A pro-NASA episode with an acceptable first act but no satisfying conclusion (i.e., an artificial happy end that really doesn't work) and too much padding and soporific characters, featuring the first puppet monster—with visible wires—that floats a la "Moonstone": it represents Barton's inner fear of making a baby to his wife: the first sign of conventional melodrama. Barton goes to Venus, the goddess of love, to copulate. Geraldine Brooks plays the same type of middle-class housewife as in "The Architects of Fear" that recites telegraphed love speech. The theme of the contamination can be linked to Val Guest's sci-fi classic: "The Quatermass Experiment: The Creeping Unknown", but Charles Haas' film-making is devoid of energy and suspense and reminds his bridled work for "Perry Mason" and therefore the audience is deprived of the treat of an intense horror show—what about continuing the stages of mutation and more... The space outfit is from "Men Into Space". Another soldier character with warmonger references, the first script's title refers as "Project Vulcan": Vulcan is the Greek version for Mars, god of war; Vulcan is also the origin of Shatner's future character-actor Leonard Nimoy: Mr. Spock. The steam bath scene is one of the best and is used as a perfect transition to experience, in dream (notice the stock shots of the rocket's taking off and the spaceship from "Nightmare" combined with a fade over process of Barton's face and fixed pictures from "Please Stand By" 's end credits without titles), the journey to Venus whose atmosphere is of the same composition. Masochist Barton needs heat (short for female warmth) because his blood composition is unbalanced (Cf. "The Bellero Shield" and "ZZZZZ"): he first lets himself fry in the steam room and lets his webbed hands burn in the fireplace. The space center is full of machineries as in "The Borderland". The military gate is also used in "Soldier". This is the natural nexus to "The Invisible Enemy" where, at last, Earth achieves to send astronauts on Mars and once again, at their own risk. As in "The Architects of Fear", the leading man suffers from a psychological weakness. Recommended for William Shatner completists only. TV Analogy: Ten years later, Shatner will play the same type of the agonizing astronaut in an episode of "The Six Million Dollar Man" titled: "Burning Bright". Notes: Dan Ullman's teleplay was rewritten by Milton Krims, a "Perry Mason" 's alumnus.