Speaker 1: While the twilight Zone Podcast takes a short summer hiatus. Tonight,
Speaker 1: I bring to you another episode from the archives over
Speaker 1: in the After Hours Club Patreon dot com slash twilight
Speaker 1: Zone Podcast. And if you're a new listener to the
Speaker 1: twilight Zone Podcast, this isn't generally how the show goes.
Speaker 1: We tend to focus more on episodes of the twilight Zone,
Speaker 1: but over in the After Hours Club, I diversify into
Speaker 1: all things sailing, and on the episode that I'm going
Speaker 1: to bring to you tonight, way back in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: I used to do a kind of magazine show over
Speaker 1: there called The Fifth Dimension, where I would look at
Speaker 1: other road sailing related work. Orse sometimes it would be
Speaker 1: reading a short story. But in this particular episode, I
Speaker 1: join up with my friend Al Shades Murder, presenter of Presenting,
Speaker 1: Alfred Hitchcock Presents to talk about an episode of stud
Speaker 1: Judo one which was written by Rod Sailing, called The Strike.
Speaker 1: And it's one of two episodes that Alan I did
Speaker 1: looking at some really really early sailing work. So I
Speaker 1: will put the other one out in maybe a week's
Speaker 1: time or something, but for now I'll hand you over
Speaker 1: to twenty nineteen Tom Elliott to introduce you to the
Speaker 1: fifth dimension and the strike. I'm going to begin tonight's
Speaker 1: show with a quote within a quote, and I'm taking
Speaker 1: it from Nick Parici's book Rod Sailing, His Life, Work
Speaker 1: and Imagination, in which he puts a quote from Mark
Speaker 1: Zickery's Twilight's Own Companion, in which he quotes Rod Sailing.
Speaker 1: So it starts out with some words from Sailing himself,
Speaker 1: and he says, a lot of these early scripts were rough, underdeveloped, hurried.
Speaker 1: Some were still pretty bad stuff. And then Zickary carries on,
Speaker 1: but to be fair, it should be said that if
Speaker 1: they were bad, at least they were bad in the
Speaker 1: right direction. A quality which could be seen in these scripts,
Speaker 1: even as it can be seen in Sailings later scripts
Speaker 1: for the Twilight Zone, was that even the waste of
Speaker 1: them revealed a primary concern for people and their problems.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the situations were cliched, the characters too dimensional, but
Speaker 1: always there was at least some search for an emotional truth,
Speaker 1: some attempt to make a statement on the human condition.
Speaker 1: So this is in a section of the book that
Speaker 1: is looking at Rod Sailing's early early work. Now we've
Speaker 1: all heard of patterns we've all heard of Requiem for
Speaker 1: a Heavyweight, But what else was going on around that time?
Speaker 1: Because Rod Sailing was gathering some steam in his wake,
Speaker 1: you know, having these moments where he knocked out the
Speaker 1: park with those kinds of plays, but also he was
Speaker 1: still developing his he was still feeling his way through
Speaker 1: the world of television and finding out that it could
Speaker 1: be a very frustrating place. So in a two part show,
Speaker 1: I'm joined by a longtime friends of the show, Al Shardsman,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about two of those early
Speaker 1: Sailing plays. And these aired on a show called Studio One,
Speaker 1: and it was one of those early American anthologies that
Speaker 1: just ran and ran. It had about ten seasons and
Speaker 1: four hundred and sixty seven episodes, and pretty much anyone
Speaker 1: who was anyone either wrote it, directed it, or starred
Speaker 1: in it at that time. And it wasn't so much
Speaker 1: an anthology in the sense that the Twilight Zone is,
Speaker 1: or even the forerunner to the Twilight Zone Tales of Tomorrow,
Speaker 1: where it does have a sort of overriding feeling to it.
Speaker 1: Studio One was more a time and a space just
Speaker 1: to put plays on television. So it's a little different
Speaker 1: from how we view television today or even when we
Speaker 1: get to the Twilight Zone. So let's jump over to
Speaker 1: my chat with Al when we begin looking at our
Speaker 1: facet story tonight. I welcome back, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the best friends of the Twilight Zone podcast. My good
Speaker 1: friend Al shared Al. Did I pronounce your name right?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: You did? Close enough anyway, Okay, yeah, yeah, I'll take that.
