to a mandatory 60 second commercial from University of Phoenix, followed by another mandatory 30 second advert is worth the trouble.
I have always been a bit amazed that of the few Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse episodes that WERE preserved on film, that they have never been offered on DVD or blu-ray. It was an amazing series for its time, and I would certainly be willing to purchase it.
OF note about this episode is Jesse White as the Bartender. . his deadpan look is almost worthy of an oscar in and of its own right.
*Poor Bill Bendix!* As an established mega-star in 1958, he only had 6 more years left to live. He died of an undiagnosed stomach ailment (similar to Crohn's Disease), which prevented him from eating or drinking. Always a well-fed, "husky" man, he ironically died of malnutrition...RIP
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