For most of its running time this episode of the Twilight Zone seems more run of the mill, even dull, compared to other episodes. Two employees at a top secret government manufacturing facility, one a scientist, the other a test pilot, are secretly planning to quit the planet with their families, on board a spacecraft they plan to commandeer. The inside word is that there will be mutually assured destruction in 48 hours and they've decided to make a break for it. However both men are on the radar of the vulture-like security man played by Edward Andrews, who suspects their ultimate plan.
As the minutes of the episode go by there's only a little tension as the two families finally make it to their rendezvous, only to be met by Andrews whose suspicions have proven to be right, but again you're wondering what the ultimate point of the story is, only for all to be revealed in the last seconds, in a neat twist.
Apart from Andrews as the escapees' creepy pursuer, I found the acting in this episode to be a little stiff and awkward and as indicated, it's quite slow moving until the big reveal at the end, although there is a clue to the outcome in the show chapter's title.
All in all, this is a quietly effective Cold War parable, eerily prescient in its first twenty minutes of the real life paranoia surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis of just a few years later.
As the minutes of the episode go by there's only a little tension as the two families finally make it to their rendezvous, only to be met by Andrews whose suspicions have proven to be right, but again you're wondering what the ultimate point of the story is, only for all to be revealed in the last seconds, in a neat twist.
Apart from Andrews as the escapees' creepy pursuer, I found the acting in this episode to be a little stiff and awkward and as indicated, it's quite slow moving until the big reveal at the end, although there is a clue to the outcome in the show chapter's title.
All in all, this is a quietly effective Cold War parable, eerily prescient in its first twenty minutes of the real life paranoia surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis of just a few years later.