The Twilight Zone Review: Probe 7, Over and Out

By William Kozy

It’s tempting to say that if you want to watch a “Twilight Zone” episode about a man and a woman from opposite ends of a spectrum who find themselves together as the only two survivors in the world, then I direct your attention to the episode called “Two” starring Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery. It was a Season 3 episode, and has garnered some favor with fans coming in 34th place (51 votes) in my survey of TZ fan sites and horror writers, asking the question, “What is your favorite episode of the original Twilight Zone series?” If you liked that episode, then conventional wisdom would seem to point to fans also liking the episode “Probe 7, Over and Out” starring Richard Basehart (as Colonel Adam Cook) and Antoinette Bower as the Adam and Eve couple. But no. That episode received only 6 votes, tying it with 11 other episodes for 106th thru 116th place of the 156 episodes. So to what can we attribute the success of “Two” and the unpopularity of “Probe 7, Over and Out”?

Overall, I would say that “Two” has a much more direct dramatic conflict at its heart, and in one sense a more personalized one. “Probe 7” has its own assets, but maybe the fact that Colonel Cook’s dismal situation is so specifically spelled out for us, some of the aspect of a mystery is removed. In The Bronson/Montgomery world though, there remain questions about the wheres, the hows, the whens and the whos. And as for the conflict, though both episodes deal with how and whether our two leading men will make peace with their woman counterparts, in “Two” the difficulty of that goal is much more pronounced.

One negative aspect the two episodes have in common, is why the two female characters are depicted to be so relatively child-like, irrational, and panic-stricken compared to the men who are the epitome of calm under pressure in Bronson’s case, or humane, compassionate and reasoning in Basehart’s portrayal . Neither episode is served well by their portrait of the women.

“Probe 7” does have a plot element added to the lead character’s predicament that lends a more existential sense of dismay–something that not every sci-fi story about stranded space travelers offers. It is the element that not only is Colonel Cook unable to repair his ship to return home, but even if he did, it appears from the reports he receives from his home planet that there wouldn’t even be a home for him to return to since in his brief communications with General Larrabee, the news is catastrophic. The world that Cook came from is experiencing global-scale war and it is essentially doomsday there. Which lends an odd double-edged sword to the outlook. It’s of course a misfortune that his spaceship is so badly damaged on this new planet, but on the other, it’s something of a relief that he has escaped devastation back home.

We get a small clever clue of what awaits him outside of his ship when he puts out a very small electrical fire, and mutters, “Heaven help me. I wonder if that’s a possibility.” He’s being sarcastic, after having just gone over his options with General Larrabee, and found the word from back home less than promising. But perhaps Heaven will bestow some assistance of a Biblical variety.

When Cook ventures outside it is nighttime, and it will remain dark for quite some time, before daylight is granted, another reference to this story’s Book of Genesis influence. But we can tell clearly enough that the surrounding terrain is lush with foliage. As Cook returns inside to his ship to contact his base, we get a few shots of that foliage getting rustled (much too unsubtly) by someone or something. Later on, we’ll see the bushes rustled again, and again it’s done with such heavy-handedness that I’d say if it’s possible to call someone jostling a bush as overacting, than this would be it.

Inside the ship, Cook shares his findings with General Larrabee, who informs him that war is imminent. Cook’s attitude I have to say, feels a little too self-absorbed, even though indeed his own situation is admittedly a grave one. But upon hearing of the major crisis on his planet he coldly argues, “There’s always a major crisis and there’s always talk of war. You’ll forgive me, General, but my own problem has a little more immediacy for me. It’s a little more personalized. I’ve got a week’s food left and two broken bones in one arm. Can’t another ship be sent out for me?” One puzzling aspect of that is Cook’s lack of foresight–he’s already observed that the planet’s gravity and atmosphere are similar to his own and he’s also reported there’s a lot of plant life. Could he not reasonably assume that there just might be some vegetation available to complement his food storage?

It also seems odd that the General’s response to Cook’s request that another ship be sent to rescue him is that they don’t have any ships. They’d “have to build one.” That feels a little hard to believe–that a planet with the technology to send a spaceship on intergalactic travel would have just one spaceship. And if we say, “All right, maybe they only had the one ship because it is such an astoundingly difficult thing for them to have accomplished”, then isn’t that something Colonel Cook would know? By the end of the communication, we can see that Cook is convinced that his home planet is doomed and handcuffed from helping him, but it’s hard to tell if his softened, saddened reaction is as much for the others as it is for himself. Men behind Larrabee on the screen were seen scrambling, and Larrabee pretty much told Cook that they were going to die, yet Cook still requested Larrabee make contact again if he could…to allay Cook’s loneliness. Yeah sure, I’m sure that will be the foremost thing on Larrabee’s mind.

