Three astronauts -- skipper Klugman, and Martin and Beir -- land their flying saucer on a planet with orders to collect any specimens of life they find. What they find is an exact replica of their own ship, crashed, and containing their own dead bodies.
This rather discomfits them. How can they be examining the wreck of their own ship, and how can they roll their own dead bodies around? Well, in fact, they don't know.
Captain Klugman guess that they've passed through some sort of time transmogrification or something and the crashed ship they're looking at is a vision of one possible future. There follows a sequence in which Martin and Beir each experience a hallucination or something in which they are reunited with some dead loved ones.
When Klugman snaps them out of it, he decides that his original hypothesis about crossing the equatorial time barrier was wrong. They're really being hypnotized by invisible beings who live on the planet, resent their presence, and don't want them to leave. No kidding, that's how Klugman's explanation works out.
The three men argue about this at some length, take off and land the ship again, and the crashed replica is still there. "Why not give it up, Captain," sobs Martin. "Can't you see we're all dead already?" Cut to the beginning of the episode, with the flying saucer approaching the planet and about to land for the first time. Maybe they'll do it "unto eternity," Rod Serling's narration informs us.
That's all well and good, except I don't know what they'll be doing unto eternity or why. Neither will you.
Beir is unconvincing but Klugman and Martin do decent jobs. The problem is that the story makes very little sense. Serling once observed that the show as perfect for a half-hour time slot and he was right, by and large. The story seems padded out and turgid at one hour. Some of the hour-long episodes were much better but this one is kneecapped by poor writing and a sort of slapdash quality to the production. It's supposed to be thirteen degrees below zero outside, yet the ship has its windows open and there are banana plants growing around it.
This rather discomfits them. How can they be examining the wreck of their own ship, and how can they roll their own dead bodies around? Well, in fact, they don't know.
Captain Klugman guess that they've passed through some sort of time transmogrification or something and the crashed ship they're looking at is a vision of one possible future. There follows a sequence in which Martin and Beir each experience a hallucination or something in which they are reunited with some dead loved ones.
When Klugman snaps them out of it, he decides that his original hypothesis about crossing the equatorial time barrier was wrong. They're really being hypnotized by invisible beings who live on the planet, resent their presence, and don't want them to leave. No kidding, that's how Klugman's explanation works out.
The three men argue about this at some length, take off and land the ship again, and the crashed replica is still there. "Why not give it up, Captain," sobs Martin. "Can't you see we're all dead already?" Cut to the beginning of the episode, with the flying saucer approaching the planet and about to land for the first time. Maybe they'll do it "unto eternity," Rod Serling's narration informs us.
That's all well and good, except I don't know what they'll be doing unto eternity or why. Neither will you.
Beir is unconvincing but Klugman and Martin do decent jobs. The problem is that the story makes very little sense. Serling once observed that the show as perfect for a half-hour time slot and he was right, by and large. The story seems padded out and turgid at one hour. Some of the hour-long episodes were much better but this one is kneecapped by poor writing and a sort of slapdash quality to the production. It's supposed to be thirteen degrees below zero outside, yet the ship has its windows open and there are banana plants growing around it.