A better director. Neither of the show's finest directors of Ted Post (Probe Seven Over and Out )or Douglas Heyes ( The After-Hours) worked anywhere on it and it suffers. Post would have turned the actors into their characters much more than they were turned here. How even the actor playing Henry's boss was not that strong in the finished product. Under Post's powerful direction he would have been and it'd much more effective. Under Heyes' direction the nuclear bomb blast and aftermath would have been far more terrifying. This could have been famous as the most challenging TZ ep on the show to ever watch with it so terrifying even for adults. Instead it's effective to be sure but oh so very tolerable.
On other points. The character of Henry is not a fully intelligent guy. The only author he goes for and has a strong right to at all is Shakespeare. The Bard took old Germanic-Norman English society and added a cultural twist to it changing it forever. He became a huge and gigantic fundamental influence. His nearest equivalent is Homer of Ancient Greece. But Henry goes for guys like Keats or Dickens just as much ( and no Homer!). Bad move. Very bad move. Does Henry like, most importantly, The Holy Bible ( see my postings)?
Also, Henry's wife Helen was underused. Nice looking actress. They should have had her come back into the story after the bomb blast ( especially if Heyes directed). Leaving a big scarey hole in viewers' mind if she was alive too, a ghost or Henry was merely imagining her. He could have saw her blurry right after his glasses broke! Much more effective it would have been!!
Finished product as is: 8 1/2 on scale of 1 to 10.
PS Another problem in general with TEAL is this episode contributed to nuclear bomb paranoia. Real life highly immoral and extremely deadly governments, like indeed Kim ll Sung's North Korea ( see my postings), were given a bad pass during and after the wars with them just because too many were grateful no nuclear bomb was ever used in that conflict. No excuse at all to excuse the tremendous immorality of such governments is this!!
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