"Death Ship" is a very successful one hour episode in that the show did not seemed padded and was able to use the time slot well. This is a com0plaint I have with some of the hour-long shows, but not this one.
It begins with a ufo-like spacecraft from Earth exploring for habitable planets. I thought it was rather funny that this interplanetary ship was supposedly traveling in the futuristic year 1997! When the ship lands, however, things get very, very confusing The three astronauts (Jack Klugman, Ross Martin and Fred Beir) are very confused to say the least. There is a crashed ship next to them...and it looks exactly like their ship! The Captain (Klugman) is very rigid and insists they cannot jump to conclusions. But, when they investigate the wreck and find themselves dead in the wreckage, what conclusions are they to draw?! Is this REALLY them? If so, how can they be looking at their dead selves?! Overall, this is a really good episode. My only problem with it is that there are multiple possibilities as to what is happening. It could be that residents of the planet are causing this and many other hallucinations in order to either scare them off or cause them to destroy themselves. It could be that they are dead and are seeing themselves but cannot accept it. Or, there could be another excellent possibility. I loved the ambiguity of this and was very disappointed when, at the end, the narrator makes it very clear exactly what has occurred. This seemed unnecessary and like over-kill. Still, a fascinating show and one that shows that season four's one-hour format could work.
It begins with a ufo-like spacecraft from Earth exploring for habitable planets. I thought it was rather funny that this interplanetary ship was supposedly traveling in the futuristic year 1997! When the ship lands, however, things get very, very confusing The three astronauts (Jack Klugman, Ross Martin and Fred Beir) are very confused to say the least. There is a crashed ship next to them...and it looks exactly like their ship! The Captain (Klugman) is very rigid and insists they cannot jump to conclusions. But, when they investigate the wreck and find themselves dead in the wreckage, what conclusions are they to draw?! Is this REALLY them? If so, how can they be looking at their dead selves?! Overall, this is a really good episode. My only problem with it is that there are multiple possibilities as to what is happening. It could be that residents of the planet are causing this and many other hallucinations in order to either scare them off or cause them to destroy themselves. It could be that they are dead and are seeing themselves but cannot accept it. Or, there could be another excellent possibility. I loved the ambiguity of this and was very disappointed when, at the end, the narrator makes it very clear exactly what has occurred. This seemed unnecessary and like over-kill. Still, a fascinating show and one that shows that season four's one-hour format could work.