normally i start each of these with some random observation or silly non-sequitur that eventually leads to the start of the episode. this week, all i have to say is that really did enjoy this episode. pretty much from start to finish it was a lot of fun to watch. do yourself a favor and spend $1.99 and have a fun hour.

**flips snark machine back to "on"**

whew. that sincerity was killing me.

we open on carl kolchak alone in a darkened independent news service office. he's visibly shaken, out of sorts and going on a fox mulder-esque rant about losing track of time and nameless, faceless men who interrogated and drugged him. alas, he must tell his story before the fog of narcotics blots it from his still-addled mind completely.

it all began in the laboratory of dr. avery walker. doc walker was checking out the knobs and dials and whirlygigs on the computers when the robot lying on the table caught a twinge in his hand. and by "twinge in his hand", i mean dr. walker's neck. the robot gives him the full spock treatment then decides to gtfo.

mr. roboto's first order of business is to get himself a new suit. he does that at the expense of a mailman who was somehow still making his rounds at 1:15 in the morning. something about spicy food or something. i don't. anyway, mr. mailman is no match for mr. roboto, who somehow happens to attack a postal worker who wears clothes that fit his robot dimensions.

next up is to get a new face. which is a priority when your normal "face" looks like a light-up version of princess leia's bounty hunter helmet in episode 6. that precipitates a smash-n-grab at a storefront so it can grab a mask. maybe this is 2017 marcas talking but i would have expected an alarm to sound. or at least some neighborhood dogs to bark. whatever. masked robot ... awaaaaaaay!

back to i.n.s. offices ... it's our only glimpse of ron updyke in the episode as he rushes off to his beloved hometown "the city by the bay." 

1. we get it. ron is gay. the show's been hinting at it repeatedly, though obviously gay characters weren't really a thing on network television in 1974. it just feels so unnecessary because it has nothing to do with anything. and it's even worse because ron has had less to do on the show every week. and...
2. i feel sorta back for jack grinnage, the actor who played ron. sure, he had a contract and was getting paid but it had to kinda suck to show up, go through makeup and wardrobe for 15 seconds of screen time. what i'm saying is that i'm jealous.

ron's heading to san francisco to cover a major murder trial. an assignment that would have been kolchak's had he not played hooky yesterday and gone fishing. his penance will be to update the obituary file for dr. avery walker. this was one of the few times tony has been able to truly get the upper hand on kolchak. you can sense his satisfaction over having won a total victory. take a bow, tony vincenzo. you've earned it.

kolchak's first stop is the dear widow walker. in her husband's absence, it appears that mrs. walker has found a new mr. walker -- johnnie. she's drunk, in case my clunky sentence landed at your feet unnoticed.

a drunk mrs. walker is a surly mrs. walker. she tells tales of a husband who was married to his work. his work at a top secret lab at the tyrell institute*. tells tales of a project called RING. she tells tales of not being allowed to see her husband after his death and only being told by tyrell's doctors that her husband died of a "heart attack."

(*stay tuned for one of marcas' weird connective movie theories!)

mrs. walker also tells a tale of dr. leslie dwyer -- the woman with whom she's certain her husband was having an affair. armed with that information, kolchak races off to find the other woman ... but not before stopping to harass a less-than-undercover man doing surveillance on the walker house.

't'would be a major disappointment if kolchak didn't channel Family Circus Billy at least once an episode. as he's on his way to find dr. dwyer, he hears word of a smash-n-grab in progress and decides to check it out.

whaddya know, it's our old friend mr. roboto and he's wrecking shop. construction workers, cops ... doesn't matter. our boy isn't waiting to see who else might show up. he finds an exit u a fire escape while hurling down one of the landings to prevent the fuzz from following.

that's right. a robot with a survival instinct. which would really be bad news for all of us if that actually started happening with robuts. 

what's notable about this escape attempt is that the cops are ordered not to shoot. which, as kolchak suggests, is unusual for the chicago police department. this feeds into my theory that one of the underlying themes of this show is overaggressive policing. or at least an overaggressive cpd.

when things at the scene calm down, kolchak talks to the owner of the freshly-burgled business -- a mortuary. the "cosmetologist" (who hates being called an undertaker) looks like a creepy conan o'brien and says that the vandal busted in, took some makeup, assaulted an employee and bounced.

just before leaving the scene, kolchak notices the police talking to some military types. the special suits all cram into a big, long car and head down the road. the reporter follows the trail, which leads to the tyrell institute*. maybe the one place kolchak can't possibly talk his way into. a no-nonsense security guard stonewalls him at the front gate like no one has ever stonewalled kolchak before.

(*don't forget to stay tuned for one of marcas' weird connective movie theories!)

after all that hubbub, it was time to go see dr. dwyer.

the lovely dr. dwyer -- clad in a silk bathrobe -- doesn't really have much to say. she claims to know nothing about RING. will only say that she worked in computers for the tyrell institute but was laid off due to the recession. yep, even in 1974. what kolchak finds is more interesting than anything the good doctor has to say. but how many people have a philosophy-book-on-tape just sitting on a side table?

it's a question kolchak likely would have asked were he not an unwitting third wheel. dr. dwyer has company. a large fellow clad in a silk bathrobe who's none too pleased to see a reporter interloping. kolchak wisely obliges.

