ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Time Enough at Last is a wonderful episode which requires the audience to understand (and sort of "forgive') the way the destroyed city is depicted.

What we'd see in a realistic depiction of a nuked city would be a sea of rubble, enveloped in smoke, with burnt bodies mixed in with the debris. These are photo of Hiroshima.







But of course, this thirty-minute TV show couldn't do that, both because of the budget and because the story could actually be told better with a stylized version of the destruction.

In fact. even though Burgess survives the blast because he's inside a bank vault, when he comes out of the vault, the bank building is still largely intact! The interior of the bank is littered with "debris" (stage dressing, but no bodies), and we don't really see any severe destruction until Burgess gets outside.

Even then, the destruction is very stylized by the background paintings used with the modest sets.





Of course, shots like the one above do an effective job of telling the audience what has happened.

But the story stretches credibility to the limit when Burgess discovers the library. Despite the fact that the building itself appears to be demolished, and there's debris and books littering both the steps and the entrance . . . these books are all in remarkably good shape!





But that's very deliberate, too, because it makes poor Burgess' final fate even more painful. He didn't just loose the ability to enjoy thousands of books, he lost the ability to enjoy thousands of books which were all in pristine condition!

So, the whole look of this episode is carefully designed to portray (a) Burgess' total isolation from all the people who had been making his life miserable, and then (b) his virtual separation from the very objects he valued more than anything else!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bogmeister]

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Episode #14 - Third From the Sun

Air Date: 1/8/60 written by Rod Serling, based on story by Richard Matheson Directed by Richard Bare

This one takes us to a slightly alternate universe — or so it seems.

It's one of those which is photographed with askewed angles and low lighting, recalling German expressionism, and suggesting 'elsewhere.' We assume it takes place in Earth's near future.

The main character is a government scientist (Fritz Weaver), who is working on nuclear armaments. From the characters' dialog, it sounds like war is inevitable. Weaver is making plans with a co-worker (Joe Maross) to steal an experimental saucer so that their families can escape the coming holocaust.

A kink in the plans may be a government agent (Edward Andrews) who is always snooping around. He seems suspicious of the men. Their plan is to go to another planet which has similar human lifeforms.

______ _

I've always liked this one just for the style. It's a triumph of dark, foreboding elegance and sinister tones.

The plot is less important in this one than just appreciating the overall mood. There is tension generated — though Andrews comes off as more annoying than actually threatening — but it's mostly from that mood, not the storyline. The twist at the end is not all that profound, especially nowadays.

Trivia From the Zone: This episode, like a few more after it, makes use of the saucer from Forbidden Planet (1956).

~ It's mentioned that the other planet is 11 million miles away, which doesn't make much sense in view of what we find out at the end.

~ Fritz Weaver also appeared in the episode The Obsolete Man. Maross was in The Little People. Both actors played much less sympathetic characters in those other episodes.

BoG's Score: 8 out of 10

_____________________ Third From the Sun


__________



BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Bud Brewster]

[Gord Green]

One thing about THE TWILIGHT ZONE is that it was about a reality that exists outside of our own. That allows for experiencing alternate takes on our own reality.

The genius of this series is that it released our minds to experience these variations. I remember walking to school with a fellow grade school student discussing "last nights episode" and dissecting the plot and arguing points of view from our twelve year old minds and finding the wonder of it all! This series was not just so great for what it presented, but for the prospects it presented to our imaginations!

Nothing since has really done what Rod Serling did to break through the stale wall of television to ignite young minds to imagine "what if.,..".

Thanks Rod! Miss you!
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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[Bud Brewster]

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Gord, that is an exceptionally well-written post. Cudos,sir.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bogmeister]

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Episode #15 - I Shot an Arrow into the Air

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There's a key story point here about the sun's position after 3 astronauts land on an asteroid, unsure of where they are. The point about the view of the sun is probably the worst flaw — this was a TZ / circa 1960 perspective of our solar system, in that there might be Earth-like asteroids in our system very close to Earth.

More to the point, the astronauts should have realized they WERE on Earth itself when they looked at the sun, but the whole punchline of the episode would then be gone. What other way could this have been done? All the astronauts blinded after the crash? Maybe — but that would have been an entirely different kind of episode, and no way to end it the way it did.

