Second Chance

Several people, all with some history, are tricked into getting on a flying saucer which is supposedly an amusement park attraction. Normally, the visitors get a simulated trip through the galaxy. Now, an alien has taken over and we are not immediately made aware of his intentions. It turns out that he has selected this group of people. First, a middle aged couple that is dominated by the abusive husband. A young football star and his friend (who ends up dying early on) and his girlfriend who has been pinned by his fraternity. There are also the two people who run the attraction, a brilliant scientist who has lost his way and a beautiful blonde woman who acts as a flight attendant on the ersatz saucer. The alien has been messing around with the controls and has managed to turn what was an artificial device into a real flying saucer. But why? What follows is a talky thing as the alien scolds the people as they are catapulted into space, heading for the home planet. Their weaknesses are used against them as they feel desperation. The scientist and the flight attendant develop a romance, but they are far from truthful. This episode is interesting as we await an explanation as to why this is being done. What makes this one a challenge for me is why these people were picked? We find out the ultimate purpose for the voyage, but, again, why these people?

Sure, there're hokey special effects, enough over-acting to power a small city for a month, & a plot picked out of a hat, but there's the usual questionable activity of those earthlings & some powerhouse TV regulars of the day.

& I'd wager that this is the only American A/V production in any form, mainstream or experimental, in which a character is chided for reading Kant's Critique of the Pure Reason in the original German.

OTOH, I wonder whether the plot wasn't picked up by an O.L. staffer at the 1964 NY World's Fair, as the spacecraft interior looks an awful lot like the centerpiece of one of the big exhibits my dad & I rode in that summer. & In a variation on the old plot twist, it's the earthlings that compel the alien to see the error of his ways.

An amusement park spaceship is actually a real spaceship with real aliens!

What a great storyline! The first half of the hour is better than the second half but the whole thing rocks. At the top of my head I can't think of another sci-fi TV show or movie that has taken on this storyline. But everything got stolen from The Outer Limits so I am guessing the story has been done again somewhere?

Don Gordon did so much for 1960s TV sci-fi, his two roles in The Outer Limits, his one role in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and one role in QM's The Invaders are great. The guy may not be remembered by all but he has a place in TV history with me.

Character actor Simon Oakland, highly unrecognizable under layers of makeup, plays an alien that takes a group of unsuspecting amusement park guests on a trip to outer space. The "crew" of the ride (Don Gordon and Janet De Gore) have no idea that the alien has made the craft suitable for flight and they, too, become captives of the alien's machinations.

John McLiam and Angela Clarke portray a bickering couple while Yale Summers, later to be featured on "Daktari" is on hand as the resident "jock" forced to show his mettle in the life-threatening kidnapping.

There are many plot holes in the episode, especially the fact that the alien is able to turn the ride into a functional rocket, but the performances by Oakland and McLiam make for an entertaining episode of the classic show.

A cruel lesson of TV writing is that your work becomes the property of someone else and that they have a great deal of liberty in changing it without your consent. Sometimes this is done for budgetary reasons, sometimes this is done for pacing, sometimes this is done in order to keep characterization consistent, and sometimes it is done for no good reason.

That's the case with this episode. The original writer, Sonya Roberts, had turned in "Joy Ride," an earlier version of the script that had strong emphasis on characters, their back stories, and motivations, all of which made the story emotionally interesting. ABC found it too complicated, and it was re-written into this campy mess that's full of tropes like the old "getting sucked out of the airlock." There was nothing for Roberts to do because the script was no longer hers, but if she wanted credit (and residual payments) she had to claim ownership, which was done by using the pseudonym "Lin Dane."

The British TV science fiction writer Johnny Byrne once described writing for the genre in this medium as "weaving an enormous tapestry, with executives not realizing that making you move one thread ruins the image." If you view this episode, I recommend keeping this in mind.