Dr. Zira

That was Kim Hunter.

I think Kim Hunter there was Zira in Planet of the Apes, right? Yes, I was right.

We'll get to Planet of the Apes at some point.

That first movie is long.

Yeah.

Results were so complete, this is interesting to me, Charlton Heston later on at a social occasion didn't recognize Kim Hunter, who played Zira, despite all the time spent on the set together.

Set with her.

Like, and also at the time, they actually delayed shooting on several other movies-

You're like, did they give the ape a mustache? It's it's.

So Bill is brought to Cornelius and Zira, who are basically the equivalent of Roddy McDowell's and Kim Hunter's Cornelius and Zira from the original films.

And instead of referring to Bill as Bright Eyes, they call him Blue Eyes.

But it's still relatively the same character arc we see.

Our heroes are all together.

And we don't even see Judy at all in the second episode.

The second episode is all about helping, you know, Bill escape from Ape City and Cornelius and Zira discovering that, oh, they're really from the past.

And, you know, our own civilization may have evolved from the human civilization.

But I suspended disbelief and I'm glad that I did because Escape gave me what I wanted.

It gave me more Cornelius and Zira, more Planet of the Apes, even if this time it was Cornelius and Zira on the planet of the humans.

The first third of the film gives us delight and whimsy as we see Cornelius and Zira treated as celebrities and attending prize fights, museums and high society lectures.

Meanwhile, the suspicious Dr. Haslein melts our minds with, at least my 10-year-old mind, with time travel theories and then shivers our timbers.

I just want to throw that in.

As he proposes that in order for Earth not to become a planet of the apes, Cornelius, Zira, and her unborn baby must die.

Quickly, the film turns from a charming light comedy into an existential tragedy.

Watching the murders of Cornelius and Zira was the most profoundly disturbing fictional deaths I witnessed up until that time as a boy.