Mr. Zeno in mid-teleportation.
Zeno suffocates as Kenny turns the climate control machine on him.
This episode has no opening Control Voice narration.
Roy Benjamin (Macdonald Carey) grows suspicious of Mr. Zeno (Richard Ney), a private tutor who has been sent to educate his gifted son Kenny (Flip Mark), and with good reason: Zeno is actually an alien from the planet Xenon, and he's part of a plan to take over Earth by indoctrinating its child prodigies.
The Control Voice: The mold of a man stems from the mind of a child. Educators and emperors have known this from time immemorial. So have tyrants.
The Special Tropes:
- An Aesop: Good parenting makes the difference between your child listening to bad influences and thinking for themselves.
- Compelling Voice: Mr. Zeno has a variation on this power; he controls his victims' bodies, but not their minds.
- Evil Teacher: Mr. Zeno is actually from planet Xenon, and he influences child prodigies to help his homeworld with their Alien Invasion. (He also murders the father of one pupil for asking too many questions.) However...
- Fake Defector: Kenny was only pretending to cooperate, and he saves the day by turning the alien's own weapon against him.
- Flashy Teleportation: Mr. Zeno travels between Earth and Xenon via a "lightning bolt" effect that is one of the series' most striking visuals.
- Mind Control: Mr. Zeno can control the bodies of his victims, while their minds remain free. A nice power to have when you're an alien invader who sadistically delights in forcing the humans who discover your plot to commit suicide against their will...
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Mr. Turner is forced to jump out a window by Mr. Zeno's mind control. Zeno tries the same trick on Roy Benjamin, only for Kenny to stop him.
- Science Marches On: Discussed In-Universe when Roy tells a friend that his son made a report on the properties of all 125 chemical elements. His friend replies there are only 102 elements, and Roy rationalises that "there must be 125 now — who would know outside of a lab?". This is the first sign that Mr. Zeno's teachings are more advanced than Earthly science.note
- Teen Genius: Kenny, which is why Zeno is interested in him in the first place.
