The Man From Y.E.T.I.

The Man From Y.E.T.I. was a 17-episode U.S. television show, originally airing September 1968 to February 1969. Often compared to The Prisoner, the show combined unexplained surreal situations and characters, paranoia, science-fiction, and action-adventure.

Opening Sequence
The opening sequence of The Man From Y.E.T.I. featured extended shots of Faraday running down vast hallways and leaping over obstacles, as well as struggling to free himself from a variety of traps. More than half of the footage used in the opening never appeared in the actual show: a car chase through a city, Faraday firing a gun point-blank at a man in a lab coat who explodes, and Faraday commandeering a helicopter, among many other scenes. At one point the camera cuts to a stack of papers with "RICK ROBERTSON" printed on the topmost page; a hand wearing a golden ring brings down a stamp, marking the page with "CONTAIN" in red ink. No character named Rick Robertson appears in the show, leading some to presume that this is the name of the actor who plays Faraday, but the total lack of beginning or ending credits on the show makes it impossible to know for sure. The footage was accompanied by the show's memorable theme song, which primarily featured drums and flute, with a low growl building through much of it, climaxing in a euphoric roar as the song reaches full-swing.

Plot
The series follows a man, unnamed for much of the show but later identified as Faraday, as he explores an underground prison complex in which he is held. Every episode, he must complete a task or variety of tasks given to him by his captors, or face death.

Most episodes would begin with Faraday cautiously exploring a new area of the prison and nearly injuring himself in the process. Often, a dog would emerge from out of view and begin speaking to Faraday in a robotic voice. The scene would then show a robot in a different location, controlling the dog's mind and speaking through it. The dog would give Faraday an unexplained task ("Defeat the Minotaur and reach the Heart of Wood," "Fill the Bottle," "Build an Airplane Engine") and then threaten him with various grisly deaths should he fail. Sometimes the task would turn out to be allegorical, but other times they must be literally completed (Faraday must actually construct an airplane engine or be dissolved in acid in one episode).

In addition to these tasks, Faraday constantly seeks a way to escape from the complex, often hatching elaborate plots to take advantage of new possible exits. Faraday will often make a fair amount of progress on a plan in a given episode, before a number of seemingly coincidental single events interlock to cause the ruin of his scheme.

As the series goes on, Faraday is exposed to a hallucinogenic gas with increasing frequency. While under the effects of the drug, he encounters a race of alligator-men who appear to be running the complex and preventing his escape. Although Faraday seems to catch glimpses of the alligator-men when not drugged, it is unclear whether they actually exist.

Another recurring event is the donning of a markedly low-quality parka or ghillie suit, which Faraday always finds in a sealed capsule mysteriously placed for him to find it, just before the climactic action sequence of an episode. This occurs nearly every episode, and neither the parka, the capsules, or the reason for wearing it are ever explained. Episodes typically end with Faraday still wearing the bizarre garment, but he never has it at the beginning of the following episode.

In a number of the episodes, Faraday encounters red service telephones. Occasionally they blink, and Faraday, shocked, runs to answer them, only to be confronted with weird, unintelligible noises. After Episode 8: "Mysteries of the Monmouth Codex, Part 2," Faraday no long attempts to answer the phones but instead goes out of his way to destroy them when they light up.

