The Brain Center At Whipple's is a late entry in the long running Twilight Zone television series, which was a sometime science fiction anthology, yet which also dealt with many social issues of its time. Whipple is one of its most humanistic, least "fantastic" offering; also one of its more prescient ones.
This episode deals with the corporate intrigue and conflicts inside the large Whipple manufactacturing firm brought about by the company's president's plans for a massive, as we like to call it, downsizing, due to changes in tasks that employed people being shifted to machines, primarily computers, which cost far less, scarcely any, actually, in real human labor.
Company president Wallace Whipple is a man who himself thinks like a machine and who lacks empathy for other human beings. He doesn't seem to care in the least as to the grief that the restructuring of his company will cause longtime employees. Indeed, he rejoices in all the millions of dollars his company will save, and what concerns he has for others appears limited to shareholders.
This might have been a good to excellent Zone entry if it had been better conceived and executed. Rod Serling, Twilight Zone's creator, host and frequent author of many of its episodes, wrote this one, and while it has much heart, maybe too much, in many stretches in the story, Mr. Whipple is way to easy to despise character. He's a heartless, one dimensional figure, while his employees are more complex, caring individuals.
There are lot of "speeches" in the episode. which is to say lengthy stretches of dialogue in which a character states his values, concerns or ambitions to another without interruption. A lot of what gets said is "old news" by 21st century standards, albeit still relevant. There is much conflict, and I suppose drama of a kind, yet little in the way of fundamental change in the characters.
One of the biggest downsides of Whipple is the character of Whipple himself, his rigid mindset and, worst of all, the performance of capable comedic actor Richard Deacon himself. He's never convincing as a man who has ever worked in the real world. Worse, Deacon plays so broadly as to emphasize his own comedy background rather than interpret his character.
He plays his part as a pompous ass; a caricature; a near cartoon character. In bold contrast the men who play his senior employees, deliver memorable, superb, deeply felt performances. Their names are worth mentioning: Paul Newlan and Ted De Corsia, and they both deserved awards for their work. For all that' s wrong in the show it's s watchable piece, and a missed opportunity for author Rod Serling to have knocked one out of the ballpark in one of the last episodes of his best remembered series.
