Death Ship

The spaceship from Forbidden Planet is used again. I even think of this as Forbidden Planet 2...well almost. This is all about a pain-in-the-bum Captain (Jack Klugman) who can't understand what is going on with his "death ship".

The closing narration plays in my head whenever I encounter stupid people doing the same thing all the time. But is the episode a classic? No. The teaser, act one and the end are classic but a good part of it is crap. It feels like a 51 minute episode that should have been a 25 minute show.

It gets high marks for the use of stock Jerry Goldsmith music played during the bit where Klugman glares at the dead crew. And, as I said, the closing narration is a mind-blower.

In 1997, the spaceship E-89 is travelling through the space to collect vegetables, minerals and animals to see if the planet can be colonized by earthlings since Earth is overpopulated. When Lieutenant Mason sees a glittering object on the surface of the 13th planet in star system 51, he and Lieutenant Carter convince Captain Ross to land on the planet. They see a crashed spaceship identical to theirs and decide to explore her. Soon they find three bodies inside the crashed ship, and when they check them, they realize that they are themselves. What is happening to the crew of spaceship E-89?

"Death Ship" is a mysterious episode of "The Twilight Zone". The story recalls the legend of Sisyphus from the Greek mythology, condemned to roll an immense rounded rock up a hill, only to watch it roll back down forever, and to repeat this action. I tried to put myself in the same situation of Lieutenants Mason and Carter and imagined how crazy I would be if I find what they have just found in the wrecked spaceship. The conclusion is adequate to the profile of Captain Ross. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "A Nave da Morte" ("The Ship of Death")

Jack Klugman stars as Earth spaceship Captain Ross, who is in charge of a science vessel meant to determine the suitability of a planet for colonization. Under his command are Lt's Mason(played by Ross Martin) and Carter(played by Fred Beir). All three men are shocked upon landing to discover their exact doubles on board a duplicate crashed ship already on the planet dead. The two Lt's. believe that they are now dead, ghosts basically, but obstinate Capt. Ross refuses to believe this, no matter how many times they have to go over it... Eerie outer space ghost story has fine performances by the three leads, and an effective atmosphere, but especially chilling is the idea that somehow Ross is able to prevent the other men staying in heaven... Deeply disturbing,(even absurd) though of course there may be something else going on here as well...

Simply mind-blowing. Likely one of THE most gruesome, terrifying concepts I've encountered to date. Quantum Physics and Existentialism together at last.

This episode was vaguely reminiscient of the earlier sci-fi episode titled "The Invaders" with Agnes Moorehead. If you enjoyed that one, this episode radiates the same "Okay, whal the heck is going on here? Vibe.

Klugman plays angry/compulsive quite well. (Just ask Henry Fonda...) Ross Martin was, as always, good, however, his acting seems its usual two-mentional portrayal.

In all, this episode should rank among the highest of Mr. Serling's efforts.

"Death Ship" is a very successful one hour episode in that the show did not seemed padded and was able to use the time slot well. This is a com0plaint I have with some of the hour-long shows, but not this one.

It begins with a ufo-like spacecraft from Earth exploring for habitable planets. I thought it was rather funny that this interplanetary ship was supposedly traveling in the futuristic year 1997! When the ship lands, however, things get very, very confusing The three astronauts (Jack Klugman, Ross Martin and Fred Beir) are very confused to say the least. There is a crashed ship next to them...and it looks exactly like their ship! The Captain (Klugman) is very rigid and insists they cannot jump to conclusions. But, when they investigate the wreck and find themselves dead in the wreckage, what conclusions are they to draw?! Is this REALLY them? If so, how can they be looking at their dead selves?! Overall, this is a really good episode. My only problem with it is that there are multiple possibilities as to what is happening. It could be that residents of the planet are causing this and many other hallucinations in order to either scare them off or cause them to destroy themselves. It could be that they are dead and are seeing themselves but cannot accept it. Or, there could be another excellent possibility. I loved the ambiguity of this and was very disappointed when, at the end, the narrator makes it very clear exactly what has occurred. This seemed unnecessary and like over-kill. Still, a fascinating show and one that shows that season four's one-hour format could work.