Over the course of the Twilight Zone series a recurring theme was people not knowing that they are dead.\u00a0 And a further subset is these unaware dead reliving over and over again some morally relevant or ironically selected event in their lives.\u00a0 This is the first occurrence of this type of story so I\u2019ll think I\u2019ll cut Serling a little slack just this once.<\/p>\n
The set up is a British freighter, called the Queen of Glasgow, crossing the Atlantic to New York in 1942.\u00a0 For those unaware that is during World War II when German U-Boats sank Allied merchant marine vessels.\u00a0 A man named Carl Lanser finds himself on the deck of the ship but is confused about how he got there and even the details of his life.\u00a0 All he remembers is his name and the fact that he was born in Frankfurt Germany.\u00a0 Being introduced to the passengers and crew he becomes excited during a conversation about German submarines.\u00a0 He tries to convince them that if a submarine finds them, they will be sitting ducks.\u00a0 The captain confirms Lanser\u2019s opinion and remarks that he knows a lot about U-Boat tactics.\u00a0 As the steward is depositing Lanser\u2019s clothes in his cabin closet he finds a German captain lieutenant\u2019s uniform hat among them.\u00a0 When Lanser angrily takes the hat back he notes that his own name is printed inside it.<\/p>\n
Alright, it\u2019s clear what he is but the story runs its course.\u00a0 Lanser has a premonition that a U-Boat will sink them at 1:15 a.m. and he starts running around warning all the occupants to abandon ship ahead of the attack.\u00a0 This is the usual painful Twilight Zone scene of an hysterical individual running around yelling semi-coherently to either no one or to a group of people who don\u2019t know why he\u2019s yelling.<\/p>\n
Mercifully the U-Boat shows up.\u00a0 It surfaces and we see Lanser in uniform directing fire at the Queen of Glasgow and we watch Lanser on the Queen observing as all of the occupants are killed in brutal fashion.\u00a0 Finally, he goes over the side and drowns as the Queen of Glasgow sinks like a stone.<\/p>\n
Next scene is on the U-Boat where Captain Lieutenant Lanser is happily recalling the details of the night\u2019s victory in sinking the Queen of Glasgow.\u00a0 His junior officer is upset and Lanser tells him he\u2019s a fool.\u00a0 The lieutenant imagines that the penalty in the afterlife for killing innocent civilians so callously might be to have to be on the Queen of Glasgow every night for the rest of eternity.<\/p>\n
In the next scene, we see the first scene again and Lanser is on the Queen of Glasgow once again.<\/p>\n
Okay, so I said I\u2019d cut Serling some slack.\u00a0 If I were watching this episode back in 1959 (but was older than my actual two years of age at the time) I would think this was an interesting twist on cosmic fate.\u00a0 So, let\u2019s give them this mulligan.\u00a0 B-.<\/p>\n
Just as a note, the episode has two actors in minor roles that went on to reasonably well-known television careers.\u00a0 Patrick Macnee (who starred in a 1960s British spy show called the Avengers) was the British first Officer.\u00a0 James Franciscus (who was among other things, Mr. Novak on American television) was the German Lt. Mueller.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over the course of the Twilight Zone series a recurring theme was people not knowing that they are dead.\u00a0 And a further subset is these<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[237,4,244,240,1661],"tags":[1701,1706,1700,38,1355,1194,44,309,265,1691,154,1692,838],"class_list":["post-5935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-tv-reviews","category-twilight-zone","tag-james-franciscus","tag-judgment-night","tag-patrick-macnee","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-rod-serling","tag-sci-fi","tag-sci-fi-tv-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-sff-tv-show-reviews","tag-tv-review","tag-tv-reviews","tag-twilight-zone"],"yoast_head":"\n