THE HAT SQUAD - JOSEPH RUSKIN

Joseph Ruskin was one of the last actors who had a hand in expanding Toobworld to have passed away in 2013.  He played several roles in 'Mission: Impossible' as well as villainous roles in 'Get Smart', 'The Wild, Wild West', and in 'The Outer Limits'.  He was also a guest star in both the original 'Star Trek' series and in the last one as well, 'Enterprise'.

But it is his turn in an episode of 'The Twilight Zone' for which Toobworld Central salutes him.  As the Genie in "The Man In The Bottle", Ruskin is one of the "Essentials" of the Toobworld Dynamic.  We turn to him as the splainin as to why there were so many recastaways of Adolph Hitler in so many TV series.

It's one thing to toss off mini-series and TV movies to alternate TV dimensions because of so many different actors playing roles like Abraham Lincoln and JFK.  But if we were to do that with the TV series as well, then it would be like somebody had pulled the plug out and drained everything out of the fictional universe.

In "Man In The Bottle", a pawnbroker named Arthur Castle used one of the wishes granted to him by the Genie (who looked more at home in a Turkish production of "Guys And Dolls") to become a man of great power who could not be removed from his position.  And so he found himself as Adolph Hitler on the last day in the bunker.

After the Genie left the pawnbroker and his wife back in 1960, he was free to go out into the world and deliver his style of karmic lessons to the greedy.  And giving those men a chance to become Hitler must have proven to be a harsh but constant lesson.

Among the many Hitlers we have seen in TV series which are situated in Earth Prime-Time have been:

• 'Doctor Who' played by Albert Welling
• 'Misfits' played by David Barass
• 'Passions' played by Benton Jennings
• 'Ace London' played by Alexander Falcao
• 'Timecop' played by Tony Papenfuss
• 'Highlander' played by Patrick Keating
• 'Forever Knight' played by Duff MacDonald
• 'Private Schulz' played by Gawn Grainger
• 'The Tomorrow People' played by Michael Sheard
• 'Wonder Woman' played by Barry Dennen
• 'The Time Tunnel' played by Bob May
• 'Red Dwarf' played by Kenneth Hadley

(The actual Hitler could be seen in archive footage in an episode of 'Grimm', and he proved to be not truly human but a wesen species known as the "blutbad".  And even he was not the true Adolph Hitler: the true Hitler was drowned in an icy river as a baby, only to have a gypsy baby substituted for him (as seen in an episode of the third incarnation of 'The Twilight Zone'.)  And as it turned out, that baby was a blutbad.

All of the other men listed above had been transported into various stages of Hitler's life but most of them proved more adaptable to the situation than Arthur Castle had been.  So it must have been a later event during their tenures as the Fuhrer which led them to relinquish the role. 

Because his role as the Genie serves to connect so many TV shows for the purposes of the Toobworld Dynamic, Joseph Ruskin is eligible to be inducted one day as that character into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.....

Good night and may God bless.....