Tag: sci-fi

Galaxy’s Edge – Tyrus Rechs – Contracts and Terminations – Book 1- Requiem for Medusa

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By the title you can see that the Galaxy’s Edge franchise has branched out.  This book is the first installment of a spin off series that follow the adventures of quasi-immortal bounty hunter, Tyrus Rechs.  Tyrus was a component in Book 2 -Galactic Outlaws of the main sequence of the Galaxy’s Edge series.  This series is a prequel to that time line and gives us the back story for Rechs and several other important components of the ancient history of the Galaxy’s Edge universe.

Requiem for Medusa is a standalone story.  It’s a revenge story that involves Tyrus tracking down the murderers of the only woman that still had any connection to his weary soul.  The story reads like a noir but ends up as a military assault against desperate odds to take down the criminal gangs and the corrupt security apparatus that flourishes in the lawless depths of the Reach, the section of the Edge that had been abandoned for centuries to outlaw operations that even the Republic’s Legion left alone.

For the faithful readers of the Galaxy’s Edge series, this is not required reading.  This is a personal story of Tyrus Rechs and although it will answer some questions about Rechs, it won’t matter if you skip it from the point of view of the main narrative.  And this story differs from the other stories in that it contains a love interest component.  Whether this would distract the reader from the story is of course a personal preference.  But it should be mentioned in my opinion.

Now my opinion.  This is a separate story from the Galaxy’s Edge narrative but the characters are interesting and the character development for Tyrus Rechs doesn’t hurt him at all.  He performs his murderous rampage without any loss of skill due to the emotional component of his motivation.  There is a very clever plot device called the nano-plague that is probably linked to some of the other important ancient history for the Galaxy’s Edge universe but in this story, it is used to advance a plot element in the revenge story.

All in all, I liked this story and recommend it.  As with all the Galaxy’s Edge books it is well written, holds your interest and contains exciting combat action.  However, if you do not want to explore the periphery of the Galaxy’s Edge fictional universe it can easily be omitted without sacrificing your knowledge of the series.  Highly recommended.

 

 

Star Trek: The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 1 Episode 2 – Charlie X

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This is a relatively straight forward plot.  The Enterprise meets a ship, the Antares, that has rescued the survivor of a spaceship wreck.  Seventeen-year-old Charlie Evans survived for fourteen years on the planet Thasus alone.  The Antares crew is anxious to leave and Captain Kirk takes the boy under his wing and tries to introduce him to how people live.

Soon we find out that the boy has extreme psychic powers that allow him to dematerialize members of the crew and destroy items across stellar distances.  Apparently, he was raised by the legendary Thasians who gave him these extraordinary powers.  Unfortunately, teen aged Charlie isn’t able to control his emotional insecurity and so his powers become a threat to the Enterprise and all aboard, especially Yeoman Janice Rand whom he immediately falls in love with.  When the crew of the Antares attempt to warn Kirk of Charlie’s powers he destroys the distant ship using only his thoughts.  When things start spinning out of control Kirk uses his dominant personality to try and rein the boy in but in the climactic battle for control of the ship Charlie rebels against his father figure, Kirk, and comes close to killing him.  Luckily at the appropriate moment the Thasians show up and take Charlie back to Thasus where they will take care of him and he will be prevented from destroying humanity.

This episode is a gold mine of goofiness.  We are regaled by Spock playing some kind of Vulcan lyre-like stringed instrument accompanied by Uhura singing extempore lyrics about Spock’s appearance and alleged romantic proclivities.  It must be seen and heard to be believed.

Later on, Kirk takes Charlie to the gym to teach him to fight.  Now we have our first viewing of Kirk without a shirt.  It’s not pretty.  He really needed to lose about twenty pounds.  And he demonstrates for Charlie his patented shoulder roll move.  Very athletic.  He also demonstrates his ability fall backward onto a mat.  Apparently, this is a skill that needs to be learned.  Well, it looked so awkward and unathletic that I judge it to be the highlight of the episode.

Here are other scenes that deserve mention.

Charlie sees one of the crewmen slapping his friend on the back after some work accomplishment.  When Charlie is walking away from Yeoman Rand, he says goodbye by slapping her on the butt.  She tries to control her outrage and tells Charlie to ask Captain Kirk why he shouldn’t have slapped her like that.  Kirk sputters and equivocates and dodges out.

