LAND OF THE GIANTS-Graveyard of Fools

GRAVEYARD OF FOOLS

Prolog

Val and Fitzhugh during the day, are buzzed by a toy model plane which they 

were trying to obtain, figuring their group could escape in it. The two run 

to a fire hydrant, Fitz bragging he was a former fighter plane pilot. A giant 

scientist named Melzac grabs them and drops them into a box. Advance 

publicity put out about this plane exhibition was just a lure to get the 

little people here. Betty, Barry, and Mark watch. Steve and Dan arrive. Mark 

explains what he and the others overheard the giants plan to do with Fitz and 

Val: fly them to the other side of the planet in the model airplane. Steve 

knows of the other side of the planet: he's heard of it: the graveyard of 

fools. 

Act One

Melzac and his aide Tagon test the plane but eventually go inside a large 

warehouse like lab building. Steve, Mark, and Dan follow. Melzac drops Fitz 

and Val into the plane after opening the door on it. Fitz tells Melzac he is 

an old research scientist himself. Val tells Fitz that none of the exploring 

parites that have ever gone to the Graveyard of Fools have ever returned. 

She's heard of this Graveyard also. Closing the door, the giants leave to 

adjust the control panels to the plane tracking systems. Mark moves to the 

floor panel where the controls operate from---they are in a cabinet, the 

doors of which Mark has to pry open.  Dan and Steve go to the plane up on the 

table where Val coaxes Fitz into giving her a hand in trying to open the 

door. The giants return and grab Steve and Dan also--flinging them in the 

plane. Steve tells the giants, "Look, we have no intention of flying anywhere 

in this crate."   Mark, near the cabinet uses a device to try to gain plane 

control. Steve tells Fitz, "We're not dead yet."  Tagon makes the plane take 

off. Mark falls, hurt from sparks that come from a small overload on the 

controls. Melzac calls Bryk at the graveyard complex. Bryk is told one of the 

little people must survive the encounter. Bryk contemplates, feeling sorry 

for the one who survives, "Those that die will be the lucky ones." 

Act Two

Turbulence in the plane becomes worse as Tagon puts on full emergency power 

and controls spark even more, this time in the plane itself. Against Tagon's 

advice, Melzac's orders to lock in the servo actuator to the plane control 

signals are carried out. Tagon puts Mark in his pocket, finding him. Melzac's 

plan is to use the actuator to control the planet. Multi colored lights make 

the four in the plane vanish, then the plane itself. A foggy brush covered, 

weed filled jungle unlike the forest Spindrift is in is where Val recovers 

from the encounter. She gets off the ground, finding tombstones---including 

Steve Burton's. NOTE: This prop was autioned off in the 1970s by FOX along 

with the Batmobile. Val cannot move the tombstone and doesn't see a hand rise 

up near her leg. Venturing past hanging vines, she nears a mauseleum--the 

outside of which has Fitzhugh's tomb against it. Val goes in past strange 

statues decorated with cobwebs. Fitzhugh startles Val from behind. Val 

enlists his help in trying to move Steve's tomb---which he hesitates to do. 

Nevertheless she pries Fitz into helping. That hand rises up again and grabs 

Fitzhugh's leg---making him yell---as he previously didn't want to disturb 

the resting place of the dead. It is Steve--alive. Fitz wonders if they are 

all dead and do not know it. Dan arrives for a joyous reunion with all three. 

Bryk presses a button, watching them via a tv screen. A high pitched sound 

emits and makes Val, Dan, Steve, and Fitz fall down into the fog. Tagon 

tosses Mark into a three pole forcefield triangle. Melzac demonstrates that 

it can fry Mark if he tries to leave the area between the poles. He wants to 

send Mark to the Graveyard on a back up trip. Melzac tells Mark about the 

servo actuator---the most powerful force on this planet which will give him 

the power to control time and space, and eventually the universe. It came, he 

and his brother and Tagon believe, from the stars from a long lost galactic 

civilization. Val, Dan, Steve, and Fitzhugh wake up, aware of not being in 

the plane but unsure of what happened in the graveyard---but they weren't 

flying long enough to reach the other side of the planet. Steve reckons they 

went through a time warp to this jungle which is how Earth looked one hundred 

million years ago. Fitz claims he was an old geologist and uses this to back 

up his complaints and fears. A titanic praying mantis towers over the 

foursome. They turn to run but from the other side a giant dinosaur--lizard 

comes rushing at them.

Act Three

Dan runs after Fitzhugh into the jungle. Val fears they will both be lost. 