MEANWHILE...

we return to mr. roboto and the mayhem in progress. actually, the robot breaks off a van's side view mirror and proceeds to give itself a "face" by slathering on undertaker's wax.

not gonna lie. he looks creepy af.

of course, mr . senator makes a few calls and it inevitably ends up in the lap of tony vincenzo. the look on his face when kolchak walks in suggests that he's just been threatened with the imminent annihilation of everything he holds sacred by someone with the power to actually do the annihilating.

this is part of where this episode is awesome. this was by far the most coherent explanation of a story that kolchak has ever had. whether it was a function of overcomplicated storylines, bad writing or just part of the bit, kolchak usually sounds like a raving lunatic. it got sorta tiresome. for all of his faults, he's a smart character. it kinda sucked that he looked like a ruffled nincompoop in front of his peers.

after a quick synopsis of the events followed by appeal to tony's desire to speak truth to power, kolchak prevents his story from getting killed. huzzah!

flash to the other side of town.

a public library! vandalized! the librarian in shock! she says the culprit was rooting around in the philosophy and humanities section before busting through the wall to make his getaway. his next stop?

the home of the lovely dr. dwyer, just getting home for the evening. unbeknownst to her, a creepy wax-faced robot is hanging out inside. the creepy creeper creepily creeps up on the creeped-out woman. and let me tell you, the whole thing was ... unsettling.

good news, everyone! dr. dwyer isn't dead, she's just missing. after a little more investigative work, rkolchak learns that her specialty was autonetics while dr. walker focused on microcircuitry. which sounds like the sort of things you'd need to build a robot. kolchak surmises that the robot has become #woke. and it's had enough.

with the help of miss emily and one of his unseen sources, kolchak learns that dr. dwyer checked out some books on tape about ethics and philosophy and holed up in a big summer house along lake michigan. he eventually finds the doctor and convinces her to spill the beans.

she says RING is robomatic internalized nerve ganglia. i say she sucks at naming things.

anyway, the robot was never built to do any harm, but the military wanted aggression put into the programming while the scientists working on the project included a survival instinct. in the end, RING killed dr. walker to protect itself. then it ran to find dr. walker while putting on clothes and a face to look "normal". can't fault a robot for trying.

this is when the reporter and the robot come face to face and talk man to man, err, robot. RING is kind of a dick when asked simple questions like "what time is it?" but handles tougher questions with ease. things bog down when kolchak asks RING the difference between right or wrong or whether dr. walker had a greater right to life than the robot. which gets us to the books on tape. dr. dwyer explains that RING is basically a child trying to create a set of rules to live by. 

this getting-to-know-you session is inevitably interrupted by the feds, who've shown up for their property. as to be expected, the operation is bungled. kolchak and dr. dwyer are taken into custody and the robot is sent into a frenzy. at least it was a short frenzy. that's because one of the soldiers puts a bullet in RING's metal head, dropping him like a stainless steel rock.

RING sputters and wheezes as his systems shut down. before he expires, he says dr. dwyer's name. and the room got a little dusty for a bit.

which brings us to where we came. kolchak wraps up his tale, not completely sure if the details are 100% accurate. but knowing that there will be another RING ... and the next one might not be so friendly.

reporter's notebook

it's time for...

marcas' weird connective movie theory!

in 1974, the tyrell institute -- a secret, government-funded lab is working to build the most life-like robot mankind has ever known. the project gets shut down but things get wonky and the robot escapes and wreaks havoc across chicago. eventually, the robot is neutralized and returned to tyrell for further study. quietly through the decades, tyrell continues to improve upon their work while growing the company through increasingly large government grants.

eventually, the company moves its headquarters to california to take advantage of the tech boom. by the late 1990s, the technology has advanced to the point that they are the exclusive manufacturer of these robots, better known as replicants. it's not long before the replicants are being used to perform the most dangerous tasks in society. tyrell enjoys multi-national success, becoming the tyrell corporation. in november 2019, a group of four replicants will stage a bloody escape from a mining colony and land in los angeles, seeking their creator to strongarm him into extending their lifespans. the plot might have worked were it not for rick deckard, an ex-cop and former "blade runner" who comes out of retirement for one last job.

that's right ... IT'S A BLADE RUNNER PREQUEL!!!

-fin-

i praised the writing in this episode so i wanted to shout out the writer. this episode (and two others -- including episode 8) was written by the duo of l. ford neale and john huff. but it turns out that later in the series' run, darren mcgavin began rewriting some of the scripts (uncredited) because he started getting frustrated by the show's direction. considering how much of a mess ep 8 was, i have a feeling kolchak himself might have had a hand in this one.

whoever wrote the kolchak story explanation scene must have done so on an empty stomach. why else would he make two unrelated desssert references within a few moments of one another?

quote of the week

"i'm not sure what's going on but i have a feeling it'll make watergate look like a pie fight." - kolchak

in an episode full of great writing, this line was as graceful as a fart in church.

next week on kolchak: the night stalker: reatures that grew from cells in an 8 million-year-old soil sample go on a rampage in chicago.