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I was also not too keen on the way Corey (Dewey Martin) was portrayed. These astronauts were supposed to be the best-of-the-best. OK, they are still human and prone to panic, but Corey was a first-grade a-hole from second one and then a full-blown psychopathic sociopath. Talk about slipping through the cracks of the space program here!

I guess vetting and testing and training of astronauts in this 'alternate reality' was a bit different from ours. I think the story would have still worked if Corey was less an outright villain, maybe a little more subtle and shaded. The other two surviving astronauts were almost too decent and Corey was too much a vile scum. The contrast was too glaring.

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Finally, I noted a dramatic dialog technique Serling used here and other episodes like People Are Alike All Over. At the end, as Corey sees where he actually is, he calls back to Pierson — one of the men he killed. Roddy McDowall does the same thing at the end of the other episode. This is a character calling out to the dead. I always found these bits as amusing and off-kilter. My first thought always is "Doesn't he remember that this person is dead?"

Trivia From the Zone: This was the one story that Serling purchased off the cuff from someone who pitched it at a party — "What if 3 guys landed on what they thought was an asteroid and it turned out to be outside of Las Vegas?"

~ According to Marc Scott Zicree's Twilight Zone Companion, Serling paid the lady $500 on the spot — the only time he did something like this. Maybe all the faults of the episode can be traced to the way this story was acquired. The site Buzzfeed didn't like this one, ranking it 18th worst episode of the series.

BoG's Score: 7 out of 10


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Bud Brewster]

________________________________

BoG did a fine job in his review of this well-known (but deeply flawed) episode. I would, however, disagree with him slightly concerning the statement below.

[Bogmeister]

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Episode #20 - Elegy

Air Date: 2/19/60 written by Charles Beaumont Directed by Douglas Heyes

Three astronauts (Jeff Morrow, Kevin Hagen, Don Dubbins) lost in space about 200 years in the future land on an unknown asteroid where they find an environment which looks like rural America, circa the mid-20th century. They realize that it can't be Earth because there are two suns in the sky and, besides which, the inhabitants appear to be frozen in place, like showpieces in some outdoors museum.

They finally meet a living, breathing subject, a strange old coot who calls himself Wickwire (Cecil Kellaway), but the answers he will provide may not be to their liking.

This episode combined the usual presentation of TZ future space travel with a bit of Grand Guignol, sort of like running into a serial killer in outer space (though tempered, of course, by the usual limitations of what could be shown on TV back then).

This episode also demonstrates the usual limited knowledge of astronomy during the show's original run — it's mentioned that the astronauts are 655 million miles from Earth, which sounds like a lot, but places them well within our solar system, say, somewhere in-between Jupiter and Saturn (perhaps an undetected asteroid?).

The ending is pretty chilling, especially as a contrast to Wickwire's seemingly friendly personality.

BoG's Score: 6.5 out of 10


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Bud Brewster]

________________________________

When I was a sci-fi lovin' adolescent (around twelvish in age), this one appealed to me because of the traditional trappings of science fiction; the Destination: Moon spacesuits, the three space explorers inside their ship —



— and the glimpse we got of the rocket they landed in when they arrived on the "asteroid" that was so illogically Earth-like.



In those days, we were so desperate for science fiction that little tidbits like these, even when they were viewed on those terrible old black & white TVs, where like a drink of cool water when you're dying of thirst!

It's sad that now, when we're all mature and well educated, episodes like this one provided us with more to criticize than to praise.

Compare that to Forbidden Planet — which (even after 60+ years) continues to reveal wondrous concepts and challenging questions that it took us decades to discover!

This is why I tend to criticize The Twilight Zone more often than I praise it. This series — like so many others from that era — let us down by not offering the kind of science fiction they could have . . . and should have.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

"I Shot An Arrow Into The Air'' benefited from the earlier Twilight Zone episode, "The Lonely", November 13, 1959.

Both episodes were filmed in Death Valley, CA, but TL proved to be the arduous testing ground which would make ISAAITA an easier shoot for the cast and crew. The June temperature during TL was 130 degrees.

The caterer decided to supply the cast and crew with a heavy meal. The result was that some of them collapsed during filming. Director of Photography George Clemens fell off the camera crane and into the sand.