She and Steve go another way, pursued by the four footed lizard giant. Bryk 

makes a giant Fitzhugh who is dressed like a pirate (not unlike the pirate 

Kasznar once played in a movie with Doug McClure) tower over Fitzhugh. The 

giant pirate tells Fitzhugh they are all going to die, insulting Fitzhugh as 

a coward and calling this the Graveyard. This, he insists is his land. Val 

and Steve pulling her, stop short by a giant boulder (almost a full range of 

the top of a mountain)  in front of them ready to fall off the giant ridge of 

a cliffside. It is ready to fall on top of them, poised to crush them. From 

the other side the giant monster moves slowly at them. Time freezes both 

hazards and they run. Val is tired, exhausted in fact and yells she can't go 

on, "I can't! I can't! I'm tired!"   The two fall into a hole which tunnels 

them into a reddish glowing tube. Dan falls in the jungle and hears calls of  

help from Betty and Steve as well as a stern call from Mark, saying, 

"Trouble, Dan, trouble."   He can't help them, which frustrates him. Betty's 

voice calls, "It's going to get me!"  Her voice calls for Dan to help her and 

that it is getting closer. Dan yells that he can't help them and this floors 

him. Betty, the real Betty, leaves Barry outside the giant's huge lab 

warehouse. With the thermal tool, she heads into a workroom of the 

installation of the giant's. She lazers a hole in the wall behind Mark (in 

the script both Betty and Barry go to do this). From the tool room she is in, 

Betty gets Mark a giant screwdriver which he uses to blow out the forcefield. 

Val and Steve cannot find a way out of the tube. Bryk removes the lid and 

looks in, talking to them, then he covers it and pushes the tube into the 

device. Val and Steve see behind them---the tunnel behind them leads to the 

flame of an atomic furnace they are now in the middle of. Dan finds and calms 

a confused Fitzhugh. The two hide as Bryk passes and uses his mind and those 

werid lights to summon the plane from thin air. He takes a piece out of the 

plane, leaves the plane down, and walks right through a solid tree. As an old 

naturalist, Fitzhugh refuses to believe one can walk into a tree but he 

follows Dan through it---frightened by the return of  the giant 

pirate-Fitzhugh outside. Bryk opens the tunnel again and hands Steve the 

piece he took from the plane--a replacement part which the giants could not 

replace themselves. If the two do not do this the giants will have the 

actuator destroy them. Bryk promises to have Melzac send them back once the 

pair put the piece into place. This whole trip was to put this part in to the 

tunnel--something the giants could not fit inside to do themselves. Bryk 

turns the tube and Steve and Val fall. Val falls hard and hits the back of 

her head.

Act Four

On the other side of the tree, Fitzhugh finds the rock wall behind he and Dan 

is now solid. On the other side of the planet, Betty notices the giants have 

found Mark missing. She and Mark at the cabinet controls. Betty tells him the 

giants have found him missing. Mark rewires the plane controls. Steve and Val 

learn the nuclear furnace is about to explode. Bryk tells Melzac the new part 

has boosted the power and enables himto use thought control. He wants to 

teleport the servo actuator and himself back to Melzac. Betty asks Mark what 

will happen to the others if it is teleported. Bryk talks to Steve after the 

piece is put into place, "This whole place is going to explode. Look, you're 

experimenting blindly in the fourth dimension. You're not going to rule this 

planet, you're going to destroy it!"  Bryk snuffs at this, "Big words for 

such a little man."  He replaces the lid, curious about what what will happen 

to the pair when the actuator teleports. He leaves the complex to find the 

plane. Dan and Fitzhugh find rope as Steve knocks the lid off. He and Val 

could not remove the new piece because it has already grown too hot. Steve 

tells Dan and Fitz to save themselves but Dan will not leave without them. 

Using the cord they climb down but Bryk returns and finds them missing. 

Hiding at the rock wall exit,  Dan figures the actuator can help them so he 

and Steve mentally concentrate to get themselves, Fitz, and Val back to the 

plane. The lights occur and the foursome vanish. Betty and Mark see more odd 

lights---and also see wavelength impulse images of Steve and Val running in 

the forest, then Dan and Fitzhugh, all running in seemingly slow motion. 

Transversing, the four appear in the plane. Mark contacts them and lifts the 

plane off from where he is. But Bryk grabs the plane. Steve tells him to get 

away before the actuator blows up. Hearing the overload, Bryk lets go of the 

plane and goes back to the complex. While Tagon and Melzac are busy with the 

sparking controls and trying to cut off the power to the actuator---Betty and 

Mark slip under the door and get outside. The lights bring the plane to the 

outside of the lab as it begins to explode. The four race out of it to the 

other three. The complex blows up (but Bryk was not in it). The plane also 

goes up in smoke. The lab seems to blow apart in a raging fire as the seven 

see its window blasted out. Fitzhugh tells the other six Spindrifters that 

with the actuator he could have shown the giants what to do with their 

planet. Dan says, "Nobody should be trusted with that kind of power."   Steve 

says, "Let's go."   He leads them away.

