1997 - THE TIME MACHINE

An Alien Voices Production
for Simon and Schuster Audio 1997

Based on the novel by: H. G. Wells
Script by Nat Segaloff

Dir.: Jack Fletcher 
Music, composed and performed by: Peter Erskine
recorded at Puck Productions, Santa Monika

John de Lancie
John, the Time Travel(l)er: Leonard Nimoy
Roxann Dawson
Richard Doyle
Robert Ellenstein
Marnie Mosieman
Andrew Robinson
Armin Shimmerman
Keegan & Owen de Lancie

"We at Alien Voices feel that the dramatization should remain faithful to the original context."

Introduction (John de Lancie): "What is time? We cannot see it, feel it or hear it. Yet it holds us in a relentless grip. It impels us into the future and imprisons the past in the tomb of memory. But what if we made time our servant? Shaping it to our desire? That is the mind- bending premise of H. J. Wells' classic novel "The Time Machine...  At its heart the story is about mankind and the fate as human beings on earth. As we evolve will our souls lift us to a higher plane? Or will our greed and violent nature condemn us to deprave depths? ..."  

The story begins near the turn of the last century. Filby, the Time Traveler's best friend, recalls hat he said after a dinner at his home: "All I'm asking you to do is question what you were told in school. Follow me carefully please and you will find out that every geometry lesson was wrong... What we call 'civilization' is a sequence of war momentarily interrupted by a moment of peace... " and then he suggests a fourth dimension: Time.

The Time Traveler leaves the room to bring the invention he has worked on for 2 years: 

The Time Traveler presented a model in his hand which was a glittering metallic framework, scarcely larger than a small clock, and very delicately made. The Medical Man got up out of his chair and peered into the thing. "It's beautifully made," he said. Everybody noticed the small seat and one of other friends, Samuel, was asked to push a handle - and the machine vanished. Collin asked. "Where did it go?" and the Time Traveler answered: "Gone in Time." The friends discuss trickery and then take his offer to follow him into his laboratory to show them: The Time Machine. "You are serious!", James exclaims. "I am serious.", the Time Traveler answers and shares: "I am ready to explore time." 

A week later the friends return but do not meet John who has left a letter for Filby saying that they should not wait for him: He will arrive in good time.  They enjoy the meal. Suddenly John appeared. Pale, wounded, ...  He hardly can speak and breathes heavily.

Beginning to tell the events John, the Time Traveler, starts exactly with what happened a week ago: He has applied final adjustments to the machine and prepared himself for time traveling. While the light around him changed and the laboratory got hazy, the clock a minute past ten and suddenly half past three. "The visual sensation of time travel is unlike any other kind of movement." With increasing speed day and night just flickered. Suddenly I broke through into the open air. The laboratory might have been destroyed and he kept on passing a year in a second. Thinking about the possibility that an object might be in the place where the laboratory had been; then, in case he stopped, both forms would fuse. "I had feared this when I built the machine, but now it was the threatening reality... I decided to take a chance and stop." The machine was tumbled over and John found himself on the ground. In the middle of a storm he could see the date: Year 802.701 the machines time indicator showed. Some kind of lush garden. Soft Rain.

Further on he saw a huge stone carved like a Sphinx and 4 feet tall people hiding in the bushes. John approached them. He was a very graceful creature. The absences of any kind of fear struck John immediately. When they approached the time machine, he gently unscrewed the control lever and put it in his pocket. It was indeed possible to begin a conversation. John asked for one of the peoples name. "We are all Eloi," he said. 800 000 years into the future and the men called Eloi are reduced to the level of a preschool child. John goes on telling his friends that the Elois put flowers around his neck and took him along outside the garden. He discovered another building beside the white Sphinx made of vast grey stone and was entered a melodious world of laughter and song-like speech. Sharing food with the Eloi John tries to begin a conversation. Their world possessed all it needed to sustained physical life.

Animals seemed to have followed the fate of the dinosaurs. John encountered a complete lack of interest in acquiring knowledge in the year 802. 701. Houses had disappeared and all people were alike. Mingo, one of the Elois, is asked "Why are there no old Elois?" and did not understand words like "old" or "death".

Suddenly John discovered that his time machine was gone. In despair he searches and finds a trail leading to the Sphinx. The time machine had to be inside that building. John remembered how much he had labored to get into the future, now he was desperate to get out. 
Wondering how the Eloi could clothe in garments without discovering any kind of creativity anywhere.