Later on, Charlie goes to see Rand in her cabin.  She’s wearing some kind of one shoulder strapped dress that accentuates her figure.  Charlie pours out his adolescent hunger for her in incoherent monosyllables and when she rejects him, he dematerializes her.  This definitely reduced the interest I had in the rest of the show.

In this episode we see more of Mr. Spock’s stoic Vulcan personality and see kirk interact with him on a personal level while they play a game of three-dimensional chess.

The Charlie character was purposefully neurotic but I still found him very annoying.  This episode may have been the inspiration for a later episode called the Squire of Gothos which has a similar character who has superhuman powers but a very immature nature.  But in that episode the characterization is much more entertaining.

But as mentioned the highlight of the episode is Bill Shatner rolling around on the floor of the gym.  His embarrassing and awkward athletics are marvelous.  Putting aside the uninspiring plot the other aspects mentioned rate this episode very high in the pantheon of bad Star Trek specialness.  Highly recommended for connoisseurs of awful Shatner athletics.  Special mention for Yeoman Rand getting smacked on the butt.

Star Trek: The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 1 Episode 1 – The Man Trap

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The episode opens up with Kirk dictating a “Captain’s Log” stating that Spock is in temporary command of the Enterprise while Kirk, McCoy and a crewman are beaming down to the surface of some planet to perform routine physical examinations on a scientist, Professor Robert Crater and his wife, Nancy.  The only unusual circumstance is that Nancy is McCoy’s old girlfriend.  Alright, let’s stop right there.  The commanding officer of a large, powerful, highly strategic military vessel is leaving his ship to keep his chief medical officer company while he gives routine physical exams to apparent nobodies in the middle of nowhere?  Who runs Star Fleet anyway, the Keystone Cops?  Alright, onward.

In the next scene, back on the Enterprise, we are forced to witness an exchange between Communications Officer Uhura and First Officer Spock.  Uhura is bantering with Spock trying to get him to engage in small talk.  He vulcans out and Uhura asks him if he can complement her on her beauty or tell her about how beautiful the moon is on Vulcan.  When Spock tells her that Vulcan has no moon, she replies that she is not surprised at all.  Gack!

While walking toward the Craters’ home, Bones and Kirk trade banter about the awkwardness of Bones meeting up with his former lover in the presence of her husband.  The exchange is truly awful and appears to have been written by a fifteen-year-old at best.  I was waiting for one of them to say, “I know you are but what am I?”

When we meet Nancy, she appears to McCoy to be in her twenties as he remembers her.  To Kirk she appears to be a middle-aged woman.  To the crewman she appears to be a very attractive and flirtatious girl who lures him into a secluded location away from the others.  Suddenly the three men hear Nancy’s screams and run to find out the emergency.  They find her with the body of the crewman dead on the ground.  He has a fragment of a poison fruit in his mouth.  He also has strange round blotches on his face.  The woman claims that the crewman ate the fruit before she could warn him of its deadly character.  The captain reprimands the doctor for being more concerned with the woman’s emotional state than with ascertaining the cause of death of the crewman.  The two live and one dead crewman are beamed back aboard the Enterprise.

Back on the ship Bones completes a medical examination of the dead crewman and discovers that he did not eat the poison fruit.  After further testing he discovers that the dead man’s body has somehow been drained of all sodium chloride, salt.  The captain remembers that Crater had stated that they needed their stock of salt replenished.  Sensing that something was wrong, the captain and doctor return to the planet with an escort of two crewman to help investigate the strange death.  Kirk tells Crater that something on the planet is killing humans and that the Enterprise will evacuate the Craters until the danger is past.  Crater becomes angry and runs away.  While searching for him both crewmen are killed by Nancy but we see her turn into one of the crewmen and return to the ship with the rest of the landing party.  Okay, let’s stop here.  “Nancy” has now killed three crewmen without breaking a sweat and Kirk is still aimlessly beaming up and down from the planet and seems almost nonchalant about it.  Resume.

Fake crewman now stalks victims on the Enterprise.  His first target is Yeoman Janice Rand, a hot blonde babe who is carrying a tray of food to Lieutenant Sulu, but she also has a salt shaker on the tray and the creature wants to take it.  But she escapes into a crowd.  Finally, something to praise in this episode, a pretty girl in a tight-fitting dress.

