Main cast: Keith Carradine (Arthur Bristol), Lolita Davidovich (Various Women), Gretchen Palmer (Various Women), Adam Arkin (Paul Danko), and Maureen Teefy (Chrome)
Director: Walter Hill
Perversions of Science is the science-fiction equivalent of Tales from the Crypt, right down to the sourcing of materials from pulp fiction from the old days. Instead of the humorous Crypt Keeper, however, we have a female-ish robot (complete with metallic areola that she will toy with) called Chrome making cringe-inducing innuendo-laden one-liners and breathy gasps during the bookend segments. This lady may be fun if she were humorous or sinister, but she just comes off as trying too hard and is embarrassing to watch.
Chrome being what she is probably explains the cautionary message about the show having mature elements, because Dream of Doom by itself is a limp affair.
This is another tiresome dream within a dream episode. Arthur Bristol is a college professor who finds himself stuck in a non-stop loop of dreams. Sometimes his wife looks like Lolita Davidovich, sometimes she looks like Gretchen Palmer, and these two ladies also play various other ladies in his dreams. He knows that something is amiss, so he suspects that all this is a long episode of lucid dreaming of his part, a consequence of him signing up for some hush-hush experiment just because he was bored once upon a time. Perhaps he is still comatose or something? Alas, there doesn’t seem to be any way of waking up… or is he overlooking something?
If Dream of Doom has anything to say, it takes forever to do so, to the point that I am bored to take much notice if it ever comes up. Oh god, I sound like Chrome now. The last ten minutes or so are the most happening parts of the episode, everything else feels like a tortuous and meandering attempt by the people behind this episode to gaze into their own navels. Perhaps if this had been a shorter episode… but as it is, this one takes too long to get going, and when it does get going, the whole thing is then quickly over. For a better take of such a dream within a dream trope, I’d recommend watching Inception instead.
Oh, and Gretchen Palmer bares quite a lot here, but you will see even more of her in Ear Today… Gone Tomorrow, so really, there is no point in watching this one for that.
