With all the changes from the first season to the second, it seem only natural archenemy Miguelito Loveless should make an early appearance. The demented dwarf isat his best here, with the most outlandish plot he has concocted thus far.Loveless has kidnapped Princess Wanakee of the black Foot nation and demanded, by telegram, she be rescued by Jim and Artie. The tribal leaders give them three days to save Wanakee or their peace treaty with the united states ends. Jim and Artie are promptly captured by Loveless’ men at the destination point and become prisoners along with Wanakee.
Teir frequent near successful escapes frustrate Loveless, who is working on his latest plot for world conquest and cannot afford the distraction. Said escapes are really just a way of padding out the episode to avoid too much of the expensive special effects involved with loveless’ plot-- shrinking Jim down to the size of an action figure!
Loveless has developed a formula that will shrink all of humanity down to that size. So he can easily rule over them, of course. A couple problems with this brilliant plan, however. Loveless is assuming the tiny size will render people powerless against him. But wait, insects are man’s mot dangerous enemy. They ruin crops, transmit diseases, and destroy untold amounts of property every year. There is not a whole lot we can do about it. Insects do these things instinctively, without any coordinated plan. Humans would not do things that way. Loveless would seriously have his hands full.
In Loveless’ defense, he is insane, so it can be excused he has not thought his brilliant plan all the way through. He was crazy enough to create an antidote that would return shrunken people to normal size and put it within Artie’s reach when it would help Jim most, so either he does not think his plans through very carefully or his innate sense of self-loathing prompts him to sow the seeds of his own defeat. However much credit you want to give the writers for psychological insight is fine with me.
Jim and Waakee are shrunken in the fourth act. Jim escapes rom a literal doll house prison and has to deal with a vicious cat, a tarantula, a mousetrap, and a rolling 8-ball decades before Indiana Jones outran the famous boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Artie makes certain Jim gets the cure durig a scuffle with loveless’ men. Loveless, of course, escapes, but his plan is ruined and Wanakee is returned safely to er people.
There is a very clever anachronism/homage combo featured in the prerequisite Loveless ad Antoinette duet. They sing a couple of verses of ’The John B Sails,” an old folk song featured in the 1917 Carl Sandburg novel Pieces of Eight in which it is referred to as “an old Nassau ditty.” whether it is a real song or one made up for the novel is not known, but Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys adapted the lyrics for inclusion on their famous Pet Sounds album. “Sloop John B” was a big hit I the sprig and summer of 1966, a few moths before “The Night of the Raven Aired.” If you have a fondness for Land of the Giants, this is the episode for you. I could take or leave that show, in all honesty, but I do like this episode. It is full of geeky science fiction elements lie man eating plants loveless has bred, items like mousetraps serving as deadly obstacles, and laughable images such as Jim lifting a small plate of butter that is the size of a footlocker to him or Loveless carrying around an obvious doll that is standing in for the shrunken Jim. “The Night of the Raven” has to be seen to be fully appreciated in all its weirdness.
Rating: *** (out of 5)