Speaker 1: We're off to a good start. Then it'll probably be
Speaker 1: downhill from here. We'll see, we'll see. Al. You brought
Speaker 1: to my attention a couple of shows that Rod Sailing
Speaker 1: did before before he started the Twilight Zone. So why
Speaker 1: don't you just sort of tell us about the release
Speaker 1: that you discovered these shows on.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, I was looking for Serling dramas anything available
Speaker 3: on DVD, and one of them I discovered was this
Speaker 3: set put out by the Archive of American Television called
Speaker 3: Rod Serling Studio one Dramas, and it's two episodes from
Speaker 3: Studio one Westinghouse. Studio Westinghouse, the television program from the
Speaker 3: early fifties, early to mid fifties, and one of them
Speaker 3: is The Strike from nineteen fifty four and the other
Speaker 3: is The Arena from nineteen fifty six, and they're fascinating
Speaker 3: in terms of early Serling work. I think the Strike
Speaker 3: Surling wrote when he was twenty nine years old, and
Speaker 3: which is pretty impressive when you look at it, I think,
Speaker 3: and only mid in his early thirties for the Arena,
Speaker 3: so they pre date the Twilight Zone by a good
Speaker 3: four to six years. And they are certainly part of
Speaker 3: the education that he had in television that led him
Speaker 3: to decide to do The Twilight Zone. So I think
Speaker 3: that they are. They may not be as important in
Speaker 3: the in the Serling of as requen for a Heavyweight
Speaker 3: and patterns and things like that, but they're definitely part
Speaker 3: of the building blocks of his career and and show
Speaker 3: him developing as a playwright. Actually, because they really are
Speaker 3: essentially plays for television. Uh they there's there's very limited
Speaker 3: sets and I'm pretty sure they were done live, so
Speaker 3: you know, you had to work them out in the
Speaker 3: same way that you would in the theater, where if
Speaker 3: somebody has to go on to a different set, you
Speaker 3: have to have a moment where they can get there,
Speaker 3: So you have to have a little bit of a
Speaker 3: little bit of transition writing. So they're real education. I
Speaker 3: think for a writer too.
Speaker 1: That's a good point you mentioned there, because you know
Speaker 1: Studio One. I suppose in some ways you could call
Speaker 1: it an anthology, but it doesn't seem like an anthology
Speaker 1: to me in the same way that the Twilight Zone is,
Speaker 1: or like you know, Night Gallery or Tells in the
Speaker 1: Crypto or whatever. It really is just a series of plays,
Speaker 1: isn't it, rather than a sort of an anthology with
Speaker 1: a similar kind of theme, because they could be anything.
Speaker 1: I mean, these two stories, we've got a war story
Speaker 1: and we have a political sort of drama as well,
Speaker 1: So it doesn't seem like an anthology in the same
Speaker 1: sense as I would normally think of an anthology if
Speaker 1: you see what I mean.
Speaker 3: Yes, the anthologies like Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock presents,
Speaker 3: those sorts of things have some overriding theme or overwriting presence,
Speaker 3: whether it's Sling or Hitchcock or whatever. These arearly just
Speaker 3: shows that did plays on television. I think Playhouse ninety
Speaker 3: was pretty much like that too. It was a thing
Speaker 3: in early television, which is actually a shame that it
Speaker 3: doesn't exist anymore. The there's an ad on the front
Speaker 3: of this DVD set that I have advertising another collection
Speaker 3: of Studio One dramas and they list with some of
Speaker 3: them are and they're all vastly different. One of them
Speaker 3: is the original Twelve Angry Men, Oh wow. So yeah,
Speaker 3: and then there's something that has Seal Minio in it,
Speaker 3: and there's something that's Jack Lemon in it, and they're
Speaker 3: all just individual plays, completely distinct. So yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: the fact that Serling was able to crack this is
Speaker 3: you know. I mean, we look at Twilight Zone now
Speaker 3: and Playhouse ninety and think of those as being like,
Speaker 3: you know, the real pinnacles for Serling, but I think
Speaker 3: being on Studio One was as well, and it established him,
Speaker 3: along with Playhouse ninety, as being one of the top
Speaker 3: playwrights for television in the early fifties, along with Patty
Speaker 3: Chaiyevsky and Reginald Rose. In fact, I was reading somewhere,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if it's in Nick Pees's book or
Speaker 3: if it was in the little liner notes that came
Speaker 3: with this DVD that Gorvi Dal put out a collection
Speaker 3: of the best plays for television in the fifties, and
Speaker 3: one of them is The Strike. So it was established Serling.
