Customer Reviews

Twilight Zone Collector's Edition (The Thirty Fathom Grave and The Parallel)

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There was an enormous amount of naval action in the seas around the island of Guadalcanal in World War II. So many ships were sunk that one area was known as "Iron Bottom Sound." This episode is about the guilt that survivors of mass death often have, in this case the only survivor of a submarine that was sunk near Guadalcanal during World War II.
In "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" it is now in the early sixties and a destroyer of the U. S. navy is on routine patrol in the Guadalcanal area. Suddenly they hear some distinctive tapping of metal on metal. They locate the source of the sound and send a diver down the thirty fathoms to determine what it is. He discovers a submarine and when the diver pounds on the hull, he hears a response. At the same time a member of the destroyer crew has been doing odd things for some time. Once the destroyer is over the submarine, he begins to feel a powerful compulsion to do things and he sees visions of dead sailors that motion for him to join them.
In a conversation with the captain, the sailor reveals that he was on that submarine in World War II. One night he dropped a light and the infrared filter fell off so that the Japanese warships could see them. The resultant gunfire sunk the sub but the sailor was thrown off the sub when it sank and he was rescued. Despite the captain's attempts to absolve the man of guilt, he jumps overboard and is lost.
I have read several books written by men returning to the site of memorable battles they fought in. Their emotions are so powerful that the ex-soldiers generally have a difficult time controlling themselves. That mental trauma is strongly dealt with here and the episode is very spooky. I would not have wanted to be one of the people entering a submarine on the bottom of the sea for twenty years. Especially when it is emitting a noise that indicates that there is someone still alive in it.
"The Parallel" is an episode that must be viewed in historical context to be appreciated. Before people went into space, no one really knew what would happen to them. Some thought that there would be powerful cosmic rays that would damage human tissue and others thought that free fall would so disorient a human that they would be unable to function. Therefore, the discussions about the great unknown of space in this episode were at a time legitimate scientific discussions.
In this episode, astronaut Major Gaines blasts off for a solo long-duration orbital flight and at first everything is normal. However, radio and radar contact is lost for some time before Gaines somehow manages to land the spacecraft. After a short time, Gaines begins to notice slight differences from what he remembers and his wife and daughter also realize that he has changed. One of the designers of the space capsule examines it and realizes that there are small differences in the one Gaines landed in from the one he took off in. After some examination of the situation and some events, the members of space flight staff conclude that there is another Earth in another dimensional plane and Gaines was in that other universe for a short time.
Since humans have been traveling in space for five decades, this episode is extremely dated. Nevertheless, if you know something of the history of early space flight you will recognize some of the speculation about what would be found when a human spent significant time in space.