Episode 6: "Seek Not To Undo What Has Begun"
The episode opens with a gang of men in yellow jump suits at the intersection of two long corridors. A brief but heated argument is already begun, and the men quickly decide to split up and run down the hallways. Once the men are gone, Faraday and a woman wearing a knit brown cape with a twig embroidered on it (Deidre Hall, in an uncredited appearance) emerge from a very poorly concealed secret door in the wall. Faraday and the woman cautiously advance down several corridors before they come into a circular chamber with a pool in the center. Near the entrance, two of the men in yellow jumpsuits are standing guard. Faraday and the woman, whom he refers to as Cindy, sneak up on the guards and knock them out in order to steal their jump suits for use as disguises. It is implied that the pool was an underwater dock, as in the next scene Faraday is piloting a submarine with Cindy at the SONAR screen. Despite the previous scene showing both Faraday and Cindy putting the jump suits on, only Faraday is wearing one; at no point in the episode does Cindy have one. Faraday explains to Cindy that they can escape the complex through the Sea of Valusia; this scene features extraordinarily low-quality dubbing, with the line heard not matching Faraday's lip movements at all. Cindy points behind Faraday and asks, "what's that?" Faraday turns and exclaims the classic line, "a Deleuzian Randorph-Retsobrenner Synchro-Phasic Fusilizer!" He picks up a shoddy-looking ray gun and inspects it, proclaiming, "only three Nebulon batteries. Better be careful." Suddenly the cabin of the submarine shakes wildly and Cindy studies the SONAR, realizing that they're under attack by a Geo-Killer (note that no such monster is ever shown). The cabin's window cracks and Cindy and Faraday exchange Significant Looks, only to be horrified when instead of water, the hallucinogenic gas pours into the sub from the destroyed viewport. After blacking out, Faraday experiences a montage of scenes featuring the alligator-men, including them wiring a car battery up to 10-foot-tall robotic version of his own head, which begins speaking badly-mangled Portuguese. Upon waking, Faraday finds himself inside at the bottom of a large circular cement pit with no visible exits. With a shock, he sees Cindy's unconscious form on the other side of the chamber (despite no trace of her being there in the pan around the room a moment before), a deadly Ghost Snake wrapped around her. The familiar action theme picks up and Faraday sees a capsule, dons his parka and proceeds to violently clash with the Ghost Snake, barely defeating it after several minutes of struggle. He finds that Cindy is alive, but will quickly die from the bite of the Ghost Snake. Thinking quickly, Faraday pulls a Nebulon battery from the Deleuzian Randorph-Retsobrenner Synchro-Phasic Fusilizer and smashes it on the floor. Foaming, bright green liquid starts pouring out and he holds it to Cindy's lips, explaining, "quick, drink this!" Cindy quickly recovers fully and the two start down a hallway, as they are inexplicably in a different room with clear exits once she wakes. All seems well, until Cindy screams, and Faraday watches in horror as she rapidly transforms into a werewolf. Were-Cindy growls viciously and leaps to attack Faraday, but he dodges just in time and she leaps past him. Before he can do anything, Cindy mounts a dirtbike that is suddenly in the room and rides down a long corridor, Faraday futilely trying to catch up with her until the image freezes on his defeated form and the credits roll.

Episode 7: "Mysteries of the Monmouth Codex, Part 1"
The episode opens with a tight shot of a bright red emergency telephone, slowly panning out to reveal one of the long corridors typical of the facility, with Faraday just coming into view around a corner at the opposite end. Upon sighting the phone, he dashes over and rips the receiver off the hook, tapping frantically at the single button in an attempt to get an outside line. After shouting for a response, he resigns his efforts, drops the phone and exits the corridor, apparently through the same door through which he had entered.

In the following scenes, Faraday follows a narrowing passage into an enormous, circular room, with a steaming, poorly-constructed silver rocket staged in the middle. The camera cuts to a view of Faraday from behind and pans up with his gaze, revealing that the rocket is emblazoned with a large hammer-and-sickle emblem and the C.C.C.P. insignia; he also notes aloud that there are no silo doors in the ceiling. Upon approaching the rocket for a closer inspection, Faraday catches sight of a capsule, and proceeds to don the parka it contains. No sooner has he done this than he is attacked from behind by an ape-creature in a badly-torn metallic silver spacesuit, which catches him in a bear-hug. As the action theme swells, Faraday grapples with the ape dramatically until he is overpowered and thrown through a conveniently-placed stack of cylindrical barrels. When he regains his footing, he has somehow produced the Fusilizer from Episode 6, which he then trains on the approaching ape. Faraday attempts to fire, but the weapon explodes in his hand (leading to his oft-quoted exclamation, "Blast it! A Nebulon overcharge!") and the ape, now holding what appears to be a Fusilizer of its own, uses the device to spray him with a hefty dose of the hallucinogenic gas.

