The Twilight Zone - The Thirty-Fathom Grave*

A Naval Destroyer on a routine travel, having just made it through a swell, not far from the Guadalcanal in the South Pacific, encounters mysterious hammering on the sonar, believing it’s possible they’ve come across a possibly sunken sub. On board the destroyer is an officer under a serious unease, psychologically and physically shaken by something he can’t quite finger or explain. He’s had quite a busy career, moving through the ranks in the Navy, but something about this most recent three days has him behaving uncharacteristically. He allows a boat to be damaged due to carelessness, with his superior scolding him for such odd recklessness.

Simon Oakland, the long-suffering boss of Carl Kolchak, is Captain Beecham, running the Naval Destroyer with a high degree of expectancy and efficiency. He’s strict but fair. He’s demanding but respectful and mindful of his crew’s flaws and strengths. Mike Kellin is Chief Bell, a veteran of the Navy who seems distracted and under stress since the ship is moving through a particular area in the South Pacific he’s quite familiar…and has haunted him for 20 years. He was in charge of a signal light on a sub that would be surrounded by the Japanese, attacked, and sunken. While the submarine crew perished, Bell survived after being thrown from it. The guilt from being responsible yet surviving that incident seems to pervasively remain with him…perhaps this brings about the phantoms that appear, in the form of those officers he once served on the sub with?

As the hammering continues, this episode of Twilight Zone, The Thirty-Fathom Grave, really hammers home how the past can return to serve as a reminder of events long gone yet never too far. Kellin nails that sense of impending doom, and I think you can recognize he won’t escape this episode without reacquainting himself with “ghosts” from the past. These ghosts do appear as those officers to Kellin (no one else sees them, although the ship doc does find seaweed and that hammering was heard by the crew over and over), calling him to come to where they are. He breaks the mirror and they are no longer there, alerting the doc to see what was wrong. Kellin maintains this really weary, anxious, unsettled presence, truly suffering an affect that seems to indicate he’s encountering something overwhelming, as if emerging to overtake him. The irony of the location and how Bell is tied to it obviously builds to the character meeting tragic end. Oakland’s concern for him, trepidation in reporting the repetitious hammering that noises its ominous call throughout his ship to his superiors, and restlessness due to a lack of answers regarding the sub adequately describe the perplexity of the situation. Bill Bixby is Oakland’s Officer On Deck, keeping the ship running in smooth order. David Sheiner is the worried doctor trying to determine just what is haunting Bell. John Considine is McClure, the scuba diver called on multiple times to revisit the sub for signs of life due to the bangs on metal that chill the crew on the Destroyer.

I really dig The Thirty-Fathom Grave but can’t help but wonder just how damn good this could have been under the thirty minute format the Twilight Zone typically operated in every other season but the fourth. This will be a consistent but undesired critique I reckon with each episode of this specific season. I think you can tell the strain on Serling extending an episode beyond what is needed had the show just remained as it should have been, thirty minutes. All that said, there’s great stuff here. The banging is creepy and the ghosts of the sub that return for Kellin certainly made the hairs on my arms stand on end. The ending was never in any doubt but that’s not to say getting to it wasn’t rewarding. Kellin sells his character’s haunting to the uttermost. Oakland, as the bothered Captain of the ship, shows us his authoritative nature of Beecham but that nervousness just what lies underneath seeps out despite his every effort to keep it shielded from his crew. In the early going, Beecham moves about to make sure his ship is operating at peak efficiency, holding Bell accountable for his blunder of the unfastened boat, giving us a look-see at how he runs everything. But then you see his soft spot for his crew when Bell clearly shows signs of distress. Even though the show is undermined by the hour in trying to fill the gaps with expanded material, the fourth season did give good actors a chance to really shine. Two—Oakland and Kellin—certainly do so here.