Speaker 3: I think in ways that he actually you know, went
Speaker 3: on from there, but it certainly is I think a
Speaker 3: major part of his career.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: You referred to Nick Perici's book then, and obviously I
Speaker 1: referred to it too, because if anyone wants to know
Speaker 1: more about this era of sailing, it's indispensable, really, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It's fantastic in that regard. You know, it covers so
Speaker 1: much stuff that I didn't even know about, in such
Speaker 1: great details. It is like an expanded Twilight zoned Companion
Speaker 1: in a way. He goes into all these things, he
Speaker 1: digs up letters and so on, and if he's to
Speaker 1: be believed, which of course why not. The arena is
Speaker 1: actually quite important in a sense beyond what actually ends
Speaker 1: up on screen. But we'll get to that in a minute,
Speaker 1: because we let's start off with our first story, which
Speaker 1: is called the Strike.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry I paused the unforgivable question. You never mentioned
Speaker 2: fear in front of enlisted man? Do you I mean
Speaker 2: letting them know that an officer might be afraid to.
Speaker 5: Chaplains have guy blanche In that respect, you can ask
Speaker 5: any you want.
Speaker 4: You're the Army's chosen people. And at the point of interest, major,
Speaker 4: are you afraid twenty hunting for Chaplin reassurance.
Speaker 5: I'm fresh out of reassurance. You see out there, that's
Speaker 5: our escape route, the only one available. I've got to
Speaker 5: lead these men through it in less than three hours,
Speaker 5: and across the river the Chinese are setting it up, artillery,
Speaker 5: setting it up someplace to look right, smack down our throats,
Speaker 5: just waiting for our.
Speaker 4: Withdrawal, and then let us have it mature. I'd like
Speaker 4: to be able to help you take some of the
Speaker 4: weight off.
Speaker 5: Ask God to deliver a patrol of twenty men I
Speaker 5: sent across that river. Deliver them safe and sound.
Speaker 2: There right stations over here, Captain.
Speaker 5: Tell Captain Sloane, I sent you. You're at his disposal.
Speaker 5: Everything from bandaging to last rites.
Speaker 1: First broadcast June seventh, nineteen fifty four, Written by Rod
Speaker 1: Sailing and directed by Franklin Jay Shaffner, North Korea, January
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one. Major Gaylord commands more than five hundred
Speaker 1: soldiers hold up in a farmhouse on the banks of
Speaker 1: a river, surrounded by enemy and with virtually no escape route.
Speaker 1: With dozens of wounded and dying men, it looks increasingly
Speaker 1: likely that the troops will need to move out from
Speaker 1: their location, even though it will be a virtual suicide mission.
Speaker 1: One day earlier, Gaylord ordered a platoon of twenty men
Speaker 1: to head out on patrol to ascertain the strength and
Speaker 1: exact location of the enemy. But they have not retained
Speaker 1: and Gaylord's men have been unable to reach them by radio.
Speaker 1: As the situation grows more desperate, Gaylord agonizes over his
Speaker 1: decision to send out those twenty men. Command orders them
Speaker 1: to move out the following morning, leaving behind the platin
Speaker 1: its fate unknown. Shortly after receiving these orders, however, the
Speaker 1: missing platoon re establishes radio contact and communicates their position.
Speaker 1: Another message from command follows Air Force planes have spotted
Speaker 1: the enemy artillery and will provide cover simultaneous with the
Speaker 1: withdrawal of Gaylord's men. They will need only Gaylord's signal
Speaker 1: to begin bombing the enemy's location, which is exactly the
Speaker 1: same as that of the platoon. To some of his men,
Speaker 1: Gaylord's dilemma is no dilemma at all. Simple mathematics says
Speaker 1: it makes sense to sacrifice twenty men to save five hundred,
Speaker 1: But Gayload sees nothing simple about ordering the deaths of
Speaker 1: twenty of his own men and refuses to give the signal.
