It's nothing but a plain crystal egg, but when someone wants to pay
half a fortune for it, antique dealer Cave (Edgar Stehli) decides to bring
the egg to his scientist friend Vanek (Thomas Mitchell, to have it
examined. During examination, Vanek realizes that through the egg, he can
see the landscape on Mars, so he figures it's some kind of communication
device. However, eventually he notices the MArtians - ugly monsters - are
using the egg to watch the goings-on on earth. Vanek becomes obsessed
with the egg, even neglecting his lovely young girlfriend (Sally Gracie)
to further study it, and he comes up with excuse after excuse to not give
it back to Cave just to keep it under observation - until Cave simply
steals his egg back. However, on the way home, Cave himself is killed and
the egg is stolen by a person or persons unknown. If possible, Vanek
becomes even more obsessed with the egg after it's gone than he was
before, trying everythuing to make a mark in the science world on the
egg's behald - but with the egg gone, nobody believes his findings, so
much so that everybody starts to believe he has gone bonkers. Vanke though
knows that he has made one of the greatest discoveries there are, but the
Martians and their henchmen are eager to silence him - and indeed, in the
end, they shoot him and destroy all evidence of the egg's existence. H.G.Wells'
story which this show is based on is simply put great in its Victorian
understanding of science and science fiction, coupled with a nice
character study. Turning this story into a piece of (early) live
television, and on a very low budget too, the plot of course loses some of
its stringency, and a very limited running time (roughly 25 minutes) does
not help much either - but taking the limitations of the medium into
account, The Crystal Egg is still powerful enough to entertain, and
most certainly one of the better episodes of Tales of Tomorrow.
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