This is about as visually interesting as this episode gets.
In this science-fiction tale, America still has a space program. Four men have just lifted off from Alpha Centauri where they were apparently the first to land on the entire star system. Sadly, they left 2 of their crew-mates “buried in the red dust.” They only needed to go as far as Mars to accomplish that. Or Sedona if they were really on a budget. Off-season.
The Captain tells them not to grieve over Kelly and Schwartz. “It’s a log way to Earth. You might need those tears for yourself.” On Alpha Centauri, they found a culture hundreds of years more advanced than ours.[1] Dr. Davidson is excited at how much mankind will gain from this appropriation. The weird thing is that the cities were all deserted, and covered in pink dust.
They notice that some of the red dust is now in the ship. As the days pass, the crew notices the dust is growing. Davidson examines a sample under his microscope and discovers it is radioactive; or something. I’d like to think there was some alien influence warping their minds, but I think it was just lousy writing:
- Kelly & Schwartz died because they did not take their radiation shots, saying they were allergic. You might think that would disqualify you from being an astronaut.
- Charlie says it should have been OK because they detected no radiation before landing. The doc now says the radiation is “in the dust!” Hmmm . . . the same dust that covered the planet?
- Meanwhile, Duncan and Kurt are lounging around the cabin remarking on the successful mission. “When we signed up for this thing who would have thought we would have made it there and back without a hitch.” Yeah, except for 1/3 of the crew being killed.
The doc determines that the dust “is a weird sort of radioactive life. A virus that attacks any living matter that comes near it.” Unfortunately, he tells the crew that the radiation shots can’t stop it, only slow it down. He expects them all to be dead in 10 years. Charlie freaks out and throws himself out of the airlock. I don’t expect an Aliens-caliber decompression, but couldn’t they at least have used a electric fan to simulate the change in pressure? This was like opening a screen door.
The doc realizes that Charlie’s rantings were correct — they are taking death back to Earth!
After the commercial, the writing becomes weird again. Kurt says, “Look doc, start at the beginning and go back. Why can’t we return?” The doc answer, “That should be obvious, Kurt. Kelly, Schwartz, Charlie, Duncan, you, even the doctor — if we landed, do you think the red dust would stop with us?” Was the doctor referring to himself in the 3rd person?
The doc says that once they are in contact with Earth, they will radio their discoveries, then they must self-destruct. Kurt isn’t on-board with the whole suicide thing. In the action portion of our show, Kurt pulls a gun on Charlie and the doc. Duncan is able to conk Kurt on the head, the the doc shoots Duncan. Kurt wakes up and Duncan shoots him.
Slipping for the third time into this alternate reality of shifting perspectives and pretzel logic, as Duncan is dying, he begs the doc not to take the ship back to earth. “I know you’re a scientist, but give them a chance!” Well, that was Doc’s position all along.
Just as in last week’s The Plague from Space, the decision is made to sacrifice everyone to save the planet. The doc reads the mission’s findings over the radio, then blows up the ship.
Post-Post:
- [1] It seems absurd that on an astronomical timescale, we would find a culture within 100 years of our own. But then, that was the case with most of the planets on Star Trek.
- Also seen today: The Boy, not to be confused with The Boy. It somehow takes a pretty flimsy premise and makes it both intriguing and suspenseful for most of its run time. As always, the questions are more interesting than the answers, but that does not diminish the result. Also, Lauren Cohan.
Strange things afoot:
Elwood’s wife had heard that the ship had been struck with the plague. Logan assures her that it was no plague, merely a hurricane and an infestation of poisonous snakes that both came aboard in Florida. Two men died and 3 others survived being bitten.
Things get frosty pretty quickly when Ruth Elwood comes to the Inn to purchase a bottle of wine. Bessie tells her the Captain might be late as he is hanging out with the guys. Ruth can tell by the long table set up for a party that he won’t be home for dinner. When Elwood spots her, he accuses her of spying on him and tells her, “to expect me when you see me.” He closes the door on her like 
Oh my God. How could this get any more tragic for her? Oh yeah, she reaches into his suitcase, a snake bites her, and she dies.
After a respectable year, Elwood feels he can get on with his life. The Widow Smith has been dropping by, and tonight he is attending a dinner for his former first mate who is now a captain. As the group is preparing to go to the table, all the dishes crash to the floor just as when Ruth had done it a year ago. Bessie is suspected, but resets the table. This time, as the group watches, the dishes are again flung to the floor.
After two Twilight Zones that weren’t very Twilight Zoney, we have an Alfred Hitchcock Presents that isn’t very Alfred Hitchcock Presentable. It’s more like 
They continue the job together and make good progress the first day. There is a fiesta that night with the camp’s only guitar and the camp’s only senorita.
The next day a boulder falls on a worker. While Philips helps him, Johnson single-handedly shores another another boulder from falling. It seems the job is not impossible to complete on schedule. The men have a respect for each other, though, and decide to give it a try.
Post-Post:
I have said before that if you stick a couple of guys in space suits, and I’m on board for just about anything. 
After the shuttle is back on the ground and up on the rack, the technicians start tearing it apart. Camera #2 seems to have had a problem, going haywire just like 
Simmons demands to be let out. Director Heilman shows up and begins questioning him. Soon, Simmons disappears and it is Simmons’ wife in the isolation room. When Simmons reappears, he gets even more belligerent, destroying equipment in the room. When he passes out, Heilman goes in with a gas-mask. Turns out he was only playing possum. He grabs Heilman and turns blue again. This time both men disappear and an atomic bomb appears in the room. Its countdown clock is at 2 minutes.
Well, this was like finding out 
Comedian’s comedian [1] Robert Klein is trying to learn about his company’s 67 new products in one week. To be fair, one of the new medical products is a sphyg-momanometer. OK, that’s a mouthful, but are they saying that a medical equipment vendor did not already sell sphygmomanometers? That and malpractice insurance would seem to be the first two items on a doctor’s shopping list. OK, it really is too perfect a word not to be used in the script.
At the office, a few individual words are randomly replaced with other unrelated words. Experience becomes mayonnaise, anniversary becomes throw-rug, lunch becomes dinosaur. He goes home for dinosaur and his wife asks him to look in on their son whose cold is getting worse. She then actually says dinosaur and Klein accuses her of being in cahoots with people from the office. He presses her to define lunch. She is getting concerned, but tells him that lunch is a color — sort of light red.
At home, his wife is very upset but her husband can’t understand what she is saying, just like men everywhere.[3] Upstairs, he finds his son is very sick, so they rush him to the hospital. The emergency room has no idea what he is saying, but his wife is able to get help for the boy. Klein feels helpless as he awaits an update. He couldn’t help his son, now he can’t comfort his wife. The doctor comes back with good news — at least judging by his wife’s reaction.
So, there really was no irony, nothing learned, no twist, no comeuppance, no cruel fate. I really enjoyed the episode, but if they have dumped most of the original series’s tropes by the 2nd episode, it does not bode well for the future.