The Voyage Home

A spaceship, manned by three astronauts, is returning from a first landing on Mars. On the last day, a discovery is made of a civilization on the red planet. While investigating, a spray/explosion comes out of a sort of pod. The men are rendered unconscious for an hour or so. Because of a lack of oxygen and a deadline for departure, they must leave their discovery behind. Unfortunately for them, they allow a substance on board. This is shades of the first Alien movie. A series of mechanical problems occur, during which irrational behavior begins among the three. The ship heats up to near intolerable levels. One of the astronauts actually sees an extra-terrestrial in a chameleon-like state. The plot then turns to coming home and the implications of that voyage. This is a psychological thriller, engendered by the science fiction angle. Unfortunately, this same thing has been done numerous times in various offerings. It is not without tension and spark.

From the title you can conclude that the story is totally unoriginal, but it's nicely developed in just 45 minutes. The episode is well acted and quite tense and unpredictable, but it is a spoiled by completely unnecessary and very bad CGI. It should have been left as an SF psychological drama-thriller, without a poor attempt at horror.

"The true measure of a hero is when a man lays down his life with the knowledge that those he saves will never know."

6/10

It's funny, for the last few days I've been trying to remember a particular episode of one of these anthology shows but I couldn't remember if it was this, The Twilight Zone, or something else completely, I could only remember the 'moral' at the end. Well, I just found that episode and it was this one. For some reason it wasn't quite what I remembered, though, and that made me sad. It was mostly what I remembered - the ending message and the reason for it - but I apparently remembered the journey to the reason differently.

Anyway, it was an ok episode? It was kinda cute that the episode title - The Voyage Home - was the title of a Star Trek movie, and that that coincided with one of the cast here - Michael Dorn - being a Star Trek cast member, albeit Star Trek TNG not the original Star Trek itself, but still...

This episode is one of the highlights of season one for me. It's probably my favourite after Quality of mercy. I was on the edge of my seat throughout the entire episode. Only downside is the CGI as the aliens do look really bad. The ending though completely makes up for it. Always tough not to feel emotional.