Original Airdate: December 4, 1959
Plot: An amnesiac German on a British steamship in 1942 tries to remember who he is and why he's so sure that the ship is doomed. Helpless, he realizes that the ship is about to be sunk – by the U-boat that he commands!
I try my best not to read anything about the episodes before I watch them. Not The Twilight Zone Companion, not the back of the DVD, nothing. Many of the episodes I've seen, but in my early teen years and my memory's crap. I feel this is the most authentic way to watch, because viewers in 1959 would have gone into the show with little clue what it was about. As such, I found the beginning of this episode exasperating: who is this guy? Why's he so nervous? Does he know the other characters? As I got into it, though, I realized that was the point. Tension builds in the viewer because he/she is just as out of the loop as Lanser (the German.) It's to Serling's credit as a writer that he didn't start out with Lanser running along the deck shouting, "where am I?!"
The best part of the episode is the spectacle of it. The exteriors are a convincing steamship with a rolling fog and very noir lighting. I kept thinking that it looked too high-budget for a TV show, and the Companion confirmed that the set was constructed for the film The Wreck of the Mary Deare. Stock footage of an actual submarine crew in action was used to emphasize the U-boat near the end and is pretty effective, though the cinematically-minded will notice that the film speed on that footage doesn't match the rest of the episode flawlessly.
I can't say that I agree with the episode's message. Lanser's subordinate comes to him and expresses remorse for the lives extinguished on the steamship, but Lanser is heartless on the matter. I'm not familiar with maritime codes of conduct in wartime, but isn't sinking ships exactly what they got on the U-boat to do? The ship had been part of a convoy at one point but was carrying civilians, as well as people involved with the war effort aboard. Was the point in sinking the ship to take away a ship from the enemy, or to kill potentially threatening people? Sure, killing people is wrong, but they were fighting a war. Maybe thinking objectively about WWII was beyond the purview of 1959 audiences... or perhaps there's some deeper meaning in my siding with the villain.
No comments:
Post a Comment