REVIEW: Broadcast as the last episode, this was a good episode to finish up 

with, certainly better than THE MARIONETTES (which was filmed last) although 

even MARIONETTES is underrated. Val and Betty both wear their new dresses and 

will for the rest of the season. Sidney Marshall, like William Welch, wrote 

illusion-nightmare weirdos for Allen. His VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE 

SEA--DEATH CLOCK had a similar device changing around the 4th dimension--- 

time. For VOYAGE he also had NIGHTMARE (another illusion based tale), DEATH 

FROM THE PAST, DEAD MAN'S DOUBLOONS (with Albert Salmi and involving 

pirates), and THE SILENT SABOTEURS (with George Takei).  This tale, while 

disjointed, is purposeful and rightly mysterious with new ways of showing 

familiar things. Case in point: the four teleporting at the end: Betty and 

Mark witness them running but we saw them vanish. And after their run, we see 

them materialize in the plane. Were they in hyper space? Running so fast via 

the mind powers that they couldn't be seen by the human eye but slowed when 

Betty and Mark saw them? No answers, really. The entire first crash and 

recovery sequence seems to be added in after the episode was completed. 

Perhaps it was filmed first. Lund was told by the director that her skirt was 

too short for TV so it had to be changed. Thus, Val has two different skirts 

on in this episode-- in some scenes it is longer, in others, shorter. Viewers 

might be able to tell in which. A lot of this episode was up for 

interpretation---did they really reach the other side of the planet? Or were 

they back in the Giant's prehistoric past? Was it Earth's prehistoric past? 

What were the tombs and statues in the cave for? Why didn't they remember 

their first landing fully? Was it the same place as the place with the tombs? 

 Did they go through a time warp? Did Melzac, Tagon, and Bryk escape? Was the 

actuator really destroyed? As with other second season episodes, this one 

could have had a sequel (this was also true of many GIANTS episodes: THE 

CLONES for one). In NIGHTMARE's case we could have seen the nightmares of the 

other characters. Salmi is good in this episode, having a different feel for 

each of the twin brothers and making them very different characters, despite 

not having much to work with. He appeared in LOST IN SPACE as Capt Tucker in 

the SKY PIRATE and TREASURE OF THE LOST PLANET. He passed away in 1990 after 

donig an episode of THE YOUNG RIDERS (which also has Don Collier of RESCUE as 

a semi regular). Marshall wrote fairly well for the main characters of GIANTS 

bar Barry who has no lines at all in the TV version. He has more to do and 

more lines in the script though. Marshall fails terribly, however, with 

Fitzhugh. He makes Fitz a very loud, complaining, braggart who is most unlike 

the Fitzhugh we have come to know in the other stories. He is constantly, in 

GRAVEYARD OF FOOLS, saying, "As an old _____________-expert, I can tell you 

that..."   After awhile this gets on one's nerves and just is too predictable 

to be "good Fitzhugh" material. Marshall also wrote this way for Fitzhugh in 

COLLECTOR'S ITEM (with "an old counselor at law" and as an old soldier").  A 

janitor scripted in the story is not seen in the TV version but he was cast 

and most likely filmed. His filmed parts must have been edited out. He was 

also given credit in the end titles! They were correct not to have the 

janitor since he served no purpose in the story.  Other script changes: Barry 

went with Betty to rescue Mark and all three were in the "government" lab.  

The dolls used to give the illusion of little people in the hands of the 

giants seemed to be larger than usual (although they look quite large in 

GIANTS AND ALL THAT JAZZ too). NO matter, they still looked very good. The 

actuator complex was a mishmash of VOYAGE sets and props, especially the 

reactor pile which was the actuator---which filled the complex AND the VOYAGE 

missile room was the overall complex. The teaser to the script ends with 

Melzac putting Val and Fitz in his smock pocket. In the script, the plane 

throws the four travelers about as it crashes amid "steam and volcani gases 

rising from crevices."   The scene then picks up with all four recovering to 

be menaced by the giant insect--which looks good in the TV version only when 

it is up close) and the lizard (which, an Irwin Allen stock footage bit from 

Allen's version of THE LOST WORLD) does not look too good. The script also 

has Mark and Betty talk about a LIMBO--a lost nowhere place while the four 

are running in psychedelic lights listed as "Int. Backing--Limbo Set."    An 

aerial shot was supposed to show the primeval area blown up from overhead. 

Again, as in HOME SWEET HOME, many lines are been changed to edit out useless 

and repetitious talk. The script from Dec. 9, 1969 is a revised shooting 

final and does not contain the Valerie--Fitzhugh-Steve's tomb sequence. It 

must have been added in as filler. The entire story is much better in the 

final televised version. That said, it is not always a logical straight 

forward tale and comes across as a mixed up set of sequences, none of which 

really make sense in the end...what kind of aliens made this machine? Were 

they light beings without any bodies? Why put a switch in a place that one 

cannot get to? What size were they? How did ESP get involved? There are more 

unanswered questions than answers.