The creature kills a few more crewmen on the ship so Kirk and Spock go down to the planet to capture Crater.  Crater stands them off with a phaser and Kirk and Spock decide to split up to encircle him.  And here we get the first example of William Shatner displaying his physical prowess.  While sneaking up behind Crater, Kirk dives into a pile of sand.  Instead of a special forces warrior he looked more like an otter.  It isn’t pretty.

Kirk and Spock capture Crater and he confesses that Nancy is not really his wife but a shape-shifting creature that needs salt to live.  The creature killed the real Nancy more than a year ago but he had spared it because it was the last of its kind like the American bison.

Kirk and Spock head back to the ship and now the search is on for the creature.  It has assumed the shape of Dr. McCoy and when it gets the chance it kills Crater and attempts to kill Spock but his Vulcan blood apparently doesn’t taste good to the creature.

In the finale the creature turns back into Nancy and goes to Dr. McCoy for protection.  Kirk comes to them with a phaser in one hand and salt tablets in the other to lure the creature into revealing itself to McCoy as a monster and not his old love.  But McCoy disarms the Captain and won’t shoot her even when she begins desalinating Kirk.  Now Shatner really gets to show his stuff.  The creature places it’s suction cup fingers on his face and Kirk emotes the crap out of his pain.  He gives of his best.

Luckily for Kirk, Spock shows up and proves to McCoy that the creature isn’t Nancy.  He interlaces his fingers and hammers Nancy in the face several times.  But instead of having her skull fractured by this Vulcan knuckle sandwich she grabs Spock and throws him across the room like a rag doll.  This finally registers with McCoy and he shoots the creature.  She then pretends to be Nancy again and McCoy after begging heaven’s forgiveness terminates the creature with a lethal phaser shot.  Once dead she resumes her actual shape, a sort of short, stocky, hairy creature with a sucker shaped mouth and suction cups for fingertips.

“The Man Trap” wouldn’t have been my choice as the introductory Star Trek episode.  It’s kind of odd.  But it’s interesting to see that certain roles and behaviors that we come to expect are already in place.  After the first crewman is killed Bones gets to make the inaugural, the primordial, “He’s dead Jim!”  Equally important, Uhura demonstrated just how annoying she can be.  We saw the importance of short tight dresses on Yeoman Janice Rand to add some interest for the adult male portion of the audience.  And finally, we got to see several of Jim Kirk’s signature moves.  His obliviousness in the face of obvious threats all around him.  His delight in rolling and frisking around in sand.  His embarrassing facial expressions when emoting pain or fear.  His jackassery when taunting his friends among the crew.

Even though this is the very first episode aired it actually is a fairly average example.  It is not particularly awful nor is it so bad that it comes off as hilarious, it’s just average.  I still haven’t figured out the details of my scoring for the various components of a Star Trek episode but this one will cleave pretty close to the middle.  I’ll add those in later but for now call it average.

 

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Introduction

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Coming hard on the heels of the conclusion of my marathon review of all one hundred fifty-six episodes of the Twilight Zone series I’ve decided to handle the Star Trek series in a decidedly different manner.  Instead of providing mostly a plot synopsis followed by a short critique of the show I’ll instead tackle each episode as it relates to the series as a whole.  For instance, Star Trek consists of the personalities of the main characters interacting in whatever plot is provided that week.  And those plots have components that can include action, drama, melodrama, romance and even comedy.  And over time the characters develop predictable behaviors.  What I intend to do is compare the characteristics of a particular episode with the typical or average portrayal of these characteristics in the series.

What I think this will allow is the maximum opportunity for mockery.  And let me be clear.  I am doing this to take potshots and make fun of the awful acting and bad scripts that makes up the bulk of Star Trek.  I watched Star Trek as a child and at the time I thought it was fantastic.  I have a permanent warm spot in my heart for the show but I also recognize how extremely awful a lot of it is.  And right at the center of this awfulness is William Shatner.  His patented brand of overacting is by turns hilariously bad and embarrassingly painful to watch.  I will rate the levels of bad and may have to invent a Shatner Scale to accomplish this.

But I want to acknowledge that Shatner is also very good at certain types of humor.  There are scenes in Star Trek where he is as amusing as anything that was on television at the time.  These are relatively brief and somewhat infrequent.  But when something is done well, I’ll celebrate it.  And there are other outbursts of good acting that occasionally intrude on the dreck.  I will definitely note those too.

