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"Counterweight"
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Opening Narration:
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"The great unknown: Limitless heavens crowded with
sparking mysteries, challenging Man's curiosity. But the heavens are not
oceans. Man cannot push a boat into its currents and set sail for the
next horizon. The heavens are a mystery only science can solve, as it
penetrates the unknown."
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Plotline:
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A group of six key persons are chosen to undergo an ordeal
in a simulated space journey to the planet Antheon and to test their ability
to cope with it. The unusual happens and the passengers meet a real alien
being from outer space who obliges the greedy one of the group, Joe Dix,
to push a special button to alert the authorities and put an end to the
experiment.
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Closing Narration:
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"Panic button pressed. Passengers returned. One side
always in the sunlight, the other always in darkness; the known and the
unknown. Frightening to each other only when they are both unknown...
and misunderstood."
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Quote:
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"The greatest danger? ... I don't know, there's so
many. Maybe the worst are the ones who make for ourselves by seeing things
that don't exist except in our own imagination."
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Captain Harvey Branson (Stephen Joyce)
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Comments:
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Another prologue that starts with a deep
space footage but combined with a space plane from "When Worlds Collide".
We're introduced to the educated players and one of them is a journalist
at the "Washington Times" whose last name is Ellis as the one
in "I, Robot". Not just a space plane at worst a space madhouse!
Apart from their occupations, they all have a psychological profile on
the threshold of insanity: Dr. Matthews is a family man who is haunted
and depressed by the death of his little daughter (he finds his doll in
his berth and alert everybody by shouting this line: "What maniac
put this doll in my bed?"), Joe Dix is a paranoid, jumpy and crafty
self-made man with a social complex (who tries to bribe the pilot and
to beat Ellis for the sound level of the music), Dr. Lint is a monomaniac
whose interest lies in the space plane's plantsfirst dead and petrified
by fear and then resurrected, frustrated female anthropologist Hendrix
has an urgent sexual needshe is attracted by the poor Dr. Mathews:
a father figure, rational Dr. Craif is a megalomaniac who manipulates
the journey's condition with a hidden gadgets boxcreating a meteorites
storm to frighten his colleagues, etcas well as the space pilot
who keeps an eye on the passengers as a Peeping Tom via a monitor. All
these characteristics will be excited and reveleated by the luminous fork
snake that penetrates their ears during their sleep. The luminous fork
tries to choke Dix whose mark disappear. One grotesque scene depicts how
they eat in survival conditionpan shot in low angle under the table
as in "Fun and Games": a tube of condensed food in the middle
of a traditional place settings or a spray can that releases the perfume
of the dishin the rear of the dining room, we can see the decompression
chamber from "Cold Hands, Warm Heart". From this episode, music
supervisor John Caper Jr. will uses the "O.B.I.T." sound effect
gimmick to announce the arrival of the unexpected or the unfamiliar. A
deadly dull, slow-moving episode in the line of "Expanding Human"
and "Behold Eck!" for stop animation fans only who can wait
for the climax of Act IV or space flight amateurs but not as effective
as "Second Chance"pay attention to a stewardess that reminds
the character of Mara Matthews. Are you ready to sleep? The sets are cheap
as well as the monster made out of a simplistic lighting effect that haunts
the passengers' berths. It has a guinea pig/absurd ordeal plot in the
line of "Nightmare": read the first sentence of the end narration:
" (...) "Panic button pressed. Passengers returned. (...)"
Actor Constantin's character name is Dix: a reference to loud mouth private
Dix from "Nightmare" which also undergoes an ordeal and over-reacts.
Actress Jacqueline Scott's character is as frustrated as her first part
in "The Galaxy Being" where her husband Alan Maxwell let her
alone. This is a tedious stagey-talky mouse in the maze episode and a
potpourri of "Second Chance" and "Nightmare". The
only episode that contains a boarding sequence of the cast of characters
(a re-edited and re-injected opening footage) instead of the usual starry
end credits. Notes: Robert Johnson is the voice of the Antheon alien and
the Surface Control Voice.
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