An earth spaceship looking suspiciously like a US space shuttle is approaching an unexplored planet.  Chatterton, a mineralogist, works for a company that strips virgin planets of their natural resources.  The rest of the crew is there to operate the ship. Their uniform patches indicate that, like the crew in Mars is Heaven, they work for ASA, not NASA.

Driscoll, an archaeologist, makes the absurd statement that all planets from 10 miles up look pretty much the same.  What percentage of planets have life on them to justify an archeologist being one of a six person crew, anyway?  They seem to land like the shuttle despite the presence of trees and rolling hills.  In fact, the planet really looks like a golf course.  One of the crew even makes the same observation.

Driscoll starts talking about wishing to fly when he was a kid, and suddenly he is airborne, swooping around like a kite.  This miracle does not impress Chatterton who wants to get along with his work.  He continues being a jerk, so Driscoll wishes him into the air for the same experience.

Further exploring, after someone mentions a bottle of wine, they discover a stream in which wine is flowing.  That’s nice and convenient, but I have to think it makes the old problem of bits of cork in the wine bottle seem positively quaint.  Driscoll wishes for fish to go with it and a few yards away there is a hot spring which has cooked a fish for him.  So it is clear this planet is, or has, a sentience that is making wishes come true — an idea it seems like every iteration of Star Trek has run with.

Chatterton wanders away from the group and gets his giant drill from the ship.  He might be a jerk, but he’s the only one in this group with a work ethic.  The others leave their wine, fish and grapes and find him starting to burrow into the ground with a giant spiraled drill.  The drill even makes a thrusting motion just in case we miss the rape metaphor. Then lightning strikes the drill.

Chatterton runs off saying he is going to destroy the planet.  But he is eaten by an unseen (i.e. unbudgeted) predator before he can do any harm.

Driscoll tries to talk the others into staying on the planet, but they’ve been in space for years — they want to go back to earth.  Driscoll stays behind and watches the ship take off.  From their perspective, the planet is a hellish place of exploding volcanoes and flowing lava.  To Driscoll, it still looks like Bushwood Country Club.  The planet is putting on a show so it will be categorized as hostile and never revisited.

Driscoll looks into the stream and sees the reflection of a beautiful blonde.  The first of several, I imagine.

Post-Post:

• Stephen King has a short story by the same title.
• Just as in The Long Years, there is a female astronaut who has no lines.
• According to IMDb, it was rejected by The Twilight Zone as too expensive to produce.

Three yahoos are sitting on the veranda — oh hell, this place isn’t fancy enough for a veranda — they’re on the porch of the Milled Buck Hotel.  They are bitching about the heat, the lack of air conditioning, and the fact that the main road does not go by here any more.

If we had a twitchy transvestite psycho killer, it would be the Bates Motel.  If we had a hot-ass mom character, it would be the Bates Motel TV series.

But we have three yahoos on a porch.  Come midnight, they are still there.  Apparently it is an annual event waiting for August 29th — the one day a year it rains in this little town.  The next morning, they emerge from the hotel, disappointed at the sunny, cloudless sky.  Mr. Smith has had enough; he talks of moving to Ireland where he hears it rains everyday.  Terle, the hotel owner, convinces him to at least stay the day.

Yahoo #3, however, has a more serious plan.  Fremley is going up to bed.  If he doesn’t hear rain that day, he is just going to die in bed.  Terle tries the old garden hose on the roof trick, but Fremley is not fooled.  Also, probably not the best use of their precious water supply.

They get excited at the sight of some dust blowing up in the distance, but it just turns out to be a guest for the hotel, another once a year occurrence by the looks of things.  Blanche Hillgood follows Terle and Smith upstairs as they carry a shrouded object from her car.

At dinner, for some reason, Blanche feels compelled to tell her life story, how she was 29 and unmarried, then 40 and now 65 — the actress was 52 at the time.  This is a reversal of male characters on a few other shows whose characters claim to be 10 years younger than the actor portraying them.

Blanche undrapes the object the two yahoos hauled in, revealing a harp.  She begins playing and somehow the harp brings the rains.  They go outside in the rain and Terle exclaims, “50 years of drought are over!”  That’s pretty optimistic based on 5 minutes of rain.

A pretty tedious affair.  Sheila Moore is very good as Blanche, but the dudes are pretty much walking through their parts, and in Fremley’s case, laying through most of it.  At least Terle (Vincent Gardenia) has some facial recognition going for him as Archie Bunker’s neighbor, and Detective Ochoa in Death Wish.

Post-Post:

Meh.

Postman Sam Brown is making his rounds and is stopped by Clara Goodwater (Sally Kellerman).  Clara catches him by surprise and he stuffs a book he was reading into his bag.  She asks if he has her book of Albertus Magnus like the other occult books she has been receiving.  He makes a poor decision of lying to a witch and says no.

Young Tom is mowing the Brown’s yard when he hears Elmira Brown screaming in the kitchen.  She has somehow managed to cut herself while slicing a cake.  Being a good civil servant, Sam stops by his house for a piece of cake while making his rounds and shows Elmira the book he should have given to Clara — “Albertus Magnus: White & Black Arts for Man and Beast, Revealing the Forbidden Knowledge and Mysteries of Ancient Philosophers.”  That mouthful is the title, not the first chapter, and it is a real book.

Elmira goes to see Clara and recruits Tom for moral support.  At this point, there is evidence that Tom is a) her son, or b) a neighbor who mows their lawn, and c) an Indians fan as he always wears their cap.  On the way over, Elmira face-plants in the yard and blames Clara’s magic.

After Elmira accuses Clara of being a witch, Clara invites her in for a cup of tea, leaving Tom on the porch.  Elmira accuses Clara of using her magic each year to be elected president of the Ladies Honeysuckle Harmony Lodge.  She reels off her misfortunes every year around election time — being sick, breaking a leg, and various clumsy accidents.

What is strange is that during this entire exchange, Tom can be seen through the window, and seems to be taking notes.  My first thought was that he represented the author, but I don’t know of a Bradbury-Cleveland Indians connection.

Leaving Clara’s house, she is nearly hit by a car.  At least we are told at that point, that Tom is not her son.  That night she continues her list of screw-ups that she attributes to Clara’s magic.  The morning of the election, she adds one more as she has a giant zit in the middle of her forehead.

For some reason, she drags Tom to the election with her.  Current president Clara introduces Elmira who has asked for the chance to say a few words.  She accuses the members of voting for Clara every year to avoid the same problems she has had.  She plans the titular exorcism.

The vote goes as usual with the the entire membership giving an angelic “aye.”  Elmira runs out and emergency exit and falls two stories.  Clara uses her powers, and tells Clara that if she comes back to life, Clara will pass the presidency to her.

That does the trick, and she marches back up the stairs with then club singing “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”  But it is clear Clara is just setting her up for another fall.

Just a strangely unappealing episode.  It wasn’t clear who Tom was until he referred to his parents; it still isn’t clear why Elmira drags him everywhere and why he goes along.  I’m assuming Sam and Elmira are married, but she seems quite a bit older, so could be mother and son — certainly a postman son living with is mother is not unheard of.

And, sorry but the presidency of a club of women in their 50’s just isn’t going to grab my interest.  A club of 20 year old strippers threatening to unionize — then you got something.

Post-Post:

• Clara introduces Elmira as being the wife of the local graphologist (one who studies handwriting).  All we know about Sam is that he is a mailman, reads people’s mail, and seems to have married a woman 10 years older than him — so I don’t get the graphologist reference.
• OK, I guess it refers to reading people’s postcards, but it’s a stretch.
• Dead last in IMDb’s always-suspect ratings.