I have said before that if you stick a couple of guys in space suits, and I’m on board for just about anything. Apollo 18 — not great, but OK. Europa Report — a little slow, but it kept me awake. Prometheus — well, there is a limit.
This episode got off to an immediate good start with me by being so mundane. We get a couple of minutes of stock footage of the Space Shuttle and astronauts doing EVAs. It was this simple beginning that reeled me in. As much as I liked Gravity, George Clooney wasting fuel doing dangerous circle jerks around the ship and running his yap nonstop while Sandra Bullock was trying to work just took me out of the movie.
Here we get simple dialogue, and the kind of simple joshing that astronauts always put on to keep the funding coming. Astronaut Becky sees a blue light flash from her EVA. Nothing comes of it, and the shuttle lands safely.
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 NASA cameras do when the UFOs show up.
As Chief Simmons is taking it away for analysis, it begins glowing purple. Simmons disappears and the camera falls to the ground. I suppose this is the same light the astronaut reported. Maybe purple just looked better than blue in post-production.
His assistant Tyson declares a Code F emergency. Really, this happens so often there is a code assigned? And not even like Code ZAGH, but the 6th code in the book? The camera is taken to a secure isolation room to be analyzed. While four scientists are looking on, the camera glows again and Simmons reappears in the isolation room. They note that the camera is gone which doesn’t make much sense. Did the camera turn into the man? When the man first disappeared, the camera was left behind.
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.
One of the scientists goes into the room and tries to reason with it. He actually talks to the device, which makes sense but is a little odd looking. It is suspenseful as the machine just continues counting down as the man talks to it. At 1 second to go, it transforms into Heiland and walks out the door.
One of the scientists finds him outside and asks why he came here. He replies, “Just curious.” Then turns into a little ball of light and zips away.
Well, this was like finding out Wallyworld was closed. I loved every minute of the trip . . . then, a big nothing. Like Wordplay yesterday, it lacks the features of a 1960s TZ episode: irony, a twist, come-uppance, self-realization; most of all, closure. I guess this is the new & improved TZ, although 30 years old now — but closer to the original than to present day. Both segments were very well-made but seemed to be lacking something at their core.
Nonetheless, another fun outing.
Post-Post:
- Skipped segment: Sweet Dreams is an 8-minute segment which would have been right at home as one of Night Gallery’s filler bits — and that’s not a good thing. It is an OK little short, fine effects and Meg Foster is entrancing. Just not much original here. BTW, way to spoil the twist on the menu picture!
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.
Veterinarian Wilbur Orwell is watching a news report about the parking garage murder that opened the show. He is oblivious to the goop squishing out of the donut [1] onto his white shirt. Should it concern me that there is a nice white bakery carton of pastries on the table? It is breakfast — did someone go all the way to the bakery and bring them home that morning? [2]
The trucker thinks it is a bear. But then 
That night, he checks his arm and finds that the bite has healed already. He then goes into convulsions and turns into a . . . ohhh, I guess it was a werewolf after all. The next morning, the TV news is covering another murder. Well, that seems to be a nightly occurrence, but this time Orwell’s bedroom window is open and he has tracked muddy prints back to his bead. And his wife says he was a “beast” last night.
After his cute assistant Mikayla is attacked, Orwell’s new mad olfactory skillz lead him to the real killer. It is a creative sideways turn, going the extra mile that most TV shows can’t be bothered with. Aided by an excellent set of performances, this turned out to be a great episode. The fact that it is rated 8th out of 13 in the IMDb ratings just further taints the credibility of that list.
We join Colonel Ward as he is taking a swig of booze at his desk. He is so drunk he only sees 48 stars on his flag. He is agonizing over men killed and equipment destroyed. They happened under his watch, so he expects to be relieved of his command when the General arrives.
The Martian is taken away to be examined. Ward receives word that the doctors examining him all dropped to the floor in convulsions. Some of the men from the hangar have been affected as have men all over the base. The doctors did determine that the Martian is just an silver ape, with no higher brain functions. Ward makes some pretty good deductions that the Martian was sent here as a living host for viruses that would decimate Earth — germ warfare.
His men continue dying until there are only 13 survivors out of 2,000. When one tries to flee the quarantined base like 
An Edsel cruises by a sporty little number by the side of the road. Her stalled car is also pretty sporty [1]. John Prescott takes a look under the hood. Not seeing a big on/off switch, he is as baffled as I would be. Unlike my typical situation, however, the first words out of Lila’s mouth are not “I have a boyfriend.” Thinking maybe she is just out of gas, he dips a stick in her gas hole. He finds it bone-dry so pushes her car literally an additional 2 inches off of the road, crumpling her license plate.[2]
he still rolls up; just not in the wheelchair.
Debs produces some old newspaper clippings that describe Lila’s death. Judging by the 5,000 point font, she is apparently the only person ever to die in this town.