People Are Alike All Over

Samuel Conrad (Roddy McDowall) is a scientist being sent on a mission to Mars. Feeling ill-prepared and ill-suited for this mission, he's very afraid of what he might find out there. As it turns out, his fellow astronaut Marcusson (Paul Comi) had been dead-on about his perception of all forms of intelligent life; the Martian people seem very inviting, but they have something special planned for Conrad.

Although I figured out where this was going ahead of time, the big reveal is still pulled off brilliantly by Mr. Serling (adapting a story by Paul W. Fairman) and director Mitchell Leisen ("Death Takes a Holiday", "The Mating Season"). McDowall delivers a top-notch performance as the jittery would-be astronaut who finds out that it really is true: no matter where you go in this universe, you'll see the similarities between "us" and "them".

Also starring Susan Oliver, Byron Morrow, and Vic Perrin, 'People Are Alike All Over' can take its place among the best of classic TZ episodes.

Eight out of 10.

The subtlety of the episode is well crafted for those times I am sure most of the message is wasted on the similar plot like "The Cage" in Star Trek. The story, on the other hand, has a message about people and how we find any reason the isolate and ostracize others who look like us but have some unique distinction. Whether color, religion, or origin, we tend to keep people categorized when in fact we are all human beings. this message was boldly presented with McDowall's last lines. Many of the staff writers for TZ were victims of McCarthism and Nazism. The world was also turning upside down with equal rights emerging as a social concern. Writers like Roddenberry and Serling knew change was coming. They wrote these concepts of a world where everyone was considered equal and people accepted you as a peer based upon you and not what you looked like. On the other hand, the fact that the astronaut thought they were speaking English and instead he was speaking their language, maybe they only looked like humans from his point of view. Great episode which speaks volumes.

One of the most popular and frequently repeated topics in the acclaimed "The Twilight Zone" was the conquest of space and the encounter with extraterrestrial life. This is almost a matter-of- course, as the series was primarily a Sci-Fi and mystery show, and obviously few topics lend themselves better for mysterious Sci-Fi than the unexplored planets of our galaxy and their potentially menacing inhabitants. Still, it certainly must not have been easy to script an episode for this series, because Sci-Fi/mystery is usually complex and detailed, and yet there were only 25 minutes of running time available for each episode! Knowing this, it's truly amazing how practically all entries of this TV-format are so intelligent and engaging. "People are alike all over" is a nice example of this, in fact, since it's a very smart and meaningful tale that is compactly narrated in less than half an hour; - not longer than necessary! A still very young Roddy McDowell ("Planet of the Apes", "The Legend of Hell House") stars as the insecure astronaut/biologist Sam Conrad, who's about to embark on his first major mission to Mars and feels very nervous about what he might discover there. His friend and co-pilot Marcusson comforts him by stating that, even if do stumble upon another species, it will undoubtedly look and act likes them because that's how God created the universe. The mission doesn't run all that smoothly, unfortunately, as they crash on Mars and Marcusson dies before they can open the hatch. Sam is all alone now, but he receives a warm welcome from the Martians who do – like Marcusson promised him – look and act like humans on earth. Actually, they act EXACTLY like human beings from earth would… The great thing about these TW episodes is that, no matter how hard you see the end conclusion coming your way, the show still manages to surprise you with it! Quite early in the episode already, I was fairly persuaded that "People are alike all over" would finish the way it did, but it nevertheless still felt as a minor rush of adrenalin. The portrayal of Mars and its inhabitant is very basic and implausible, of course, but it ideally suits with the underlying message of the story. People ARE alike all over, and the nature of our kind is questionable to say the least.

Note that the some of the spaceship interior components, specifically the Pac Man light boxes, appear to be leftovers from "Forbidden Planet". These appear in a couple other TZ episodes also: "Elegy" and maybe some others.

I never realized this was the same girl from "The Cage/Court Martisl" before. Maybe she got typecast as an attractive alien seductress.

Finally got Tivo So I can record the TZ New Yeat marathon. Now I can leave my TV room on New Year's eve/day!

What's up with the 10 lines of text minimum? I can't think of anything more to say!

This is one I asked myself if I ever had seen before? Wasn't sure until the surprise ending. Roddy McDowall gives a strong performance as the apprehensive scientist Sam Conrad on the mission. You just have a feeling from the beginning he's destined for trouble. "The Andy Griffith Show" fans get a treat seeing knockout Susan Oliver from "Prisoner of Love". She's absolutely mesmerizing as a female Martian here also. The top dog Martian was Bryon Morrow who also did TAGS and many classic TV shows. I really enjoyed the story's tense uncertainty throughout. What worse could happen then to have the spaceship's captain bite the dust in the crash landing? They seem all like such nice people.