The ensuing montage includes depictions of the alligator-men wearing construction helmets and repairing telephone wires in a field, stocking a large shelf with Faraday dolls and worshiping a giant, golden statue of a human ear. Upon regaining consciousness, Faraday finds himself in what he initially believes to be his childhood bedroom, but he quickly discovers it to be a crude reproduction. After finding an exit he continues on through a series of rooms, among them an empty laboratory full of bubbling orange beakers, until he emerges back into another corridor with a red telephone (this corridor is identical to the one in the opening scene, though it's never explicitly stated that they are, in fact, one and the same). Suddenly, the small light on the phone stars blinking, and it emits a bizarre series of buzzing noises. Faraday approaches cautiously and answers; he is told to "Seek the Abramelin Sign" by a strange mechanical voice, after which the line goes dead.

Throughout the rest of the episode, Faraday is seen navigating a series of corridors and empty hangars, during which he chases a robotic key to unlock an oversized vault door and ultimately has to jump over a pit teeming with scorpions (a task which he bemoans at great length). At one point, he enters a factory assembly line producing heavy machine components. He sights a lone worker in a yellow hazmat containment suit that appears to have a tail. A chase ensues, but Faraday is ambushed by a team of Red Ninja assassins, who he fends off during a lengthy fight sequence. Resuming the chase, he turns a corner to find himself at a dead end, in a short hallway with another phone on the opposite wall.

In the final scene Faraday, looking somewhat bewildered, examines the phone and finds that it, unlike others he has encountered in the facility, has a coin-intake slot. A small placard on the wall next to it reads "INSERT TOKEN - WAIT FOR OUTSIDE LINE" (some die-hard fans have postulated that this is, in fact, the "Abramelin Sign" mentioned earlier in the episode, though artifacts in the script throw this theory into question). The camera cuts back to Faraday; a look of frustrated determination spreads over his face, and the words TO BE CONTINUED appear below him in bold, orange letters.

Episode 9: "Survive the Essence"
The episode opens on Faraday, trapped in a small, poorly-lit room with rubble blocking the only exit. He tries several methods to escape, but soon tires and opens a packaged meal ration. After a few bites, Faraday passes out; through the use of the screen distortion employed when he is gassed, it is implied that he accidentally ingests a concentrated dose of the hallucinogenic drug, causing him to fall into a coma. While unconscious, he relives a number of scenes from previous episodes, but with the alligator-men now shown as being responsible for the failure of his escape attempts. Eventually, he experiences a number of alternate futures, before waking up in a sunny field of grass. Faraday, confused but seemingly free, wanders through the field, picks an apple from a tree and bites into it, and smiles. Suddenly, he freezes, his eyes locking on something out-of-frame; he sprints into the field, only to come up a previously unseen wall, painted to appear as the sky. Banging on the wall and yelling, Faraday finds a door and opens it, the camera holding on his terrified expression for long seconds before cutting to what he sees: the door opens into a large room typical of the complex, with a very high ceiling. Painted in enormous block letters on the wall facing Farday are the words: "THERE IS NOTHING ELSE"

Trivia

 * Faraday's famous line from Episode 6, "a Deleuzian Randorph-Retsobrenner Synchro-Phasic Fusilizer!" has been sampled in a number of songs.


 * Artifacts in the original scripts indicate that Episodes 7 & 8 were at one point titled "Dial R for Rapture" Parts 1 & 2, respectively.


 * An hour-long television movie was originally planned to air the summer following the series finale, but the project was scrapped a week into shooting due to budget issues. Though the actual script has never surfaced, production documents indicate that the movie would have revolved around Faraday pursuing and ultimately confronting his captors, the leader of whom is revealed to be Faraday himself; he created the alligator-men, ordered his own memory wiped and had himself imprisoned because he "learned too much" and endangered "the Cause." After fighting numerous alligator-men, destroying the Mind Control Robot Alpha Computer and commandeering a speedboat in an underground canal system, Faraday would finally destroy the facility and make his escape back to society.