Twilight Zone/People Alike.../Execution/Big Tall Wish

 People Are Alike All Over

This episode didn't age well. Martians looking as if they came from Ancient Greece on a planet that isn't habitable for human type beings. Roddy McDowell's Sam Conrad can just leave his ship and breathe comfortably on Mars and those who inhabit the planet seem perfectly fine. And Sam's "zoo cell", a home modeled after a suburban house back on earth, is perfectly modeled from his mind by the Martians capable to read his thoughts. The whole point was to provoke a response of "how do the zoo animals feel when you put them in a habitat to be eyed at by onlookers all day?" This is one of those episodes that has slid down my favorites list quite a bit because it is built on the twist and I just never felt what happens up until the twist really is all that memorable besides McDowell's lone TZ appearance. I'll always love the fact he was in "Planet of the Apes", though, cementing his connection to Serling in not only TZ but also later on with "Night Gallery". Sam Conrad had every reason to be concerned as it points out later. It is rather tragic Paul Comi's Marcusson, the actual astronaut to Sam's scientist (he was asked to go on the mission due to his mind, his intelligence), made it to Mars but because they crash (more on this in a moment) he was mortally wounded with internal bleeding ("all busted up inside"), never able to see that the Martians on the planet were only interested in them as gawkers visiting them in their "native habitat". Maybe Marcusson kicking the bucket spared him the same fate as Sam, whose mind the Martians had very little interest in.

Still, you'd think since the Martians were mind readers they'd want more out of Sam than just a species to study through cell bars. Roddy, to his credit, really sells the devastation of knowing he's nothing more to them than a zoo animal. I will say that anytime I get to see Susan Oliver during this particular period of her career is never a bad thing. 

I also noticed a trope in TZ from the very beginning: trips to planets seem to always end most of the time in a crash, leaving those onboard almost always stranded. (SYFY; 4:30AM, Saturday, Nov 13th)

Execution

"...justice can span years. Retribution is not subject to a calendar. Tonight's case in point in the Twilight Zone." 

I'm not all that wild and crazy about "Execution" but it does seem the episode has gained in reputation with TZ fans over the years. Russell Johnson being in two time travel episodes is such a cool bit of trivia: one as a scientist who pulls a man of violence out of 1880 right as he's hanging from a rope for shooting a fellow in the back (his dad, played by George Mitchell, the ogre who ran the gas station, unwilling to help Inger Stevens in "The Hitch-Hiker", is there at the "necktie party" to watch his son's killer pay for the crime) and the second as an engineer in Washington, DC, who happens to find himself mysteriously teleported to the night of Lincoln's death in the memorable episode, "Back There". Salmi always leaves a memorable impression, so often this savage or ruthless heel that when he isn't that kind of character it just feels odd. You see him twice involved in physical altercations. Johnson's scientist had did it, creating a time machine, and this amazing accomplishment brought him Joe Caswell, the worst kind of sort to pull from the past in order to verify his invention worked. The wreckage left behind by Caswell is the really memorable part of the episode, I think. That and how Salmi reacts to this extraordinary landscape he now finds himself: so loud and the lights so bright. The "concrete jungle", this vast city that isn't as much a playground for Caswell as it is an overwhelming overload he couldn't have ever prepared for. Johnson was right: this man he brought out of 1880 was worth fearing. A jukebox and television inside a diner know that all too well, as did Johnson's Professor Manion. The lamp over the head just shattering, leaving Manion dead in a heap over his desk to the floor is rather potently violent for a 1960 sci-fi show, but it did explain just how dangerous Caswell was. The episode depends on a ton of coincidences such as a no-good burglar happening upon Manion's apartment right when Caswell had returned, mistakenly turning on the time machine, getting inside the machine, and transporting exactly to the hanging noose during when Caswell was there, replacing the notoriously murderer with his own neck. Ironically Caswell strangled by a curtain string by the burglar is agreeably TZ...he just got his punishment in a different time, that's all. (SYFY; 7:00AM, Monday, Nov 15)

The Big Tall Wish

Very important from a historical context, with the wonderful Ivan Dixon (who is even better in "I Am the Night: Color Me Black") as a washed-up boxer still climbing into the ring and swinging despite every reason to quit. When he goes to punch a sorry promoter who bet against him, asking him to work with him in throwing fights after two rounds, his one weapon is nuked after hitting the knuckles right into a wall. So with only one real punching arm available, Dixon's Bolie needs a miracle. That miracle comes in that "big tall wish" his little buddy, Henry (Steven Perry), pleads hard for, a young boy who lives in the same tenement as him with his mom, Frances (Kim Hamilton). As Bolie is pummeled blow-by-blow, Henry's wish does work: instead of being counted to ten by the ref on the canvas of the ring, his opponent is knocked out instead. But the episode has the emotionally and physically battered Bolie just refusing to accept the miracle, and because of that, Henry's wish reverses, altering the originally altered turn of events in the ring. I consider the ending a bit frustrating, to tell the truth, if just because I felt Bolie deserved to have something go right for him, since his life has been so miserable and full of disappointments. This kid truly believed in him and for Bolie to reject that admittedly broke my heart. If just because Henry's gift shouldn't have been so taken for granted. It was his wish to see his dear friend have something go his way. Bolie's stubbornness, his inability to accept that miracles can happen, leaves him once again wrecked, with slumped shoulders, a sad heart, and a resignation that another loss was meant to be. I guess I just cared about Bolie and wanted what the kid did: for him to have some semblance of real happiness. That was the whole point. Henry sees his hero day in and day out beaten down by a world that seems to be against him. Twilight Zone isn't always a show that leaves us with broken characters, but there are episodes like "Time Enough at Last" and "The Big Tall Wish" that communicate to us that fate doesn't always seem to deal a good hand to folks undeserved of the results they often experience. (SYFY; 7:30AM, Mon, Nov 15)