Speaker 1: The strike is a war story, something that clearly Sailing
Speaker 1: has carried throughout his career, the war stories and so on.
Speaker 1: It's a reg killer feature in the Twilight Zone. But
Speaker 1: this is an early war story with familiar Twilight Zone
Speaker 1: face in it, which is good. Yes, So let's let's
Speaker 1: just get into this one. Al, let's just you know,
Speaker 1: what are you what are some thoughts on this? On
Speaker 1: the strike?
Speaker 3: Well, the Strike is I've found it fascinating in that
Speaker 3: it essentially is a play where nobody really changes.
Speaker 1: It's it's.
Speaker 3: It's a city, and the situation doesn't change, so it
Speaker 3: becomes a philosophical exercise essentially. It's really it's really an
Speaker 3: exercise in utilitarianism. To put that into popular culture references,
Speaker 3: it's like what mister Spock says in The Wrath of Khan,
Speaker 3: which is the the needs of the many outweigh the
Speaker 3: needs of the few, or the or the one. So
Speaker 3: essentially you have a situation where you have major Gaylord
Speaker 3: played by James Daily, who is curmudgeonly and sort of
Speaker 3: against being a commanding officer right from the beginning, who
Speaker 3: is in a Sophie's choice to some extent, a no
Speaker 3: win situation in which he has sent out a platoon
Speaker 3: of twenty men across a river. This is in North Korea.
Speaker 3: This is during the Korean War, which only ended, like
Speaker 3: I think a year before this was shown, so it's
Speaker 3: something that's very current for the viewers at the time.
Speaker 3: And he has sent a platoon out to scout out
Speaker 3: where the enemy artillery might be. But they build a
Speaker 3: bridge which they have to destroy, and then they get
Speaker 3: trapped themselves in their own location, so they have to retreat.
Speaker 3: But they know that the enemy artillery will obliterate them
Speaker 3: once they start to retreat. So the only answer to
Speaker 3: that is that the army will send in the Air
Speaker 3: Force will send in planes that will commit an air strike.
Speaker 3: And that's what the strike is in the episode. If
Speaker 3: you look at the title without seeing anything else, you
Speaker 3: figure it's going to be, you know, like a union
Speaker 3: strike or something. Yeah, yeah, No, it's an air bombing strike.
Speaker 3: The problem is that the platoon that the major has
Speaker 3: sent out is in the same location as the enemy artillery,
Speaker 3: so that in order for the bombers to successfully let
Speaker 3: the five hundred men who are on the other side
Speaker 3: of the river, that are trying to retreat successfully retreat.
Speaker 3: The twenty men who are on, who are in the
Speaker 3: platoon are going to have to die. And what's interesting
Speaker 3: about the whole story, I think, is that the major
Speaker 3: goes through all these pangs of conscience and blames himself
Speaker 3: for sending the platoon out to begin with, and yet
Speaker 3: ultimately he has no choice, which is powerful, but is
Speaker 3: at the same time it's kind of frustrating when you're
Speaker 3: watching it, because again, you know, he has to decide
Speaker 3: it's cut and dried. There's no way out of the situation.
Speaker 3: So he either has to save five hundred men or
Speaker 3: he has to save twenty men, and ultimately there's no
Speaker 3: decision there, but it devastates him. It reminds me of
Speaker 3: the Tom Godwin story The Cold Equations, which was actually
Speaker 3: made into a Twilight Zone in the third season of
Speaker 3: the eighties Twilight Zone. And the whole point of the
Speaker 3: Cold Equations, which is why it's called the Cold Equations,
Speaker 3: is that there are certain things that are just so
Speaker 3: in terms of math or physics or whatever that there's
Speaker 3: nothing you can do about. And it's interesting in that
Speaker 3: in the Cold Equations, I don't want to say too much,
Speaker 3: but it's a It takes place sometime in the future,
Speaker 3: and there's a guy who has got his own personal spaceship.
