The Twilight Zone / The 7th is Made of Phantoms / Notes

 I have old user comments I'll also include here from July 5th, 2015, when SYFY was still showing the 4th of July marathon. This review got hammered with the unhelpful tag on IMDb, so I might as well removing it and dump the comments here.

I had thoughts of watching this last week but never got around to it. 

I have my problems with the episode. And I think I list them for the most part below. Joining Custer with machine guns, in modern military fatigues, you'd think history would be warped with the Butterfly Effect or something. If they did join Custer in a losing battle at Little Big Horn, wouldn't those actions shape the outcome of the future. I guess the time warp (a wind and encountering wigwams, a canteen, a horse without a Sioux rider, and an arrow in the back) was always meant to include these three at Little Big Horn, but their weapons and uniforms, you'd think, would be cataloged as peculiar artifacts. Whatever the case, while I think the episode is riddled with flaws and perhaps doesn't use a time rift as well as other episodes in the past, "The 7th is Made of Phantoms" does give viewers a history lesson, though, I doubt McClusky and Connors could remember so much of the historical details so exactly. Like Langsford, I figure plenty of viewers are as astonished as he is that those two have such impressive Little Big Horn memory recall. That Captain just wants the trio to do as they are told, but Connors seems just too motivated to keep from his unique destiny. Why he'd want to join Custer probably has more relevance today while the audience of 1963 might have felt differently.

Absolutely fascinating idea (modern soldiers literally "stumbling into a historical event") is undermined by ill-conceived "siding" with General Custer when he was up against the Sioux (considered "the enemy"). The presentation itself is spellbinding (clues of each small event as the Battle of the Little Big Horn would soon transpire three National Guardsmen encounter, soon perhaps encouraging them to "help in the fight" and take place in a part of history), and seeing Warren Oates in an episode of Twilight Zone is certainly really cool. Oates' Langsford really is a genuine mouthpiece for the cynic who says, "Really? Really?", and his lack of knowledge in the whole history of Little Big Horn basically relates to those of us who don't know the alarmingly fine details (an obvious sign of writer Serling needing to make sure two of the three knew exactly what they were encountering while on their "wargames mission") senior officer, Connors (Ron Foster) and young, but bright officer, McCluskey (Randy Boone) knew a bit too much about.

One bothersome detail, the big twist at the end, had me wondering to myself how, if the three modern soldiers went in to help Custer with weaponry superior and different than his (even with their names represented in a monument), history wasn't updated to recognize them. That and wouldn't history have recognized the different uniforms and guns they had in correlation with Custer's soldiers? Still, that twist is rather a corker: it has a haunting power to it no matter how far-fetched it might have been.

The music really does a swell job of heightening the discoveries by the three men (the wigwams, horse without a rider after McCluskey shot at the direction of noise letting out at a distance, the 7th Calvery canteen, etc.), and the discussions of history (even if the two maybe know a little bit more about the whole Little Big Horn as a matter of plot convenience to help the viewer) give the developing episode quite a chill factor. Still the treatment of the Sioux is misguided, and knowing Serling wrote this with that mentality can't be just dismissed.