Episode Spotlight: "Probe 7, Over and Out" (11/29/1963)

Season 5, Episode 9 (129 overall)

Originally aired 11/29/1963

Cayuga Production # 2622

Fifty years ago tonight, viewers received a measured dose of interplanetary déjà vu, courtesy of The Twilight Zone.

Rod Serling’s “Probe 7, Over and Out” introduces us to Colonel Adam Cook, whose spacecraft has crashed into an unknown planet. He manages to establish visual contact with his superiors back home, who give him the unfortunate news that all-out war is imminent, and that their world is doomed. Stranded with no hope of rescue, he ventures outside into the lush, unspoiled garden-like forest…. and discovers that he’s not alone. 

Another stranded space traveler, Eve, greets him with a rock to the head and a scratch across the face. After these initial hostilities (foreplay?), she warms up to him and they head off into the sunset together. Sound familiar? Have we perhaps seen this story played out before? You could cite the Book of Genesis, but you’d only be half right. 

“Probe 7, Over and Out” is a shameless copy of season three’s “Two,” right down to the verbose male lead and the black around the female’s eyes. The only significant difference is that this swipe at the laughable Adam and Eve cliché is that here, in this second pass, there’s virtually no attempt at subtlety (she even offers him an apple, fer chrissakes!). “Two” was wise enough not to go there; but then, that (superior) episode wasn’t written by Serling.  

We can also thank Serling for Cook’s endless philosophical musings on the nature of man, which I’d be a bit more accepting of if at least some of them were done in voiceover; as it stands, Cook’s constant talking to himself just feels clumsy and awkward (season two’s “King Nine Will Not Return,” also written by Serling, is helped immeasurably by the voiceover approach).

“Probe 7, Over and Out” is fine enough on a visual/technical level, thanks largely to the impressive life-sized spacecraft. The wrecked ship was purchased from Daystar Productions, which had built it for the Outer Limits episode “Specimen: Unknown.” Its image was also was inexplicably used by Bif Bang Pow! on the card backs of their 2012 TZ action figures, even though they've never produced any collectibles based on this episode (and they sure as hell haven’t produced any Outer Limits stuff, despite my incessant begging).

THE MUSIC

Most of the underscore in “Probe 7, Over and Out” is culled from Jerry Goldsmith’s “Back There” score from season two. These cues were used to great effect in season three’s “To Serve Man”; here, however, they sound a bit out of place (“Uncle Simon” suffered a similar problem). “The Outer Space Suite,” or maybe “Where is Everybody?” (both by Bernard Herrmann) would've probably worked better. I guess I should be grateful they didn't use Nathan Van Cleave’s “Two” score…!

FAMILIAR FACES

Richard Basehart (Adam Cook) is probably best remembered for his role as Admiral Harriman Nelson on TV’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964-68). IMDB lists an uncredited role as “Shakespeare-Reading Tape Recorder Voice” on an episode of Lost in Space (“The Derelict”); I’m only mentioning it because of the many connections shared by TZ and Lost in Space (Robby the Robot's fraternal twin the B-9 Robot, Billy Mumy, Jonathon Harris, etc).

Antoinette Bower (Eve Norda) is probably most recognizable to genre fans as Sylvia in the “Catspaw” episode of the original Star Trek; however, Bower appeared on many genre TV series throughout the 60’s and 70’s (including Mission: Impossible, The Invaders, and The Six Million Dollar Man).

My overall analysis of “Probe 7, Over and Out” can be boiled down to six words: been there, done that, over, out.

Next week:
War games are afoot, but Matthew Broderick is nowhere to be found.

TZ Promo: “Twenty Two” (2/10/1961)

“Twenty Two”
Season Two, Episode 17 (#53 overall)
Cayuga Production # 173-3664

A Twilight Zone episode is usually easy to spot, even if you miss the opening titles. Richard Matheson said it best: “The ideal Twilight Zone started with a really smashing idea that hit you right in the first few seconds, then you played that out, and you had a little flip at the end; that was the structure.” * 50 years ago tonight, an episode premiered which followed this deceptively simple blueprint, but didn’t feel like a Twilight Zone at all.

“Twenty Two” (sans hyphen), written by Rod Serling and directed by Jack Smight, feels like CBS ran an episode of ABC’s One Step Beyond in some bizarre programming glitch. All the hallmarks are there: spooky music, premonitions of disaster (which of course come true), and a hook that isn’t so much supernatural as psycho-spiritual. Having said that, I don’t dislike the episode at all. It’s creepy, damn it. Who hasn’t had a nightmare in which they were invited to their own demise?


“Twenty Two” is one of six season two episodes that were videotaped instead of filmed, and the different (that’s being charitable) look contributes to the non-TZ vibe. It somehow works here, though…. The faux morgue set is impressive on video, but on film it might’ve looked fake. The same can be said of the exploding airplane in the finale.



This week’s damsel-in-psychological-distress is played by Barbara Nichols, who certainly has the, um, assets to play “the best little stripper-dancer that ever came down the pike” (as her agent describes her). In addition to screaming like a banshee and knocking over glasses of water on The Twilight Zone, she also appeared in 1957’s Sweet Smell of Success, a Burt Lancaster-Tony Curtis film noir that just came out on blu-ray from the Criterion Collection. No, I didn’t get paid for that plug (but I’d be happy to accept a free copy, if Criterion feels like sending me one!).



Forbidden Planet alert! Okay, this one is a bit of a stretch. The creepy doctor is played by Jonathan Harris, who we all know from TV’s Lost In Space!, the cast of which included the B-9 Robot, which was designed by Robert Kinoshita, who also designed Robby the Robot (the two 'bots certainly look related). Call it Two Degrees of Forbidden Planet.

Harris with Robby the Robot's cousin, the B-9. Oh, and there's Billy Mumy (a three-episode TZ veteran)!

The “spooky music” referenced above is made up predominantly of reused cues from Van Cleave’s “Elegy” score from season one. It works better here.

Room for one more, honey!

The freaky nurse is played by Arlene Martel (aka Arlene Sax), who is probably best known for her role as T’Pring, Spock's arranged wife-in-waiting, in Star Trek’s “Amok Time.” I know her best from my other favorite TV series of all time, The Outer Limits, where she played opposite Robert Culp in the wonderful “Demon with a Glass Hand." And speaking of The Outer Limits… well, stay tuned.

Two weeks from tonight: The Twilight Zone joins the mile-high club, in a manner of speaking. You won’t see any gremlins on the wing, but you might just see a brontosaurus if you get a window seat. Check in early.

* Matheson quote shamelessly cribbed from Marc Scott Zicree's The Twilight Zone Companion.