At a river John John watched the people playing. One of them, a young girl, fell into the stream of water and weakly cried for help. No on e cared about her. Quickly John stripped off his clothes, went into the river at a shallow place and rescued her. "Your are the man from the noise in the sky.", she remarked and left after John learned her name: Weena. In the evening she greeted him with joy and presented him a bouquet of flowers made for him alone.

After dark the people never stayed alone and never left the big, grey building.

One day while seeking shelter from the sun, John found a narrow passageway. He entered into the darkness. Stepping on John discovered a pair of pinkish-grey eyes, unblinking, in front of him. The Eloi's terror of the dark came into Johns mind. He could make out some ape-like creature which did not respond to him but escaped into the opening. John followed and discovered a shaft leading down with hand and footrests on the sides. John speculated that the human race has split into two species: One living on the surface during the day and the others living underground being active during the night. " 'Morlocks' come in darkness", John learns from the Eloi.

John's friends find that he has taken this too far but believe John that experienced life in future which has altered the very genetic make-up of the human race.  
Whether John liked it or not he had to go for the Morlocks - they had the time machine. If he only did not feel so alone!
Climbing down the shaft he noticed that the Morlocks had machinery. Their eyes were abnormally large and sensitive. In a cavern John saw a table filled with food. Meat. So the Morlocks were carnivorous. Only four matches remained. "You cannot imagine how nauseatingly inhuman they looked!", John tells his friends. "Those pale, chinless faces." Using his last matches to chase them off John made it up the shaft.

Now the Time Traveler realized the reason for the Eloi's fear of the dark and where the Morlocks food, the meat, comes from. Exploring the area together with Weena, she shows John a palace decorated with green porcelain. John suspects that it has been a library. Mirror-like pictures moved and told earth's history speaking to him: "With knowledge came prosperity. No longer would superstition divide mankind. A great peace came. Institutions fell because they have fulfilled their purpose." "Could it be that mankind would enter an age of enlightenment that would make time meaningless", John wondered. Two fractions evolved: Those who shape the world to their needs and those for whom the environment was shaped." By the 400th millennium the separation was inevitable....  suddenly the voice stopped. Had they been watched by the Morlocks?

Exploring the library John found matches in an airtight box and he found camphor. Trying to make it back to the Sphinx he lit a fire as soon as the Morlocks came near - and lost Weena in the turmoil of a burning forest.
The Elois were bathing in the river where he first me Weena. Unaware of their fate as cattle for the Morlocks.

John and his friends discusses their influence in shaping their future, but want to know how John made it back and whether Weena was found. She was not, John says. 
Very unexpectedly John found the doors of the Sphinx open - and his machine on a raised spot. As John approached the machine the doors closed and he was trapped in the darkness. Quickly he put the control lever onto the machine and started it. He felt the hands of the Morlocks at him, but soon he was gone - dashing further on into the future.

Millions of years seem to have passed and a beautiful sky covered with stars gives John a spectacular sight when he stopped again. A beach is now in front of him and crabs huge as tables approach. A sense of desolation came over him. Stopping now and then the red sun seemed lifeless after 30 million years and twinkled no more. The sky was absolutely black. "And so I came back here... I trembled. The machine has stopped in the garden because I had started from the Sphinx. I hesitated when I heard your voices inside.  ...  You know the rest."
"To tell you the truth, I hardly believe it myself.", the time traveler says and shows them flowers Weena had picked for him in the forest. No one could identify them. When everybody leaves Filby stays and shares that he can see that John misses Weena terribly.

Both go out for the time machine. "The story is all true", John confirm to him.
The next day Filby returned and finds John sleeping in his chair - a camera in his hands. "Can I see you time traveling?" Filby asks. "I know why you came.", John understands. "Wait for half an hour and I will be back proving to all of you that I do time travel. You're a good friend.", he says. Going after John, Filby hears a whirling sound out of the laboratory and, when looking inside, sees a twirling figure in a metal seat transparent, so that he can the the opposite wall through him. Then he was gone.

"At that I understood. At the risk of disappointing Richardson I stayed on, waiting for the Time Traveller; waiting for the second, perhaps still stranger story, and the specimens and photographs he would bring with him. But I am beginning now to fear that I must wait a lifetime. The Time Traveller vanished three years ago. And, as everybody knows now, he has never returned. And I have by me two strange white flowers..."