Project UFO

The Dollhouse Incident

Season 1, Episode 11 (#129)
Original Broadcast: 20 May 1978
Executive Producer: Jack Webb
Writer: Robert Blees
Director: Robert Leeds

Carl Youngstrom (Alf Kjellin) is the long time gardener for Senate candidate Frederick Flanagan (David Hedison). Youngstrom is working alone in the night, trying to finish a dollhouse for his grandaughter. Suddenly, lights begin blinking, the house shakes and a glowing UFO lands in the yard! Youngstrom is confronted by 2 aliens who exchange bread for water.

The Blue Book investigators may have physical evidence this time. Youngstrom has saved a piece of the bread. And so another investigation is launched. But this time, more so than usual, things don't quite seem to add up...
 
Marta plays Anita, the housekeeper of the Flanagan house. Her character is evident through the show with scattered lines. But in the last five minutes, that changes as Anita flags down the Air Force investigators to admit she also saw the UFO, and went aboard!

What makes this episode particularly fun is the Irwin Allen connections. You have David Hedison from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. You have Marta from Lost in Space. And if the UFO looks a little familiar, it's because the art director for the episode was none other than Robert Kinoshita, the designer of the Jupiter 2. The design of this ship extends beyond exterior design - the interior has a center dome unit where the domed astrogator on the J2 would be, and the propulsion system is a series of round arches that pulse with light, a look very familiar to Time Tunnel fans.  In fact, to stretch the Irwin Allen analogy, Youngstrom is making a doll house, a motif found in Land of the Giants.
At the April 2004 Chiller Theatre Expo in East Rutherford, NJ,
Frederick Flanagan reunites with with his housekeeper Anita,
24 years after The Dollhouse incident




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