I rate Prisoner of the Machines as one of my top ten favorite CBSRMT episodes of all time.  As such, it is one I can enjoy listening to over and over again.  

Most of this is due to the combination of John Lithgow’s strong performance in such a prominent role as main character and story narrator Major John Gulliver; and Henry Slesar’s descriptively packed original science fiction tale set during humanity’s future war with the slave robots they built (ironically called the ‘Macs’ – in a story broadcast four years prior to Apple’s introduction of their thinking machine with the same name).  

As I’ve found him in every role throughout his career, John Lithgow is brilliant.  He plays an understated, unflappable, and seemingly reluctant military officer who finds himself a POW on a Mac-run penal colony. “The prison uniform came in one size… wrong.â€  Lithgow provides a diary-like narration which then blends into individual incidents and dialogues that make up the story.  A large portion of the story is actually a flashback which makes the listener interested in what has resulted in Lithgow’s helpless current circumstance and how our hero will survive to someday see home again.  

Also strong are the minor roles of Major Gulliver’s (Lithgow’s) brothers-in-chains such as the nervous Sergeant Zilkowski, the bull-headed Corporal Klybourne, and the solitary-confinement-maddened Lieutenant Lamar Jackson: “Tell the boys to stay out of trouble, Major!  Stay out of trouble… stay out of the bubble!â€  

The epilogue is a bit anti-climatic, however, I can see the difficulty in concluding such a dark narrative with a rosy ending.    

I am stingy with stars but I give Prisoner of the Machines the five-star maximum.  

- Juror 4
