"Kung Fu": TV Series with David Carradine, Alethea

#10 (Prod #166150) "Alethea"
Teleplay By: William Kelley (also #18, 37 & 38, 50 & part of 51)
Directed By: John Badham
First Broadcast: ABC, March 22, 1973 (from the DVD)
Guest Stars: Jodie Foster, Charles Tyner, Kenneth Tobey, Khigh Dheigh (also #20 & 50-51), Byron Mabe, William Mims
Regular Cast: David Carradine, Philip Ahn, Keye Luke, Radames Pera

Caine gets caught up in a stage hold-up and an honest young girl thinks she sees him shoot a man. On her eyewitness testimony, he is sentenced to hang. In flashbacks the young Caine, who is sent on a mission with a 400 year old scroll, is tricked by a magician.

Pilot & First Season
Available on DVD

"My eyes look far and near but I didn't know they looked funny." - Caine

"I, too, read many things." - Caine (though rarely seen reading)

"'You got a sort of Injun look about you.'
'It is a sort of Chinese look.'" - Caine

"'Long ago Chuang Chou dreamed he was a butterfly. He was very joyful as a butterfly, well pleased with his lot, his aims fulfilled. He knew nothing of Chou the man. But shortly he awoke and found himself again to be Chuang Chou. And he could not tell whether as Chou he had dreamed he was a butterfly or whether as a butterfly he had dreamed he was Chou.'" - Young Caine reading from a "400 year old scroll taken from the seventh original" (from the end of Chapter 2 of CHUANG TZU)

"I am afraid only of failure." - Young Caine

"'We are taught that the most important gift of our natures is the reaching out to one another.' - Young Caine
'To say and to listen. To teach what we know truly to those who do not know. To send peaceful thoughts over the bridge of words. . . . Reach out. Yet be wary of what you allow yourself to grasp. . . . Guard above all things the purity of your vision.'" - Master Po

"I cannot kill them." - Young Caine, when offered a knife to kill those who had attacked him

"I am innocent." - Caine

"You told the truth. . . . Then I am proud to have you for a friend because of what you did." - Caine, even though that truth condemns him to death

"If the jury cannot see innocence in my eyes, will they find it in a lawyer's mouth?" - Caine

"Do not condemn yourself for telling the truth." - Caine

"It was the truth. To say less would dishonor the respect for truth which she has won at such great cost." - Caine

"Of shame there is a great variety. But of the 'Butterfly Scroll' of Chuang Tzu only one." - Master Po

"There is nothing I wish." - Caine, when he is about to be executed

"I am glad to be alive." - Caine

"Your eyes saw a gun in my hand and a man shot. For all you truly know you have freed a murderer." - Caine

"'Must I always tell the truth?' - Caine trying to teach Alethea.
'But you couldn't lie. You hate lying as much as I do.'" - Alethea, sure of Caine's truthfulness even though she thinks she saw him kill a man.

"Each waking moment is as a rung on an endless ladder. Each step we take is built on what has gone before." - Caine

"If you distrust me, why let me go?" - Caine

"'If you ain't a road agent and ain't an itinerant musician, what are you?'
'I am a priest.'" - Caine

"Nothing more will be taken from you.' - Master Po
'But I have lost nothing.' - Young Caine
'But your innocence How shall that be returned?'" - Master Po

"'I love you, Mr. Caine.' - Alethea
'And I have not loved anyone more.'" - Caine

Although Caine tries to escape before he gets into town, once there he doesn't make any further attempt to escape from jail and later walks to the gallows and allows a noose to be put around his neck.

(One is left to wonder how Caine, who was raised in China and only recently learned or relearned English, would know the Greek word for 'truth,' which he says is 'alethea?'

Young Caine is twelve during the flashback of this story.