Title: “I Shot an Arrow Into the Air”
Original transmission date: January 15 1960
Written by: Rod Serling, from the story by Madelon Champion
Directed by: Stuart Rosenberg
Starring: Dewey Martin as Officer Corey
Edward Binns as Colonel Donlin
Ted Otis as Pierson
Harry Bartell as Langford
Leslie Barrett as Brandt
Setting: Earth (sssh!)
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Survival, greed, selfishness, despair, lost
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: A++
Serling’s opening monologue
Her name is the Arrow 1. She represents four and a half years of planning, preparation, and training, and a thousand years of science, mathematics, and the projected dreams and hopes of not only a nation, but a world. She is the first manned aircraft into space and this is the countdown. The last five seconds before man shot an arrow into the air.
The first spacecraft to leave Earth falls off the radar and control loses contact with it. On a deserted asteroid, the survivors decide to strike out from the remains of the crashed craft, to see where they are and if there is any chance of survival. Corey, one of the crew, resents the fact that his commanding officer is “wasting” water on a dying crewman, but the colonel will not leave him to die. He points out that there’s no chance of rescue, as they had the only spacecraft ever made by man, so there is no way anyone can come after them even if they knew where they were, which they don’t. While Corey fights over the water, the crewman dies. That leaves only three of them.
Nerves are frayed; Corey is being belligerent and insubordinate, perhaps thinking why should he obey a man who represents an authority that is no longer in charge? They’re on an asteroid, not Earth, and unlikely ever to be back under military command again. When Corey returns from patrol without Pearson, the third member of the crew still alive, the colonel forces him to admit that the other man is dead. Though the colonel can’t prove Corey killed Pearson, he insists they go and bring his body back. Corey is reluctant, but his CO forces him. When they get to the spot where Corey says he was though, Pearson is nowhere to be found.
They follow a trail and find him, not dead after all, but he is dying. He points to the top of the mountain, indicating he found something up there, but has not the strength to speak. He sketches out a rough figure - two horizontal lines crossed by a vertical, like a cross. The colonel has no idea what it is, but Corey decides it’s time for him to die and shoots him, continuing on alone up the mountain. When he gets to the top, he sees what it was that Pearson was trying to tell them, what he had found before losing his balance and falling back down the mountain, the icon he sketched.
A telegraph pole.
Turns out they aren’t on an asteroid at all. They’re on Earth. They fell back to Earth and crash-landed in the desert, only a handful of miles from Reno. Nevada.
Serling’s closing monologue
Practical joke perpetrated by Mother Nature and a combination of improbable events. Practical joke wearing the trappings of nightmare, of terror, and desperation. Small, human drama played out in a desert 97 miles from Reno, Nevada, U.S.A., continent of North America, the Earth and, of course, the Twilight Zone.
The Resolution
Perhaps where
The Twilight Zone began to come into its own. This is absolutely brilliant. There’s no way you could figure it out, yet when you go backwards, it all makes sense. Why was there an atmosphere if this was supposed to be an asteroid? Why did the control centre lose contact with the ship? Just fantastic, and really puts the two murders (we more or less assume he fought with and left Pearson for dead) into dark, dismal perspective.
The Moral
Perhaps stick together, look after your friends?
Questions, and sometimes, Answers
We know at the end why, but you have to ask the question why the crew didn’t wonder that there was an atmosphere, since asteroids are just big chunks of rock and have no atmosphere?
Themes
Survival again, greed and a determination to be the one left standing even if you have to kill everyone around you. Hubris, and despair in the end when it’s all been for nothing.
Iconic?
No. I don’t recall anyone ever using this idea again. It’s kind of a one-shot deal isn’t it? Once you know, the impact is gone. Still, Wiki maintains it came up again with
Planet of the Apes. Meh, I don’t see it myself. Basic idea, yes, but not this actual theme.