In 1880, outlaw Joe Caswell (played by Albert Salmi, star of many television shows, including the excellent Twilight Zone episode “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville” from Season 4), is being hanged for killing a man. Just at that moment, a professor from the future (incidentally, the professor, Russell Johnson) has decided to test his time travel machine, which brings Caswell to the future – to New York City, in fact.
Unfortunately, Caswell doesn’t adapt well to the future, and the technology advances and noise in particular don’t do him well. He even gets done in by a thief from his new home. But since what goes around comes around, even in the future, and even in New York City, this new criminal ends up back in the time machine, and back in the noose back in 1880, where those hanging Caswell are surprised, to say the least.
An interesting twist on the story, but not very well told, perhaps because the series was somewhat new at the time. It would have been interesting to see if they had done it later in the run if it would have been done any better when they had a chance to hit their stride, with better network support and a larger budget.
