Way Out — Season 1, Episode 4: Button, Button
Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy • 25 min • 1 season, 14 episodes • ★ 7.0/10
Episode synopsis
The Button referred to in the title is the button that will launch the nuclear missiles in a war. Captain Stone has the key which unlocks the control panel, giving access to the Button. Captain Stone also has nightmares about the nuclear holocaust that would result, should he ever have to push the Button; in his nightmare, his men hold him while one of the sergeants takes his key, and presses the Button, unleashing the nuclear missiles. Captain Stone wakes up, relieved it was all a bad dream. But just then, the exact same men that were in his nightmare show up-- including the sergeant who took his key and pushes the Button. Was it a nightmare, or a vision of what was to come?
About Way Out
Way Out was a 1961 fantasy and science fiction television anthology series hosted by writer Roald Dahl. The macabre 25-minute shows were introduced by Dahl's dry delivery of a brief introductory monologue, sometimes explaining a method of murdering a spouse without getting caught. The taped series began because CBS suddenly needed a replacement for a Jackie Gleason talk show that network executives were about to cancel, and producer David Susskind contacted Dahl to help mount a show quickly. The series was paired by the network with the similar The Twilight Zone for Friday evening broadcasts, running from March through July 1961 at 9:30 p.m. Eastern time, under the primary sponsorship of Liggett & Myers. Writers included Philip H. Reisman, Jr. and Sumner Locke Elliott. The premiere episode, "William and Mary", adapted from a Roald Dahl short story, told of a wife getting revenge on her husband. In "Dissolve to Black", an actress cast as a murder victim at a television studio goes through a rehearsal, but the drama merges with reality as she finds herself trapped on the show's near-deserted set. Other dramas offered startling imagery: a snake slithering up a carpeted staircase inside a suburban home, a disembodied brain in a jar, a headless woman strapped to an electric chair, with a light bulb in place of her head and half of a man's face erased.