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West locates the owner of the initials, Colonel Vautrain, a Confederate officer confined to a wheel chair due to War injuries. Vautrain insists that West stay for dinner -- if he ever wants to see his friend alive. The Colonel explains that his legs were shattered in the Civil War and he wants West to travel back through the fourth dimension to help him reclaim the use of his legs.
As West passes through a doorway in the Colonel's house, he is transported into the 1700s where he encounters Gordon and brings him back to the present. The Colonel is ready to return to the incident that claimed his legs, so West, Gordon and Vautrain all journey back to relive the Civil War. Suddenly, Vautrain is young again and has the use of his legs. But it becomes clear he wanted to return to the war to change its outcome to the Confederate's advantage. He is crushed in an explosion and, certain that his two-fold scheme has failed, tells the agents to return to their own time without him.
Writer Henry Sharp allows his background as a cartoonist to shine in this episode, considered one of the series' most far-out. Much later, the 1999 movie "Wild Wild West" would have a legless Confederate Colonel as its villain
Directed by Jesse Hibbs* The above information was compiled from The Wild Wild West: The Series by Susan E. Kesler (Arnett Press), "Michael Garrison's Wild Wild West," an article by Robert Alan Crick in Epi-Log Journal #11 and other sources.
Written by Henry Sharp
Theater Manager: Harry Havey Sr.
Levering: Gregory Morton
Vautrain: Ricardo Montalban (of Fantasy Island and Star Trek 2, The Wrath Of Khan)
Fairchild: Ed Prentiss
Amanda Vautrain: Dianne Foster
Robber: Will J. White
Capt. Scofield: Felice Orlandi
Professor: Howard Wright
Bartender Davis Roberts