Speaker 3: He's hauling cargo or something from one planet to another,
Speaker 3: and he discovers that there is a young girl who
Speaker 3: has stowed away on his spaceship because she wants to
Speaker 3: go see her father or something like that. And the
Speaker 3: problem is he now weighs too much to land successfully
Speaker 3: and his ship is stripped down to begin with. So
Speaker 3: the Cold equations, are you weigh too much? What are
Speaker 3: you going to do? There's no solution to that, And
Speaker 3: it's and it's tough, and it's and it's hard, but
Speaker 3: there's noating around it.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 3: What I read about with the eighties Twilight Zone jumping
Speaker 3: ahead to what you'll be dealing with somewhere down the
Speaker 3: line here, is that there was one studio executive who
Speaker 3: refused to accept the whole point of the Cold equations
Speaker 3: and suggested that because in the Cold Equations, the only
Speaker 3: solution is and I'm spoiling this like crazy, is that
Speaker 3: is that he has to jettison the girl out of
Speaker 3: the ship, has to kill her, and there's no other
Speaker 3: way around it. But there was a studio exec who
Speaker 3: who apparently came up with this great idea that he suggested,
Speaker 3: which is that at the at the end of the show,
Speaker 3: the ship opens up and the girl comes out. She's
Speaker 3: all right because the pilot has cut off his legs
Speaker 3: and sent them out. So so, and then whoever was
Speaker 3: writing the the the.
Speaker 5: It might been J.
Speaker 3: Michaels Strazinski, I'm not sure whoever was writing the teleplay
Speaker 3: at that time, said well, you know, this sort of
Speaker 3: defeats the whole point of the story, which is the
Speaker 3: cold equations. So anyway, this is sort of the same
Speaker 3: kind of thing. There's really no getting around it, which
Speaker 3: makes it a little bit frustrating. I also think it's
Speaker 3: a little bit.
Speaker 1: Cheating.
Speaker 3: It's a little bit harsh to say that on Serling's
Speaker 3: part in that the only guy in the entire group
Speaker 3: that is fighting against this decision is the major. Everybody
Speaker 3: else tells him he has to do it. He has
Speaker 3: to do what he has to do it, which makes
Speaker 3: it sort of easier for him ultimately to do it.
Speaker 3: I think there should be more guys that are sort
Speaker 3: of on the fence. But in any event, you know,
Speaker 3: even though it's sort of a foregone conclusion to watch
Speaker 3: the major sort of which you watch the major work
Speaker 3: through it's not even really acceptance that this has to
Speaker 3: be done on but you watch them work through acceptance
Speaker 3: of command, right, and that is I think really powerful
Speaker 3: and works really well.
Speaker 1: I said before we started record now that I struggled
Speaker 1: a little bit, and I'll tell you what I struggled
Speaker 1: because a lot of it I put on my own
Speaker 1: back kind of thing, because it's so much television from
Speaker 1: another time, isn't it in the way it's presented, you know,
Speaker 1: like the Twilight Zone. I don't think you really need
Speaker 1: to make many, if any concessions for because the form
Speaker 1: is still there. But this is so you know, they're
Speaker 1: talking about guys who are elsewhere. They're talking about a bridge,
Speaker 1: they're talking about you know, air strikes. They're talking about
Speaker 1: so many things that aren't there and we never see.
Speaker 1: So it's all got to be conveyed with weirds and
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of guys there. I kept
Speaker 1: getting mixed up with with who was who and it
Speaker 1: was you know, and I purely admit that this is
Speaker 1: you know, that was the art form at the time,
Speaker 1: that was television, and that's the way it was. So
Speaker 1: it's like I struggle watching silent movies. I can't. I
Speaker 1: really struggle watching them because it's just such a different experience.