So that’s fair warning for really devoted fans of the show.  I have no reverence for this show but I am fond of it.  I will mock it viciously but I will also point out the good stuff that also exists in it.  I will talk about how the show uses or abuses various science fiction tropes of the time.  I will rate the plots and discuss inconsistencies that annoy the nerd in me.  I will talk about the character development (such as it is) of the lead actors and of course I will delve into the strange and frightening study of William Shatner’s acting technique.  I intend to do one episode a week.  That will give enough time to lavish all the loving attention each episode deserves.

I know that I will learn a lot about bad television and I hope I provide a faithful portrait of one of the most influential and durable science fiction franchises around.  So, I watched the first episode and was surprised to learn that “The Man Trap” was the first televised episode.  I had assumed that “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” which I had understood was the second pilot, had aired first.  So here I’m learning new things about Star Trek right from the git go.

Now, I will boldly go where no sensible blogger has gone before.  Dun ta dun ta dun dun dun dun …. da dunnnn!

 

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 5 Episode 36 – The Bewitchin’ Pool

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Sport and Jeb are the young children of Gil and Gloria Sharewood.  They live on a beautiful estate with a big house and a large in ground swimming pool.  But their prosperous parents dislike each other intensely and bicker constantly.  One day while their parents are fighting the children see a little boy with a Huckleberry Finn straw hat on his head appear in the swimming pool and tells them to follow him.

They swim down into the pool and end up somehow coming out into a swimming hole where they see a country cottage surrounded by a swarm of children playing happily together.  The boy they followed Whitt introduces them to Aunt T, an old lady who takes care of the children.  She gives them chores and acts as a loving grandmother to them.  She gets Sport and Jeb to frost a cake she’s making for the children and they are really happy to be in a happy love-filled environment.  But then Sport hears her mother worriedly calling to them and she tells Aunt T they have to back to their home because they and their parents love each other.  Aunt T agrees that a loving home is the best place for children.  They swim back into the pool and their parents are very angry with them for disappearing and punish them by sending them to bed without supper.

The next morning Sport is painting outside when her mother wants her to get her brother who has disappeared.  She says she has a big announcement and there won’t be any more fighting in the house.  Sport goes into the pool and finds her way back to Aunt T’s house where Jeb is happily helping out.  Sport tells Jeb that they have to go back and that things were going to be better without any more fighting.

When Jeb and Sport get back their parents tell them they’re getting divorced and the kids will have to pick who they want to live with.  Jeb and sport run back to the pool and their parents chase them and tell them to get out of the pool.  When they don’t resurface their father jumps in.  When he comes back up, he tells his wife that they aren’t in the pool.  She becomes hysterical crying for them to come back.

Jeb and Sport are happily frosting cakes with Aunt T when suddenly Sport hears her mother’s voice calling for them.  But she ignores it and they go back to their happy life at Aunt T’s.

This was the last episode to be televised in the Twilight Zone series.  Because of this, some technical problems they had with sound on the outdoors segments of the show caused major issues.  The actress who played Sport was not available to re-dub the sound and so a voice actress, June Foray had to be used to voice over Sport’s lines.  Foray was the voice of Rocket J. Squirrel in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon series and her voice is noticeably different from the actress who played Sport.  This change is actually quite jarring for the listener.

Another incidental note for this episode has to do with the actress who played Sport (Mary Badham).  In this episode the sister and brother are named Sport and Jeb.  In a well-known movie that Mary had recently been in (To Kill a Mockingbird) the character she played was a sister named Scout with a brother named Jem.  A coincidence?  I think not!

This fantasy episode is addressing the topical problem of an increased divorce rate in America at the time.  Of course, compared to today it was an idyllic era for family life but modernity was already taking its toll on the sanctity of marriage and the family.  I see what Serling was saying in this episode and it is admirable.  Dramatically the story is simple but effective.  Even counting in the technical problems with the voice over I’ll call this a B+.

 

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 5 Episode 35 – The Fear

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Charlotte Scott is a New York City fashion designer hiding out in the back country recovering from a nervous breakdown.  State Trooper Robert Franklin shows up at the door of her out of the way but opulently appointed cabin to follow up on a report from some townspeople that Miss Scott had said she had seen strange lights in the sky.

