Whipple displays his plan to save money by replacing
the workers.
the workers.
Rod Serling: These are the players, with or without a scorecard: in one corner, a machine; in the other, one Wallace V. Whipple, man. And the game? It happens to be the historical battle between flesh and steel, between the brain of man and the product of man's brain. We don't make book on this one and predict no winner, but we can tell you that, for this particular contest, there is standing room only in the Twilight Zone.
Air date: May 15, 1964
In 1967, Wallace V. Whipple (Richard Deacon), the owner of a vast manufacturing corporation, decides to upgrade his plant to increase output by installing the "X109B14 modified transistorized totally automatic assembly machine", which leads to layoffs as more and more of the plant's employees are replaced by robots or computers. Some of his former employees try to convince him that the value of a man outweighs the value of a machine, but their protests fall on deaf ears.
Eventually, the company's board of directors, finding Whipple neurotically obsessed with machines, decide to retire him. Whipple joins his former plant manager, replaced by another computer earlier, at the bar opposite his factory and expresses deep sorrow at his misfortune ("It isn't fair, Hanley! It isn't fair the way they... diminish us"), now that a robot runs his office.
The Trope Center at Whipple;s:
- 20 Minutes into the Future: The episode is set in 1967, three years after it was filmed.
- An Aesop: Aiming for superior efficiency is not in of itself a bad thing, but it should never be an excuse to sacrifice or devalue humanity. Whipple aimed for efficiency to the point where he devalued himself out of his own job.
- Alliterative Name: The protagonist's name is Wallace V. Whipple.
- Bald of Evil: Although in Whipple's case, it's more like Bald of Jerkass.
- Became Their Own Antithesis: Whipple starts out cold and without empathy. Later, after he's fired, he becomes just as humanly devastated as the very people he's fired, going into a poignant, raw spiel about the worth and value of a man.
- Break the Haughty: What happens to Whipple in the end.
- The Cameo: Robby the Robot appears at the very end of the episode, during Serling's closing monologue, as the new CEO of the Whipple Manufacturing Plant.
- Character Tic: Whipple likes to twirl his watch fob when he's thinking. The robot who takes over his job does the same thing (though what a robot needs with a pocket watch is anyone's guess).
- Chromosome Casting: The only women featured in this episode are from crowd scenes in Whipple's film at the start of the episode, with none playing a major role in the story.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Wallace V. Whipple.
- Everybody Has Standards: Whipple's last human employee doesn't approve of a lot of what Whipple has done but is at least initially willing to put up with it. However, he shows genuine disgust when Whipple names maternity as one of the human "inconveniences" that makes robots more efficient replacements.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Whipple's dedication to efficiency and his machinery winds up getting him efficiency-ed out of his own job.
- Irony: Lampshaded. Whipple's remaining human employee points out there's something self-defeating in making an efficient company that sells many fine products, but puts so many people out of work that there will be fewer customers who can afford to buy it themselves.
- Job-Stealing Robot: The general plot of the episode.
- Laser-Guided Karma: At the end of the episode, Wallace Whipple suffers karmic justice as he himself is replaced by a robot.
- Master Computer: X109B14 takes over the operation of Whipple's factory.
- Original Position Fallacy: Whipple had no problem firing his employees by the dozen in exchange for machines that outsourced them. But towards the end, when a machine has replaced him, he goes into a devastated spiel about how it's wrong to toss a man away for not meeting up to the same standards as machines. It's not lost on his retired assistant that Whipple ironically created the very system that pushed him out of his own company.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Whipple is such an overwhelmingly unlikable person that he receives three of these before he finally gets a clue.
- Speak Ill of the Dead: Downplayed. While Whipple doesn't outright insult his late father, he points out that his father's "good will" wasn't as "efficient" as his own approach at business.
- World of Ham: As Mark Scott Zicree says in The Twilight Zone Companion, there are two kinds of characters in this episode: those who make speeches and those who make speeches while gesticulating. In particular, Ted de Corsia (as Dickerson) gives a speech to Whipple that, to refer to it as "scenery chewing", would be an extreme understatement. "I'M A MAAAAAAAANNNNN, MR. WHIPPLE!!!!!!"
- Rod Serling: There are many bromides applicable here – too much of a good thing; tiger by the tail; as ye sow, so shall ye reap. The point is that too often, man becomes clever instead of becoming wise, he becomes inventive but not thoughtful – and sometimes, as in the case of Mr. Whipple, he can create himself right out of existence. Tonight's tale of oddness and obsolescence from the Twilight Zone.