Speaker 1: And it was similar with this, you know. I got
Speaker 1: to about twenty minutes in and I paused it to
Speaker 1: see how long it was, and it said twenty minutes,
Speaker 1: and I thought I'd been watching it for an hour,
Speaker 1: you know. Was it was very slow at times. I
Speaker 1: was confused. But it's like watching Game of Thrones in
Speaker 1: a way. Half the time you don't know who anyone
Speaker 1: is and who's related to who, but you just sort
Speaker 1: of get the gist of it as you go along,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, And by the end you're
Speaker 1: kind of fine and you know what's going on and
Speaker 1: who everyone is. But I think that the form of
Speaker 1: it was quite a struggle for me. You seem to
Speaker 1: have adapted to it a lot better than me, you know.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, let me say that, as a
Speaker 3: lover of silent movies, if you see them the way
Speaker 3: they're intended, then you can really appreciate them. They're really
Speaker 3: a different art form than regular movies, and if you
Speaker 3: think of them as just regular movies, then you'll see
Speaker 3: all the gaps and the weaknesses in them. But if
Speaker 3: you can see them in a theater with a big
Speaker 3: screen and either a live organist or a live orchestra,
Speaker 3: it's a totally different matter. I've actually been, you know,
Speaker 3: for my Hitchcock podcast, I've been looking at I recently
Speaker 3: watched several of the silent Hitchcock films and I'm just
Speaker 3: getting them on YouTube and such, and on those you
Speaker 3: either have no sound whatsoever, or they just have some
Speaker 3: generic soundtrack they put on there, and in both cases
Speaker 3: they're very hard to watch, but that's never the way
Speaker 3: they were intended. Anyway, Enough of that digression, I think
Speaker 3: that you know, the way to look at these Studio
Speaker 3: one things is not necessarily as television, but as theater
Speaker 3: as plays. You could take the strike and you could
Speaker 3: put it on stage, and there's essentially what there's like
Speaker 3: three sets in the whole thing. There's the main camp
Speaker 3: where they are they go outside a few times, and
Speaker 3: then there's a spot where they have a tent where
Speaker 3: the wounded are, and you could set that up on
Speaker 3: a stage and do this script exactly the way it's
Speaker 3: written for Studio one, and I think you would deal
Speaker 3: with it a lot better because you'd recognize that you're
Speaker 3: watching a play and it's on stage. The fact that
Speaker 3: it's suddenly on your TV screen makes it seem some
Speaker 3: to be something sort of alien and it might be
Speaker 3: hard to get into. But the other thing is, as
Speaker 3: you know, is, as we said, the Korean War had
Speaker 3: just ended, so people watching this at the time were
Speaker 3: very familiar with a lot of this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: I assume it is sort of difficult to watch it
Speaker 3: and say, Okay, they're talking about a bridge and they
Speaker 3: blew up the bridge, and there's a strike, and where's
Speaker 3: the enemy, you know, and it's the Chinese, and where's
Speaker 3: the artillery and you know and so on. So I
Speaker 3: missed a lot of that my first viewing of it.
Speaker 3: It was really only the second viewing, when I was
Speaker 3: paying really close attention that I figured out, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: well they built this bridge and these guys went across
Speaker 3: the bridge, but then they had to blow up the
Speaker 3: bridge and all this sequence of events that sort of,
Speaker 3: you know, inevitably leads to this unsolvable situation. The other
Speaker 3: thing that I think that I appreciate about it because
Speaker 3: it is like a play you don't really have, like
Speaker 3: a musical soundtrack. There's no musical more playing. It's all
Speaker 3: very much just guys on stage doing these things. I
Speaker 3: appreciated the way Serling with his dialogue sort of creates
Speaker 3: this tone. And he not only creates the tone just
Speaker 3: amongst the harsh things these guys are talking about, you
Speaker 3: also have like this, but becomes almost this background sound
Speaker 3: of the one the radio man who is constantly going
Speaker 3: out with Razor Red. This is Razor blue CP, Razor Red,
Speaker 3: This is Razor Blue CP, over and over. It becomes
Speaker 3: like this thing that's just it becomes the soundtrack. Essentially,
Speaker 3: this pems the score of these words in the background.
Speaker 3: When you have the scene in the medical tent, there's
Speaker 3: a guy who's so shell shocked. All he does is
Speaker 3: he says his name and his home address over and
Speaker 3: over and over again, and he becomes sort of this
Speaker 3: background sound. So there's this background sound of human voices,
Speaker 3: some of which are in despair, that I think also
Speaker 3: become like the equivalent of which your score would be.
Speaker 3: And I think that my guess is that Serling intended that,
Speaker 3: and I think it's really works really well. It's really powerful.
