The Twilight Zone: Third from the Sun
Oct. 29th, 2025 05:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerSo far as starting with a title and not much else goes, I was ready to suppose “Third from the Sun” meant The Twilight Zone was getting back to science fiction. Perhaps I didn’t think too much about certain criticisms that science fiction can (or “should”) involve more subtle subjects than “space travel,” but I might have just been trying not to speculate too much, conscious of the apparent risk in “finding fault with a story just for not being what you thought would be a good idea.” (I suppose, though, that I had a thought or two of a title from a few decades later that added one word to shape a less serious mood...)
While I might not have been speculating all that much, it still could have been a bit of a surprise for the episode to open with two defence scientists confronting how their weapons were about to be deployed in forty-eight hours. For all that one of them was more relaxed about the prospect, that led into the episode laying down a general feeling of dread, during which I started noticing all the tilted shots. It fit into how I’m ready to imagine “the dangers of nostalgia” might be countered with an awareness of the worries of those times, even if I’m also at least aware I might be told “we can still worry about that: there are just more distractions now, that’s all.” That The Twilight Zone was bringing up the subject for the second time already still got my attention.
When the more concerned scientist began discussing “leaving” with his wife I could see where my previous thoughts of science fiction would tie in. Along the way, his teenaged daughter played a significant role at a crucial instant. From there I was amused to see the getaway would be made in the C-57-D from Forbidden Planet, and then by how much of that ship was left from the production of that movie a few years before. Comments seen that Stanley Kubrick had made sure to dispose of the sets and props from 2001: A Space Odyssey to keep the elaborate design work he’d commissioned from going into cheaper productions came back to mind.
It was right around that time that I got to wondering what sort of twist I ought to expect to arrive, and it turned out the twist was a familiar one. The thought “that’s how they were able to talk so much about an impending final war” did sort of amuse me. All the same, I did get to wondering about all of the thoughts that “the saucer people” would be greater than us and save us from ourselves; that now-countered thought might even have crossed my mind in whatever advance speculation I had permitted myself about this episode.
While I might not have been speculating all that much, it still could have been a bit of a surprise for the episode to open with two defence scientists confronting how their weapons were about to be deployed in forty-eight hours. For all that one of them was more relaxed about the prospect, that led into the episode laying down a general feeling of dread, during which I started noticing all the tilted shots. It fit into how I’m ready to imagine “the dangers of nostalgia” might be countered with an awareness of the worries of those times, even if I’m also at least aware I might be told “we can still worry about that: there are just more distractions now, that’s all.” That The Twilight Zone was bringing up the subject for the second time already still got my attention.
When the more concerned scientist began discussing “leaving” with his wife I could see where my previous thoughts of science fiction would tie in. Along the way, his teenaged daughter played a significant role at a crucial instant. From there I was amused to see the getaway would be made in the C-57-D from Forbidden Planet, and then by how much of that ship was left from the production of that movie a few years before. Comments seen that Stanley Kubrick had made sure to dispose of the sets and props from 2001: A Space Odyssey to keep the elaborate design work he’d commissioned from going into cheaper productions came back to mind.
It was right around that time that I got to wondering what sort of twist I ought to expect to arrive, and it turned out the twist was a familiar one. The thought “that’s how they were able to talk so much about an impending final war” did sort of amuse me. All the same, I did get to wondering about all of the thoughts that “the saucer people” would be greater than us and save us from ourselves; that now-countered thought might even have crossed my mind in whatever advance speculation I had permitted myself about this episode.