"Counterweight"
 
Production Order #36 and Broadcast Order #46
Shooting Days: 21-27 July 1964
First Air Date: December 26, 1964
 
Production Credits:
Teleplay
: Milton Krims
Story: Jerry Sohl
Director: Paul Stanley
Assistant Director: William P. Owens
Director of Photography: Kenneth Peach
Composer: Harry Lubin
Cast of Characters:
Michael Constantine
as Engineer Joe Dix
Jacqueline Scott as Anthropologist Alicia Hendrix
Larry Ward as Newspaper Keith Ellis
Charles H. Radilac as Botanist Michael Lint
Crahan Denton as Dr. Matthew James
Sandy Kenyon as Professor Henry Craif
Stephen Joyce as Captain Harvey Branson
Shary Marshall as Stewardess Margaret O'Hara
 
Opening Narration:
"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."
 
Plotline:
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.
 
Closing Narration:
"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."
 
Quote:
"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."
—Captain Harvey Branson (Stephen Joyce)
Comments:
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 plants—first dead and petrified by fear and then resurrected—, frustrated female anthropologist Hendrix has an urgent sexual need—she 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 box—creating a meteorites storm to frighten his colleagues, etc—as 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 condition—pan 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 dish—in 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.