The Twilight Zone - Death Ship

I am one of those, admittedly, that considers the one-hour episodes a bit of a drag for the Twilight Zone, easily seeing how stretching / extending stories to such a length as 50 minutes perhaps did more harm than good for the show. Season 4 does remain an interesting experiment for the classic show, but perhaps left an exhausting toll on those who took part, especially Serling. But there were diamonds among the lesser gems, and I think Death Ship is such a case. Good performances and an interesting take on ghosts and eternal misery, using a space trip mission of colonization disaster as writer Richard Matheson’s template; Death Ship offers a fine hour of dramatic television. I especially liked the “hallucinations” (as Klugman’s Captain Paul Ross considers them) crewmembers Lt Ted Mason and Lt Mike Carter (Ross Martin and Frederick Beir) have, momentarily solace after such frustrating and infuriating ordeals with their Captain who refuses to acknowledge the obvious. I think it is clear almost from the get-go that these three are most certainly dead. The title of the episode is Death Ship. Captain Ross just won’t allow the truth to sink in. He believes there has to be another explanation. Even after the trio visit their own crashed ship, see inside all the wreckage, and come upon their own dead bodies; Captain Ross just won’t let what his eyes tell him to infiltrate his will to continue on.

That pursuit for a plausible explanation as to why all this horror is happening to him drives Ross while Mason and Carter just want to join their dead loved ones in their own versions of paradise. Several folks Mike Carter knew in life that died (a hunter pal and an old lady close to him) he met while trekking down this long road to his home to see his wife. But she wasn’t there (not dead yet?), while Ted Mason rejoins his wife and daughter on a picnic (they died in a car crash). Both “events” are full of excitement and joy. There’s sun and lush green, smiling faces and warmth. Beir’s exhilaration upon the idea of seeing his wife, walking faster and faster as his old buddy (who was killed in a hunting accident) and an old lady passing them to get groceries try to stop him to talk is lovely. But Ross Martin’s teary-eyed disbelief and overwhelming nirvana at seeing his little girl and the wife preparing their lunch, is beautifully acted and touching. Then comes grumpy Klugman (he’s practically insufferable) with that serious face out of the bushes to disrupt Mason’s paradise, dragging him out of all that felt so good right back into that fucking ship, that depressing ship that offered nothing but one disappointment after another. Like Mason, just as Carter was about to try and find his woman, there’s Ross to pluck him away from such tranquility, jerking him right into the bowels of wretchedness. Ross believes that there is perhaps some alien mind control behind all of this. That none of it is real…until lift-offs and returns continuously tell Ross otherwise. Pleas from his crew to abandon the pursuit and just accept death to be with those they love fall on deaf ears and a dogged, stubborn heart. Serling rightly called their ship the Flying Dutchman and the three astronauts will continue on in eternal slumber, a limbo with no net returns.