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I recall seeing this TV show when I was younger, probably a repeat (the sets and dress looked like a 1960s or perhaps even 1950s); I think it was an episode from a science fiction series, but can't be sure. It was in black and white.

The opening scene shows a group of people in white coats sitting at science stations (probably meant to be computers) in a white, ascetic-looking room. Suddenly -- as in, he's not there, then in the next frame he is -- a man appears and starts smashing the computers with an axe. He's subdued, but when the rest of the compound is searched several anomalies are found, including a motorised cart with the body of another scientist in it driving in small circles outside the research complex. The dead scientist was in the room with the rest of them the moment before the vandal appeared.

When the vandal is questioned the show jumps to tell his story: he was working merrily away when time stopped for everyone except him and the dead man, whose action was what stopped time. He did it deliberately, I think as part of an alien invasion. After trying to stop the traitor, he finished up outside armed with a machine gun, with the traitor in a cart. Because the traitor can manipulate time (a power granted by the invaders to help them) he's always somewhere other than he seems to be (where he was when he said whatever he's saying), so the vandal starts shooting in a circle, ultimately hitting the traitor, who's in the moving cart. He then goes back into the lab to destroy the equipment and start time again.

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  • When you say "English," do you mean that was the language? Or was the show (seemingly) British-made?
    – Buzz
    Commented Apr 6, 2020 at 17:11
  • Yes, British-made (in English, too, but I see your point.)
    – Wocky
    Commented Apr 6, 2020 at 17:57

1 Answer 1

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Some of the details (e.g., dead body driving around in circles in a little motorized buggy) remind me of an episode (I forget which one) of the Gerry Anderson TV show, "U.F.O."

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063962/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

...so the vandal starts shooting in a circle, ultimately hitting the traitor, who's in the moving cart.

The scene was a movie lot, which is cover for the secret underground headquarters of a defence agency---SHADO---that tries to keep the aliens away from Earth. The "vandal" is Commander Ed Straker, the head of the agency. The framing story is that the entire action happened in the wink of an eye as far as anyone else knows, and when they suddenly see the commotion on the lot---there's the dead guy, whom they did not know was a spy, and there's their commander, who is seriously feeling the adrenaline, and who is holding a smoking machine pistol in his hands---they initially think that the commander has gone mad.


OK, Here it is: Episode 16: "Timelash"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timelash_(UFO)


Just re-watched it last night, and apparently I got some details wrong. When Cmdr. Straker suddenly appears, it's not at the scene of the killing. He appears in the underground bunker, and he's smashing electronic equipment with a wrecking bar. That's because the spy told him that the device that's freezing time was hidden there. When time starts again, he is able to overpower about eight guys because of a drug that he took (part of the plot), and he leads them on a chase outside, past the scene of the shooting, before they finally subdue him, and he then tells his story.

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