Speaker 1: Now. One thing that I didn't struggle with was our
Speaker 1: major gay lord who is played by James Daly, who,
Speaker 1: of course is from a stop of Willoughby. Maybe my
Speaker 1: favorite Twilight, don't. I don't know. I'll decide that at
Speaker 1: the end, when all is said and done. Oh, I
Speaker 1: can't wait in about twenty years time. But you know,
Speaker 1: it was so good to see him, Because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not a scholar of this era of cinema. I
Speaker 1: can't say I've seen him in anything else. I might
Speaker 1: have done and not realized it. But you know, to
Speaker 1: see him as got Williams this sort of guy who's
Speaker 1: cracking up. But here he's maybe cracking up to a degree,
Speaker 1: but for a whole different reason. And he's more of
Speaker 1: a grizzled sort of military man, but not completely. He's got,
Speaker 1: you know, this element to him of doubt about what
Speaker 1: he's doing. Like you said, so, I really enjoyed James
Speaker 1: Daily in this. I think he's almost out of time.
Speaker 1: I find I think he's like an actor from another era. Personally,
Speaker 1: he's a bit more naturalistic than a lot of actors
Speaker 1: of the time, I think. So what do you think
Speaker 1: of him?
Speaker 3: Oh, I think he's tremendous in this. He conveys this
Speaker 3: weariness and everything that's going on with with that that group,
Speaker 3: that platoon. It's cold, they don't have any food, they're tired,
Speaker 3: they're shell shocked. He conveys all of that in like
Speaker 3: in his look and in his voice. He loses control,
Speaker 3: often ends up screaming at people for little reason, and
Speaker 3: it all feels very real. I actually think the other
Speaker 3: guys around him are really good too. I can't remember
Speaker 3: what their names are offhand, but they are actors who
Speaker 3: were in a lot of TV in like the fifties
Speaker 3: and sixties. So the guy who plays Chick, and then
Speaker 3: the other guy who is I can't remember his name, Frank's.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: I think those two guys are excellent as well, and
Speaker 3: they also they just sort of fit into this whole
Speaker 3: feeling of this weariness of war, which I think a
Speaker 3: lot of what Serling is trying to convey in this
Speaker 3: is that weariness of war that he experienced that I
Speaker 3: think affected him his whole life. And you can see
Speaker 3: how this is going to affect these guys their whole lives.
Speaker 3: James Daily, clearly it's going to affect him because he's
Speaker 3: made this decision that's going to haunt him, but you
Speaker 3: can see how it's affecting the other guys as well.
Speaker 3: There's a line that I wrote down which I think
Speaker 3: that I think is a great line where that convey
Speaker 3: in its own way what war does to people. And
Speaker 3: it's I can't remember who says it. It's Frank's or
Speaker 3: Chick or one of those guys talking about how the
Speaker 3: James Daily character is not commanding, he's not leading because
Speaker 3: he's not making the decision that he has to make
Speaker 3: to have these twenty men in this platoon killed. And
Speaker 3: the line is one of them says, in times of sanity,
Speaker 3: it might be called an attribute his conscience, but this
Speaker 3: is not times of sanity, and it's not an attribute.
Speaker 3: So I thought that was one. You know, there's a
Speaker 3: lot of little lines, a lot of really great Surling
Speaker 3: esque lines in there that convey these sorts of horrors
Speaker 3: of war.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some great little stories as well. A new Wunda
Speaker 1: kind of because he does bring in like he would
Speaker 1: often use the names of his old soldiers that he
Speaker 1: knew in his fiction. It wouldn't surprise me if some
Speaker 1: of them are in this. But he tells the story
Speaker 1: about the guy who's coming to camp and he doesn't
Speaker 1: give the password. He doesn't give the sort of secret
Speaker 1: wed and the reason is because he's being followed by
Speaker 1: Japanese soldiers. So he's like he sacrifices himself because he
Speaker 1: knows they're going to spray bullets down there and kill him,
Speaker 1: but also the Japanese soldiers. So there's some great little
Speaker 1: stories like that in there as well, isn't there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's that is a real character building part
Speaker 3: of the James Daily character is that's that's a story
Speaker 3: he tells when he was in World War two and
Speaker 3: and he he's amongst the guys that are asking for
Speaker 3: the password, and it's not him, it's the other guy
Speaker 3: he's with, who essentially says spray them that he has
Speaker 3: to kill him. He hasn't given isn't giving the password,
Speaker 3: And that turns out to be the right thing to do.
