Episode #108 - Death Ship

Air Date: 2/7/63 written by Richard Matheson Directed by Don Medford

This was based on Matheson's short story of the same name, published in 1953 in Fantastic Story Magazine.

It's the story of a 3-man crew (Jack Klugman as the captain, Ross Martin as Lt. Mason and Fredrick Beir) in their flying saucer ship, the E-89, in the year 1997. Their job is to conduct surveys of planets and take specimens back to Earth for analysis. While over such a planet, Lt. Mason notes a blip and the captain orders that they land to investigate. They land near another ship which appears to have crash landed. It soon becomes evident that this wrecked ship is a duplicate of their own and that they may be seeing their near future. Or, are they already in that gloomy future...?

This is a ghost story transposed into a science fiction setting - the future of space exploration ('97 seemed far in the future at the time this episode was made and is now over a decade in our past; the mind whirls). When I first saw this many years ago, I didn't think Klugman was the captain during the first minute and was surprised to learn this as the episode progressed. He was an atypical representation of the usual ship's captain, not the expected tallest and most manly member of the crew; I was used to seeing Klugman in supporting roles or playing weak, weasly characters. He also plays this captain as wound a bit too tight.

Due to the repetitive nature of the plot, the audience was treated to numerous shots of the saucer taking off, flying around, at rest and even as a wrecked version for the crash site. The flying saucer almost became like a 4th character in the episode (besides the 3 crew members). A lot of the shots recalled Forbidden Planet - like a black & white version. I think this episode was a good example of getting the most out of such a prop and it really helped the show here - it suggested a larger budget probably where there wasn't one. Production costs: $125,476.44. BoG's Score: 7 out of 10

The stills above are from an article in Filmfax #114. The article contains some commentary by actor Klugman, who stated that he hated this episode. One reason for his attitude is that the episode was "too technical with all that jargon." There were also "two guys who were crying all the time." For Klugman, it was "like acting with Joan Crawford!"