While being questioned by the officer Charlotte displays all the phrases and behaviors expected from a city snob when denigrating the country folk, she despises.  Robert calls her out on this rudeness and is about to leave when suddenly a blinding light appears outside the cabin and forces him to leave her in the cabin while he investigates.  When he returns, she apologizes for her rudeness and claims she is masking insecurity associated with her fear of the unknown after seeing the mysterious lights earlier.  Robert accepts her apology and tells her he’s pretty scared himself.  He tells her he thinks that the lights are associated with a UFO.

They discuss how to determine what is going on when suddenly Robert’s car drives by with no one at the wheel.  It ends up on its side and Robert determines that the car radio is dead.  Now they retreat back into the cabin with the aim of holing up until morning when it will seem safe to leave.  Charlotte hears noise on the roof but when Robert goes outside and climbs up, he doesn’t see anything.  But he discovers that his patrol car is back in its original position but with a set of fingerprints visible on the surface showing that the car had been moved back into position by being lifted by a giant’s hand.  Robert tells Charlotte that there was nothing on the roof but if it had wanted to it could have crushed the house flat.  He approximates the giant as being about 500 feet tall.

They sleep the rest of the night but in the morning, they decide to walk back to town.  They come upon a foot print of gigantic proportions.  While talking about the danger they face Charlotte panics and bolts down the path.  When she reaches the clearing suddenly, she sees a one-eyed alien about 500 feet tall.  She screams and Robert comes running up.  He tells her to run away and he’ll attempt to stop the alien with his service revolver.  She refuses and says she’ll stay with him.  He fires several shots at the monster and suddenly the two humans are practically blown off their feet by a powerful wind.  Eventually we see that the monster was actually a balloon and the wind was caused by the bullets puncturing and deflating the balloon.

Charlotte is confused about how all this happened but Robert sees a small flying saucer on the ground nearby.  Inside they see and hear the tiny space men radioing their home base for permission to flee the Earth before they are attacked by the giant humans.  They report that their plan to frighten the humans with the phony giant alien and tricks with the car have failed because the humans are fearless.  The space ship flies away.  And Robert expresses sympathy for the aliens and hopes on the next world they land that they are the giants instead of Lilliputians.  Charlotte worries about what will happen if the next aliens she encounters are real giants.  Robert proudly tells her that he believes she’ll spit in their eyes.

This is a pretty silly episode but the characters are likable and the story moves right along.  I think what I like about the story is that it reflects the conventional but very appealing scenario of the maiden in distress and the knight in shining armor willing to fight the dragon to protect her.  And as opposed to the modern upended trope of the independent woman Charlotte is grateful to Robert for his valor and protection.  Based on all that, this is a solid B episode.  And Hazel Court who plays Charlotte is actually quite attractive, so, that’s got to be worth at least half a point.  B+.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 5 Episode 34 – Come Wander with Me

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Floyd Burney is a rock and roll singer who calls himself the Rock-A-Billy Kid.  He received a tip that the owner of a store out in the back country could sell him some authentic folk songs.  Leaving his car on a ridge that’s blocked by a downed tree he finds the store and it’s full of old musical instruments.  But after negotiating with the old man the owner refuses to sell him any music.  Suddenly Floyd hears the voice of a woman singing a sad ballad.  The audience is shown a headstone that says “Floyd Burney, the Wandering Man.”  He follows the singing into the woods and unbeknownst to Floyd we see that a woman in mourning clothes is watching from a distance.

Tired of his futile search Floyd sits on a log and starts strumming his guitar.  From behind him a young woman in country clothes joins him.  Floyd welcomes her and asks her who she is.  She tells him that her name is Mary Rachel.  Two things we learn is that she is the singer Floyd’s been hearing and that she can’t sell the song because someone already owns it.  When Floyd starts showing romantic interest in Rachel she is bespoke, meaning she is engaged.  Floyd makes a play for her believing he’ll get the song if she thinks he loves her.  She agrees to go with him and run away from her boyfriend Billy, one of the Rayford brothers.  Now Floyd gets her to sing some of the song into his tape recorder.