Director Jack Smight (Harper, The Illustrated Man, No Way To Treat A Lady, Midway) thought that Clemens had a heart attack. It was the combination of a big meal and oppressive heat during the June filming for TL.

The production nurse kept on pushing lukewarm water for the cast and crew. One gent told her not to worry about him. He drank a quart of cold chocolate milk. Thirty minutes later he turned green and had to lie down in one of the trucks. The crew ended up doing double duty for other members because people were collapsing all over the place.

Technical problems also arose.

When actors were supposed to be sweating for a scene, they were sprayed with a composition of water and oil. In the Death Valley heat, the composition would immediately evaporate. The actors would look totally dry before the camera even started to film.

They finally ended up spraying 90% oil mixed with a little water in order to achieve the look required for the actors perspiring for their scenes. After only 2 days of shooting the cast and crew headed back to the studio for the rest of the filming for this episode.

By the time they returned to Death Valley for ISAAITA, the crew was wiser on preparing for the grueling shoot, starting with salads and a light meal from the caterer.

[Bud Brewster]

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Pow, that is an amazing BTS story about the filming of those two episodes! Thanks for sharing it with us.

Knowing about all those problems the two episodes caused will greatly enhance my enjoyment of them the next time I watch both The Lonely and I Shot an Arrow into the Air.

Please continue to enhance the threads on All Sci-Fi with contributions like the one above.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

Will do, Bud.

[Bogmeister]

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episode #22 - The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street

Air Date: 3/4/60 written by Rod Serling Directed by Ronald Winston



This was Serling's first and perhaps ultimate take on the suburban lifestyle being invaded and even destroyed. The enemy appears to be from somewhere without, but as in a few such stories, may be from within.

It's a study in paranoia, first and foremost, projected to the audience through the interaction of a larger-than-usual number of various characters, all supposedly typical of what we see as fifties-sixties Americana. The subversive message is that our stronghold of American values and beliefs may not be as invulnerable as we think. We may have stark weaknesses which an enemy might exploit . . .

This episode is strengthened by some fine acting, notably Claude Akins as the most level-headed neighbor, Jack Weston as the sneakiest and Barry Atwater as the more mysterious one.

There's also this weird kid character who puts the notion of invading aliens into everyone else's head (his source are comic books. EC used to have a lot of this stuff).

When I first watched this many years ago, I thought that the kid might be an alien in disguise. I think what disturbed me more by the conclusion was that I thought Akins, representing order, would be able to keep things civil. But the ending is pretty pessimistic.

Trivia From the Zone: This was remade for the 3rd TZ series in 2002, but updated for the terrorist threat and making the U.S. government the enemy, a complete 180-turn to the premise here. There was also a film in 1996, The Trigger Effect, which had a similar premise.

BoG's Score: 9 out of 10


________ The Monsters Are Due . . . (conclusion)


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__Epilogue: The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street


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BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Bud Brewster]

________________________________

This is one of several episode which seems to use the C-57-D prop, along with the uniforms from Forbidden Planet.

Actually, it isn't the C-57-D or any part of it! Look closely at the real McCoy.





Note the height of the ship, the length and angle of the stairway, and the "ridge" that runs down the sides. And of course there's that beautiful dome under the ship.

Now look at the prop that was built to be used in a few TZ episodes, shown here in the last shot from The Monsters are Due on Maple Street.





~ The disc of the ship is smaller and composed of panels shaped like pizza slices.

~ The dome beneath it is actually a funnel-shape, like a cone with the point cut off.

~ The stairway is shorter and angled steeply. If the real C-57-D stairway had been used here, each of the steps would be angled downward, not flat. But we can see in the screen above that they are in fact flat.

~ The stairway doesn't have the ridge down each side like the stairways on C-57-D do.

This same prop was used in On Thursday We Leave for Home and Third from the Sun, although we do see the miniature saucer in both those episodes.



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes,prejudices---to be found only in the minds of men.

For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own---for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone.

This episode and Rod's writing (along with other terrific writers for the series) is why TTZ is still standing tall today.

Yes, the twist endings are a great deal of fun.

However, the show's lasting power is not due to its visual FX. Let's face it, the majority of its special effects, props, make~up are quite dated these days.

But its scripting still holds immense power,poignancy,shock, sadness,triumphs all these years later.