Speaker 3: So that's a lesson in terms of you know, this
Speaker 3: is this war and sometimes the moral thing or the
Speaker 3: thing that you really want to do is not what
Speaker 3: you do. I did find it interesting though, that later
Speaker 3: in the show there's a couple that there's a there's
Speaker 3: a British officer comes in with a chaplain and somebody
Speaker 3: reports to the Major and says there's this British guy
Speaker 3: out there and he doesn't know the password, and the
Speaker 3: Major says, well, let him in one of the time.
Speaker 3: So so he, you know, he goes against exactly what
Speaker 3: he seemed to have learned before, which once again demonstrates
Speaker 3: that he's he really can't conform to what war is
Speaker 3: forcing upon him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, okay, okay. You sound pretty positive on this one, Alan,
Speaker 1: and I am too, because I did like it. It's something
Speaker 1: that I would really like to go back to. I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to climatize to a bit more, if you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. So I don't I don't know
Speaker 1: whether we can sort of rate it or what, but
Speaker 1: just what's your overall kinds of opinion of it.
Speaker 3: Well, I like it quite a bit, though I do
Speaker 3: feel like, as I said earlier, that it sort of
Speaker 3: stacks the deck in one direction, not just the not
Speaker 3: just the hopelessness of the situation, but the fact that
Speaker 3: the Major seems to be the only guy who's fighting
Speaker 3: against it. I mean, even the chaplain essentially tells him,
Speaker 3: you know, this is what God is telling you to do.
Speaker 3: So that to me is a weakness in it that
Speaker 3: he sort of helped along in his decision. He's sort
Speaker 3: of caught in these rapids, you know, of opinion that
Speaker 3: it doesn't make it any easier to his conscience, but
Speaker 3: there's no way he can make another decision. I think
Speaker 3: there's no way he can make another decision anyway. So
Speaker 3: I think it would work better if you had less
Speaker 3: of everybody saying Major, you have to do it, you
Speaker 3: have to do it, you have to do it. I
Speaker 3: mean there's even a moment where he wants to just
Speaker 3: give up command and he says, you know, one of
Speaker 3: you other guys give the order, and they say, no,
Speaker 3: you're in charge. You have to do it. So it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, to a great extent, the script and everybody
Speaker 3: around him in the script forces him into this corner,
Speaker 3: which I find less than satisfying. But otherwise I think
Speaker 3: it's really powerful and it shows the horrors of war
Speaker 3: and how sometimes there's just no good decision, and it
Speaker 3: shows how people can be tormented by it.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think if I look at it overall, I
Speaker 1: did struggle a bit, But like I said, that may
Speaker 1: be more of an acclimatization thing. Could it have been
Speaker 1: a bit shorter probably. You know, it's interesting that Sailing
Speaker 1: wanted to make The Twilight Zone an hour in the beginning,
Speaker 1: but he soon sort of realized that half an hour
Speaker 1: was the right format for it. And I wonder whether
Speaker 1: this would have benefited as to being a bit shorter.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, is that just
Speaker 1: me being not used to this style of television. So
Speaker 1: the jury's out on that one. We'll see, but I
Speaker 1: think people should definitely watch it. It's out there on YouTube,
Speaker 1: it's easy to find, or or they can get that
Speaker 1: DVD release that you've got as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I would agree actually that it would be
Speaker 3: better if it was shorter. He's clearly written to just
Speaker 3: as they often did on television, you know, until recently.
Speaker 3: Actually it was always on television. He was clearly written
Speaker 3: to a length, and this is an hour show, so
Speaker 3: he has to write something that is essentially an hour long.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I agree that it probably would have been
Speaker 3: more powerful shorter, but I think it still works pretty well.
Speaker 1: Okay, we're going to stop it there for this month,
Speaker 1: and next month we'll be looking at another episode of
Speaker 1: Studio one written by Rod Sailing, So join us then,
Speaker 1: on the fifth Dimension. Good Night for now,