But Billy shows up and at rifle point orders Floyd to come with him to see his brothers “who know how to deal with the likes of Floyd.  Floyd uses his guitar to push the rifle off of himself and attacks Billy.  Floyd hits Billy to the head and kills him.  Now we hear another verse of the song telling how Billy is killed and how the brothers look for Floyd.  Floyd panics and starts screaming at Rachel to tell him what’s going on.  She tells him that this is how it always happens and she asks him if this time he can not run away but let her hide him.  But he refuses and runs.  Now we see the woman in mourning is Rachel.

Floyd goes back to the store and begs the man to hide him.  The old man refuses and Floyd angrily strikes him.  The old man dies and suddenly all the instruments and music boxes start playing.  While Floyd cowers hiding in the store the Rayford brothers come in and shoot him dead.

 

I thought this episode sucked.  The music is boring and annoying.  The story is predictable and uninteresting.  I didn’t like the characters.  D.

 

 

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 5 Episode 33 – The Brain Center at Whipple’s

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Wallace Whipple is the CEO of Whipple Enterprises and he employs hundreds of thousands of people in his plants.  But he is obsessed with efficiency and he explains to his plant manager Walter Hanley that he intends to automate away all the workers in his plants.

Whipple waxes poetic about the joys of efficiency but Hanley chides him on his lack of feelings toward all the loyal employees that have worked faithfully for him for decades.  Whipple scoffs at Hanley and mentions the generous severance package and retirement benefits he will provide to all the employees he’s about to fire.

A mechanic named Dickerson becomes deranged when he hears about the computer that is replacing hundreds of men.  He comes back to the plant drunk and attacks the computer with a tire iron.  When the night watchman fails to act quickly Whipple grabs his gun and shoots Dickerson himself.

In the next scene we see Hanley returning from the hospital where Dickerson is expected to live.  When he castigates Whipple for shooting the man, Whipple tells him that he has purchased a machine that can do Hanley’s job.  And he adds that Hanley is fired.  Hanley’s answer is that he intended to quit that day anyway and in lieu of severance or retirement benefits he punches Whipple in the face as payment.

In the next scene Whipple is at the local bar and looks slightly disheveled with a one-day beard.  He sees Hanley at the bar and asks him how he’s getting along in retirement.  Hanley says it’s tolerable.  Whipple starts to explain that the Board of Directors of Whipple’s thought that Whipple had become too obsessed by his automation project so they retired him.  Now he whines to Hanley that it’s unfair that machines displace men and thereby diminish them.

In the final scene we see a robot in Whipple’s office talking on the telephone and doing all the things Whipple used to do, even twirling the same keychain that Whipple used to twirl.  Interestingly, the robot is Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet.

This is a silly episode but Serling couldn’t decide if it was serious or for laughs.  It comes off as odd and slightly flat.  I’m giving this a C.

 

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 5 Episode 32 – Mr. Garrity and the Graves

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Jared Garrity arrives in Happiness, Arizona circa 1875 and enters the saloon where he wakes up the saloon keeper Jensen and asks for a beer.  Praising the town Garrity marvels at how peaceful it is and Jensen tells him that it only was renamed Happiness ten months ago when the new Sheriff named Gilchrist established law and order in the previously lawless town by killing off the outlaws like Lightning Peterson.  Since then everything has been happy in Happiness.  But when Jensen asks Garrity what his line of work is Garrity replies, “I raise the dead.”

Garrity continues that he is able to resurrect the dead through scientific principles that he learned in the Himalayas.  As they were talking in the bar the hear a dog give a loud yelp from out on the street.  Rushing outside they see that a dog is lying apparently dead on the street and a man driving a wagon says that the dog ran under his wheels and was killed.

Garrity announces that he will resurrect the dog if everyone present will turn their backs while he performs his secret procedure.  After a few seconds of Garrity mumbling some words they hear a bark and turning around they see that the dog is indeed alive and unharmed.

Now Garrity announces that, that very night, he will resurrect all the dead in their Boot Hill and that the departed would arrive back in town at midnight.  As the hour approaches A form is seen walking through the fog toward the saloon and Garrity tells Jensen that since his brother was the last to die, he will be the first to return.  Jensen nervously tells Garrity that his brother John was a thief and a drunkard.  And he tells Garrity that if there is some way to stop the resurrection, he would want it.  Garrity tells him that resurrection is easy but reversing it is difficult, $700 of difficult.  Jensen pays.  Then each of the townspeople pay Garrity to keep their kin from returning.  Mr. Gooberman, the town drunk pays for his wife Zelda to stay dead so she won’t break his arm again for the seventh time.  And the sheriff pays $1,200 to keep Lightning Peterson from coming back, especially since rumor has it that Sheriff Gilchrist shot him in the back.

