THE LONE RANGER IN THE SWINGIN' SIXTIES

or most of his life, a man named Reid, better known to the world as wild, wild West hero "The Lone Ranger", lived in the 19th Century.  After the Civil War, he and his faithful Indian companion Tonto roamed the frontier making sure that Justice held sway and that the defenseless innocents were protected by the scourges who plagued the prairies.

But at one point the Lone Ranger and Tonto were catapulted through Time into the Future - at some point before 1968, as a matter of fact.

In 1968, we saw the Lone Ranger and Tonto attending a swanky party in a toney Manhattan townhouse apartment, where they discovered the pleasures of pizza rolls.  (They must have arrived from the days of the Old West early enough before that party to have built up a reputation, perhaps even as a novelty, to get invited to that party.  I'm thinking they arrived in the early 1960s, before the Man of Steel died.  And at some point after his arrival, the Lone Ranger teamed up with Superman, which would have brought the Masked Man some notoriety.)

How did they get there in the Future of 1968?

In the real world, there is only one set of rock formations known as the Vazquez Rocks.  But in Toobworld, that out-cropping was mass-produced by one of the Magratheans who built Earth Prime-Time.  It pops up all over the Western frontier, and that lazy Magrathean even used it again when building a planet commissioned by the Metrons.  It would be where Captain James T. Kirk would one day do battle with an alien known as the Gorn.  (It looks like that Magrathean architect even used the design on six other artificial planets, including Vulcan!)

All of those iterations of the Vazquez Rocks served as touchstones for the Lone Ranger - he would journey to those formations and make camp, knowing them so intimately that he had memorized all of their defensible areas.

But one of them turned out to be an illusion, a temporary "rock" formation that was in fact a TARDIS.  I believe it was used by the Meddling Monk and it would be just like that interfering Time Lord to trick the Lone Ranger into riding his horse up to the summit and then shooting him and Tonto forward in Time in the hopes it would change history.

But the future excursion proved to be beneficial to the populace of the 1960s as the Lone Ranger and Tonto teamed up with not only Superman, but also the Green Hornet and Robin the Boy Wonder (who by this point in Time was flying solo), saving the country from the likes of Lex Luthor, Dr. Mabuse, and Shame.  

Perhaps they even tangled with the immortal Dr. Miguelito Loveless.  (In the Tooniverse we know they did cross paths in the old West.  But in that TV dimension, Miquelito Quixote Loveless was known as Tiny Tom.)

Eventually the Lone Ranger and Tonto made it back to their own Time and continued their crusade for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

So how did they get back to that point in Time?

I hate over-using the concept, but I think the TARDIS of the Doctor's was temporarily a stable, as the Masked Man and his faithful Indian Companion took along their horses Silver and Scout.  It's the simplest splainin and Toobworld is always looking to employ Occam's Razor.....

BCnU!

[The Lone Ranger in the TARDIS at Vasquez Rocks was created especially for this article by the amazing Caeric J. ArcLight. Caeric is also a televisiologist who studies the fictional books, movies, TV shows, and locations of the TV Universe.]