On Cook’s next exploration of the area around his ship, he discovers a diagram drawn in the dirt. “There’s company,” he exclaims breathlessly with optimism. He wanders around calling out, begging whoever it is to come out and be his friend. He stumbles a bit looking every which way when suddenly he is struck in the head by a rock thrown at him by someone off camera. It seems a little nonsensical to me that this person would go to the trouble of forming some bridge of communication by drawing that diagram only to then do something as violently off-putting as knocking out the visitor with a stone to the head. What was the thinking behind that? They were in no danger from Cook, but now how can they expect a friendly link up, even after they initiated a connection via the diagram?

When Cook awakens, finally it is daylight, and he lumbers back into the ship. Suddenly, a door in the ship quickly shuts. Someone had snuck inside the ship while Cook laid unconscious. Cook grabs a metal bar for a weapon and in perfect English explains that he’ll step outside in order to give whoever is hiding in the little compartment a chance to come back out while Cook is outside the ship. Cook acknowledges that whoever is listening might not “understand this language but that the tone might be getting through to you.” I’m not sure I could expect those instructions to be clearly translated by his tone, but anyway, true to his word, he steps back outside, and takes a tumble. He leans against a tree waiting for whoever took shelter to emerge. In a very confusingly shot scene that I had to watch several times in order to piece together, the intruder exits unseen by us, and gives a short shriek (poorly dubbed) when tumbling down the incline into some bushes. Yes, here’s where again they shake not at all like someone had fallen into them and is trying to extricate him/herself. The event is very awkwardly staged; they cut to a shot of Cook looking around for where the shriek came from–they edit it that way in order for us not to witness the person exiting the ship. But that makes not one shred of sense on so many levels. The shriek would have come well after the intruder emerged through the portal, and secondly, why would Cook look around for where that shriek came from when it would have obviously been coming from where he had his eyed glued to: the ship’s portal.

In any case, he trots over to the area where the person would have landed, and it seems an unreasonably long distance, but there she is, lying on the ground and looking suspiciously like Elizabeth Montgomery from “Two” right down to the raccoon-eyes makeup, and military-style garb. My God, did the producers like “Two” THAT much?

He starts chattering away at her and then bends down to draw his own diagram in the dirt to explain what happened to him. Then it’s her turn at Pictionary, and she draws a simple image that Cook is somehow able to infer an inordinately lengthy narration from. But the crux of it is that she is the lone survivor of a different spacecraft that also crash landed. They exchange names with the usual pat against the chest while saying their name. She is Norda. Sounds suspiciously similar to “Nova” the tribal woman played by Linda Harrison that Charlton Heston meets in “Planet of the Apes.”

Cook tells her he’s a one-armed man with a broken rib. Hey, did she take his rib in order to paint another Biblical reference? He offers her food and companionship saying, “We could spend the rest of our lives together drawing diagrams which would become rather tedious…” Oh boy this Colonel Cook moves fast.

He gets back up and inexplicably picks up a stick. This alarms her (of course!) and she scratches his face before running away. He calls out after her but its no use.

Back in his ship, Cook muses sullenly on the state of humanity. He waxes philosophically on what a frightened breed is man and that it “must be a universal trait.”

A bit later after Cook has reviewed his situation, he emerges from the ship once again and who is there looking up at him but Norda. He tells her he’s going to set in a direction where he suspects there is more vegetation, “sort of like a garden”. Hmm…watch our for serpents! She utters some words from her language and Cook gets the message–she wants to come along with him. He is only too content to allow that.

Next vocabulary lesson: he holds out some dirt and asks what she calls it. “Erd-Thah” she utters. “All right” he says, settling the question of what they’ll call their new home: “Earth.” He slings his bag over his shoulder, and the music rises up as they start walking off together, a fitting shot to roll the credits over…but oh wait a second, we can squeeze in one more Bible link can’t we? They stop beside an apple tree and Norda, who also calls herself Eve as she just indicated to him, offers him an apple. But she calls the fruit “seppla” (an anagram of apples).

The closing monologue intones, “Do you know these people? Names familiar are they?…” Uh yeah, thank you I think we got it.

I rate this episode a 4.1, that is Chapter 4, Verse 1.

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