After collecting all his fees Garrity leaves town and in front of the graveyard he meets up with the man who drove the wagon over the dog and of course, his dog.  Garrity compliments his friend for impersonating Jensen’s brother and then they discuss their next con job in Tucson.  As he leaves, Garrity addresses the denizens of the graveyard and apologizes for not actually being able to bring them back to life.

As he drives away, the dead rise up from their graves and stagger down the road toward town.  John Jensen, Zelda Gooberman and Lightning Peterson each express their impatience to get back to Happiness and greet their “friends and relatives.”

What can I say?  John Dehner, J. Pat O’Malley and Stanley Adams as Garrity, Gooberman and Jensen respectively are fine character actors who take comic turns in this farcical passion play.  Between the cowardly hypocrisy of the denizens of Happiness and the creepy supernatural ending this is a very enjoyable comic Twilight Zone episode.  A.

 

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 5 Episode 31 – The Encounter

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Mr. Fenton is a WW II veteran of the Pacific Theater who is in his attic throwing away junk.  Taro (Arthur) Takamori is a young Japanese American who stopped by to ask if he could add Fenton’s yard to his lawn mowing route.  Fenton asks him to come up to the attic to help him clean up the junk and to share a beer.

During the conversation we discover that Fenton has a lot of hostility toward the Japanese from his time in the war.  He shows Arthur the samurai sword he took from a Japanese officer whom he says was trying to kill him with it.  Fenton claims he’s tried repeatedly to get rid of the sword by giving it away, selling it and throwing it in the trash but each time it’s been returned.

When Fenton leaves the attic to get a beer Arthur picks up the sword and says, “I’m going to kill him.”  Then he immediately asks himself “Why?”

Fenton continues to interlace insults with his conversation with Arthur and Arthur is clearly becoming angry.  Fenton becomes more and more agitated and begins describing just how dangerous a trained soldier like himself is.  At this point Arthur grabs the sword and seems to be preparing to attack Fenton with it.  Fenton arms himself with a small knife and attempts to disarm Arthur but Arthur ends up with the sword against Fenton’s throat.  Fenton placates Arthur by saying he was just describing his war training not threatening Arthur.  Arthur puts the sword down and they begin fencing with words again.  When Fenton says that he killed the officer in self defense Arthur calls him a liar and says the officer had put the sword down when Fenton killed him.  Fenton admits it but says that on Okinawa the standing order was take no prisoners.

Next we learn a little about why Arthur is so angry.  His father was construction contractor for the US Navy in Pearl Harbor and had built a dock for the Navy.  Initially Arthur tells Fenton that his father was a war hero who had warned the sailors about the approaching planes but later he breaks down and admits that his father had betrayed the Americans and had guided the planes to their targets.  He was a traitor and Arthur was consumed by the blood guilt.

When Arthur tries to leave the attic, he finds that the door is inexplicably stuck.  They continue to talk and we learn that Fenton has lost his job and his wife over his drinking and the anger that he harbored over the war.  Once again Fenton and Arthur become involved in a fight with Arthur wielding the sword.  After a prolonged struggle Fenton manages to pry the sword out of Arthur’s hands and tosses it aside.  But the sword was caught between some of the furniture in the attic with the blade protruding up.  And when Fenton attempts to get up off the floor where he had been wrestling with Arthur, the young man grabs Fenton’s feet out from under him and Fenton impales himself on the blade and dies.  Arthur grabs the sword with an anguished look on his face, yells banzai! And hurls himself through the attic window to his death below.  Finally, the door to the outside opens on its own.

Rod Serling returns to one of his fascinations.  Serling served in the Pacific and it scarred his mind.  Fenton to some extent symbolizes the barbarity of the war but typically for Serling, he faults the American soldier and makes the Japanese officer the noble victim.  To be somewhat even handed he gives Arthur a guilt complex over his father’s treason.  But it’s pretty clear where our sympathies are supposed to lie.  I would give this episode a B but George Takei plays Arthur.  George and I do not share political sympathies.  I think he’s a jerk.  So, I’m giving it a B- because I’m as vindictive as they come.