Title: “Elegy”
Original transmission date: February 19 1960
Written by: Charles Beaumont, from his story
Directed by: Douglas Heynes
Starring: Cecil Kellaway
Jeff Morrow
Kevin Hagen
Don Dubbins
Setting: An asteroid
Timeframe: 2085
Theme(s): Death, Commercialism, social status
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: A
Serling’s opening monologue
The time is the day after tomorrow. The place: a far corner of the universe. A cast of characters: three men lost amongst the stars. Three men sharing the common urgency of all men lost. They're looking for home. And in a moment, they'll find home; not a home that is a place to be seen, but a strange unexplainable experience to be felt.
Off-course and drifting in space, the crew of a spaceship locate an Earthlike planet and land. More than Earthlike - it’s identical, except everything seems to be frozen in place. They’re soon disabused of the notion that this could in fact be Earth by the older technology - it appears to be about 200 years in the past - and, more importantly and conclusively, two suns in the sky. When they encounter people, they too all seem to be frozen, and one falls over when one of the spacemen pushes him lightly. Hearing music, they rush to the bandstand but the music seems to be piped in, though there’s a full band, standing like models.
They consider the possibility that time might be moving at a different speed for them. They decide to split up, to see if there is anyone living they can contact, but though they come across a party where a man is dancing with his wife, a beauty contest and a card game in session, nobody moves or talks, or responds. Then, unseen by the spaceman, one of the figures at the beauty contest
does move, and smiles knowingly to himself. Meeting back up, the men go to check out houses, and are astonished to come across the old man who moved back at the beauty contest. He introduces himself as Jeremy Wickwire, and he explains that the asteroid they are on is a giant purpose-built cemetery.
Here, anyone who can afford it may have their body preserved in whatever fantasy or ambition they like, and because the company, Happy Glades (“The Biggest Mortuary Company in the World”) promises eternal peace, forever, to its, ah, clients, the place had to be built out in space. And so it was, says Wickwire, in 1973. He reveals that he is not human, merely the perception of a computerised image, a caretaker that looks after the place and ensures its denizens are not disturbed.
But they
have been disturbed, and as he serves the space pilots drinks, he asks them what their fondest wish would be. As they lose consciousness, he ensures that it comes to pass, arranging their dead bodies in their ship, so that they can feel as if they are heading for home.
Serling’s closing monologue
Kirby, Webber, and Meyers, three men lost. They shared a common wish—a simple one, really. They wanted to be aboard their ship headed for home. And fate—a laughing fate—a practical jokester with a smile stretched across the stars, saw to it that they got their wish with just one reservation: the wish came true, but only in the Twilight Zone.
The Resolution
Clever. Although you have to question the likelihood that bodies, even embalmed ones, would stay in pristine condition - and in place - for two centuries, the idea of a huge, exclusive and expensive graveyard in space is an interesting one, and once you know that this is the case, there can never be allowed any sort of disruption, least of all from humans. Or at least, live ones.
The Moral
Man will never achieve peace, for he can never bring it about.
Themes
Death, nuclear war, commercial entrepreneurism, and social strata all figure in here. Happy Glades is only available to those who can afford its, no doubt exorbitant rates, and so, as ever, even the cemetery maintains the human societal hierarchy. There’s mention of an “atomic war”, supposed to have taken place in 1985, which is interesting on two levels. Given that this was written in 1953, that means that Beaumont foresaw this apocalyptic disaster occurring a mere thirty years in the future, and considering what almost happened in a mere ten years - the Cuban missile crisis - he could have been right. Also, he puts the date of the war at one year after that predicted by George Orwell in his famous novel.
The idea of creating the cemetery on the asteroid is not fully explained: who built it? He says it was built in 1973, but that kind of technology would have been unlikely to be achieved in twenty years, so did some alien race build it?
Oops!
Again, we’re told the spacecraft is 65 million miles from Earth. That’s not even halfway out of the solar system, so where are they supposed to be?
And isn’t that…?
Jeff Morrow (1907 - 1993)
Famous as Exeter in the classic science fiction movie
This Island Earth and also as Paulus in the Biblical epic
The Robe.
Kevin Hagen (1928 - 2005)
Without question, the role he’s remembered for is the likeable Doc Baker in the series
Little House on the Prairie.
Questions, and sometimes, Answers
I know these are supposed to be fine, moral, upstanding specimens of humanity, but still, when one of them comes across a card game where all the players seem frozen (like everyone and everything else) and there is literally money everywhere on the table, thousands, surely, of dollars, he doesn’t experience even the momentary temptation to take some, or all of it? Seems a little unlikely.
Who pays for the cemetery, for its upkeep and maintenance, now that the Earth has been mostly destroyed? The spacers say that it took nearly 200 years to get the planet back on its feet after the war, but if such an enterprise existed wouldn’t everyone on Earth know about it? And these guys certainly never seem to have heard about it. How can it be such a well-kept secret? Don’t they advertise?
Can you kill someone by pumping embalming fluid into them? I mean, I guess it would kill them, but wouldn’t it be horribly painful? And Wickwire assures the men it will not hurt. Surely there could have been some other way to get rid of them? I know this is two centuries in the future, and they may have some more humane process for death that involves embalming fluid, but still...
Iconic?
Very much so. The idea of a purpose-built planet has been used many times since, in
The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, for one, and this very story is closely mirrored later in a
Star Trek episode called “Shore Leave”. Different aim, same basic idea though. Similar attendant too. Also, to some slightly different extent, an early
Star Trek: The Next Generation episode ("The Royale", I believe) in which aliens purpose-build a new home for a NASA astronaut who has been stranded far from his planet. I guess you could even attribute the last scenes in
2001 to it too, as Bowman is cared for by the aliens to whom the monoliths belong.
This also features a rocket-shaped exploration craft of the type which would become very popular in sixties science fiction movies and serials.
Those clever little touches
That
Star Trek sound effect used on “Third From the Sun” is again in evidence in the opening scenes inside the spacecraft.
The Times they are a Changin’
Who would have thought that science fiction writers could have envisioned a basic space station being built in the 1970s, or that Earth would undergo a cataclysmic nuclear war in 1985? And yet, here we still are, bothering the galaxy with our presence over forty years later...
Personal Notes
So far as I can see, given that this was only 1960, I don’t think any special camera tricks are used in the “suspension” effect, which means all the actors are standing or sitting still of their own accord, and if so, it’s a testament to their acting that, while there are the odd almost imperceptible movements, as will happen when anyone tries to remain entirely still, they achieve the illusion really well.