ROBERT CULP, DOGGIE-STYLE

It's not what you think.....

Clarke's Third Law
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

'Conan' was one of many TV series over the years that just slipped past my notice. As big a fan of fantasy literature as I am, I was never that interested in the sword and sorcery, thud and blunder, variant made most popular by this hulking He-Man creation of Robert E. Howard. (I think the closest I came to the style would be Fritz Lieber's stories about Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and the comic book series about Cerebus the Earth-Pig.)

As a TV series, 'Conan' seems to hold more to the spirit of the Schwarzenegger films than to Howard's stories, which would be even more of a reason for me to skip the show.

But via Hulu, I just watched an episode which featured the distaff version of Conan, "Red Sonja". And that's only because the guest villain that episode was Robert Culp as King Vog of Harta.*
Vog kidnapped a young but powerful wizard named Lutai so that he could produce a magic spell that would make the aged king young again. The evil Vog wanted his reign over the Hartans to continue far longer than a normal man's life span, and that would only mean decades more of death and destruction for the Hartan people; perhaps even an eternity if the spell could be perpetuated.

Eventually Lutai agreed to do what Vog requested. Using strangely named plants, he concocted a paste which Vog only had to taste and he would be made young again. Suspecting it might be poison, the king tested it on a dog (on the suggestion of Lutai). The dog transformed into a smaller, younger, version of its former self. Vog then dipped two fingers into the mixture and tasted it. The results were almost instantaneous as Vog clutched at his chest and fell to his knees; with a golden flash of light, he was transformed into... a puppy.
"I never promised I would turn him into a young man," Lutai smirked. (That must have been some magic, to make his robes and crown disappear like that!)

In a way, that felt like an episode of 'The Twilight Zone', especially "What You Need". And even back then, in the age between the fall of Atlantis and the first recording of History (as mentioned in the opening narration), ages before the birth of Rod Serling even, the Twilight Zone would hold sway over Toobworld.

I believe that had Vog tasted the paste first, without letting the dog contaminate the mixture with its slobber, then he may have transformed into a much younger man, even a child. And then had the dog tasted the paste, then it too would have transformed into a young human. I think the paste needed DNA as its catalyst; and whichever DNA first made contact, that would be the form taken by any who tasted it.

So Vog became a dog - but in body only, I'm thinking. I believe his human intelligence would remain intact and perhaps it might even have been handed down to future generations of his new breed. Toobworld Central believes the same thing happened to Red the red squirrel, mistakenly transformed into a human by Martian technology in 'My Favorite Martian'. When he became a squirrel again, he retained that intelligence to be passed down through his lineage. (And even crossed over to the population of grey squirrels through cross-breeding.)

Lutai's transformation paste, although looked upon as a "magic potion", would be nothing more than an application of chemistry and biology. The technology that duplicated these efforts, used by the Martian Exigius 12 1/2 (aka "Uncle Martin O'Hara") was just an energy variant of the compound.

Even though I believe that Vog retained his human intelligence and passed it down to his doggy descendents, this doesn't mean I think all dogs who can think and/or talk are related to Vog. Too many specific species involved when he was transformed into a cute little mutt.

With those other dogs, we look to the unsold pilot of 'Poochinski' for inspiration: when a human dies, their first reincarnationi is into dogs - unless the cosmic powers that be dictate special circumstances, like into an antique car or a toaster or a shopping cart. (Connecticut readers may understand that one....)BCnU!

*I'm still not convinced that 'Conan' should be considered part of Earth Prime-Time. Oh, it belongs in the main TV dimension, but over on Earth's twin, Mondas, on the far side of Earth's orbit around the sun. Just because the narration says that it takes place in the time between the fall of Atlantis and the recording of History, that could just be a Terran frame of reference for us about when it was taking place on that other planet.

One other note, a rare critique: as much a fan of Robert Culp as I am, this was one of his lesser acting jobs. No matter how old he was in real life when he made this, I think he was incapable of acting old. This was almost an exaggerated shadow of how Dick Van Dyke might have played the role.......