The third episode of the short-lived NBC series The Fantastic Journey premieres. Roddy McDowall joins the cast as an amoral scientist, adding some star power (and a bunch of androids) to the show’s lineup. 
Varian, Scott, Liana and Fred arrive in a windswept desert through the portal; shortly afterward, Sil-L, the cat with whom Liana shares a telepathic bond, arrives too. But they soon run into a new problem – a pulsating red cloud, not dissimilar from the green cloud that stranded them on the island. The men wind up in a swamp, surrounded by green-skinned people who seek help for their malaria-stricken leader, while Liana finds herself in a compound populated by attractive people in identical jumpsuits. She meets Professor Willaway, who seems to rule over these people, and he is instantly smitten with Liana, deciding that she must stay to marry him, whether she wants to or not. All of his “sons” and companions turn out to be androids, originally built by the species that has been forced into the swamp; Willaway, a radical scientist from 1963, reprogrammed all of the androids to serve him. But his desire for human companionship is driving him from radical to treacherous. When Fred, Varian and Scott leave the swamp and find their way to Willaway’s village, Varian quickly realizes that their inquiries about Liana’s whereabouts are being answered with lies. And no longer hampered by their leader’s health, the beings who created the androids are now returning to reclaim what is rightfully theirs, leaving Willaway to seek refuge with Varian’s group.
written by Harold Livingston
directed by Irving J. Moore
music by Robert PrinceCast: Jared Martin (Varian), Carl Franklin (Fred Walters), Ike Eisenmann (Scott Jordan), Katie Saylor (Liana), Roddy McDowall (Willaway), John David Carson (Cyrus), Marj Dusay (Rachel), Lester Fletcher (Chef), Frank Coresntino (Toren), Joseph Della Sorte (Aren), Ron Burke (Robert), Brian Patrick Clarke (Daniel), Bud Kenneally (Veteran), Crofton Hardester (Michael), The Felix Team (Sil-L)
Notes: Actor Brian Patrick Clarke is credited as “Brain.” Roddy McDowall joins the show in this episode, playing a part that was written specifically to attract him to the show. His genre credits already included the Planet Of The Apes films and their short-lived TV spinoff. Writer Harold Livingston also penned episodes of Mission: Impossible, Future Cop, The Six Million Dollar Man and the William Shatner series Barbary Coast, but his most famous genre gig was, of course, the unenviable job of coming up with a coherent script for Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979, a job Livingston didn’t relish as it put him into conflict with Gene Roddenberry (Livingston later claimed that his rewrites were being rewritten and sabotaged by Roddenberry). This episode contains rare references to the pilot, with Fred comparing the red cloud to the green one in the Bermuda Triangle, and Varian noting that the traveling party is almost as large as the original group of shipwreck survivors. Sil-L conveniently hides for almost the entire duration of the episode, appearing only at the beginning and the end; presumably he was marking his territory in Willaway’s outdoor planters the rest of the time.
LogBook entry by Earl Green