Brief Passages - Twilight Zone (People Are Alike All Over / Execution)

I have to be honest on “People Are Alike All Over”…I was never that big a fan of the episode. Don’t get me wrong, I think it was cool to have Roddy McDowell in an episode of Twilight Zone, for sure. And better to be in the best season of The Twilight Zone, so Roddy featured in the starring role was a plus, but I guess I just wasn’t impressed with the aliens on Mars (Martians in white togas, umm…) and the twist at the end, while perhaps a shocker when it was released back in 1960, is just a bit too cute for me personally. The “cage”, sign indicating the new “zoo exhibit”, and how Roddy realizes his fate on his new world seem to be the entire point of the episode. The rest feels like padding. I think what helps is the performance from Roddy who, rightfully so, feared the worst about what he and his astronaut colleague, Paul Comi, might encounter once they blasted off from Earth in their ship, later to crash on Mars. Comi seemed quite comfortable and without fear, with the crash underpinning him with inner wreckage (the internal injuries, I figure, the cause), eventually killing him. So poor Roddy is left alone with the Martians (including the gorgeous Oliver (Star Trek fans immortalize this beauty, her body in green and moving seductively in “The Cage”/”The Menagerie”)), soon realizing he’s been duped by their hospitality, recognizing their deception too late. The later “Probe 9, Over and Out” reminds me of this episode, perhaps because of how the ship wreck looks and how an astronaut onboard is left to ponder what is waiting “outside”. 2.5/5

To me the best scenes in “Execution” continues to be Salmi’s reaction to New York City of the 20^th century, 80 years after he was about to hang for the murder of at least 20 or so men in the Old West, spared by the handing noose thanks to a scientist (Johnson) who whisked him into the future through his time machine. His falling out of a phone booth, destroying a jukebox, and firing a gun (taken from Johnson who he kills by breaking a lamp over his head) at a television set (featuring a western gunmen pointing the gun right at the screen). The “thunderous” noise of the honking, traffic, bright lights, and city activity just sets him off; it is painful. I didn’t like the ending where a thief and Salmi are fighting it out in Johnson’s apartment; it is a plot contrivance I thought was a bit too convenient (a curtain string serving as a metaphorical noose the thief with a scar on his face uses to subdue Salmi who escaped one hanging but not a second one). And the thief just turning on the time machine and getting in, “sentenced” to suffer Salmi’s fate, was also a bit contrived to say the least. Still, men from 80 years of the past and future dying in a time they don’t belong has an irony fitting for the Twilight Zone. At the end of “People Are Alike All Over” had Serling in Johnson’s apartment by the time machine, vanishing, as if on a trip wondering where he went is most amusing if you have the series on DVD/Blu. This episode doesn’t feature Johnson too much, and I prefer his work in “Back There” (also featuring time travel, this time with Johnson going back to the past) 2.5/5