The Ray Bradbury Theater
Season 5

THE EARTHMEN

The second manned mission to Mars lands and the four man landing party almost immediately encounter Martians. The reaction to their arrival, however is not what they were expecting. They are met with either irritation or contempt until finally they arrive at a place where everything is explained.

Following on from Mars Is Heaven this is much more ambitious and complicated than that story, but suffers more as a result. Ray Bradbury's humorous streak comes out as the four astronauts are blindsided by the bizarre reactions of the Martians to their arrival. Patricia Phillips is completely delightful as the scatty first contact. Exactly why the astronauts should think they should be welcomed in a recognisable manner by a totally alien species is not explained. The arrogance of mankind, presumably.

Unfortunately, the psychological nuances, and some of the more visual tricks, of the story are not given the time they need to develop or are absent altogether. The truth behind what is happening is therefore info dumped in the last section so a violent finale can take place. The story does deserve better, which it got in the dramatisation of THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES.

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ZERO HOUR

A working mother fails to pay attention to her daughter's game with the neighbourhood kids, a game called 'invasion'.

We work to live, not the other way around. Treating your children as an afterthought is not a good idea. Bad parenting can lead to very bad outcomes for children and parents both. These are the obvious points that lie behind what is a pretty tedious episode that fails to chill, even with what is meant to be a scary finale. It doesn't help that we are being asked to believe that children could whip up a device capable of transmitting an army across interplanetary space from a few items they can find in the average kitchen. There could be an argument to be made that the alien preying on bored children is similar to online grooming today, but it is unlikely the audience will be engaged enough to think about that. One of the lesser episodes of the show.

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THE JAR

A cuckolded husband from a small town buys a jar containing uncertain items from a carnival in order to make himself a local celebrity and perhaps keep his wife at home more.

This episode is a bit of curiosity, mixing sex with carnivals with murder with a bit of mysticism, all in a small town setting. Paul Le Mat is the cuckolded husband at the centre of the story, but it is never clear what exactly his motivations are around buying the jar, or even attending the carnival in the first place. Could it be that he had a plan in place all along or was the twist just the result of his wife's pushing him? The effect of the jar on the locals is also uncertain, ranging from derision to the rather bizarre certainty that it contains the lost soul of a neighbour's son. Is it some sort of actual effect or simply the self-delusion that takes people to carnival freak shows anyway? The man from the carnival said it was speaking to him, but was that just some of his patter to get the sale?

This is the first time sex has been front and centre in the show and the shock of it makes the episode stand out, but the premise, and the promise, are not completely borne out.

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COLONEL STONESTEEL AND THE DESPERATE EMPTIES

A young boy's summer is enlivened by a practical joke played on the whole town by his friend Colonel Stonesteel.

This is not a genre episode, but rather a return to Bradbury's sentimentality about the wonder of childhood. Drenched in golden nostalgia, it's a love song to the small town and to the characters to be found there. Harold Gould is back for a second appearance on the show and his lively, mischievous Colonel Stonesteel is a lot of fun. He is exactly the kind of person you would want to have as your fun uncle or grandfather. These days, though, there would be questions asked about an older man hanging around with a young boy. Ah, Bradbury writes about less complicated times.

And simple is what the townsfolk would have to be to be taken in by the discovery of an Egyptian mummy in the Midwest. The press are equally taken in by the fake mummy's subsequent disappearance. The silliness of the jape undermines the good work of the episode, but it is still watchable and anchored by the central performance.

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THE CONCRETE MIXER

A martian invasion is not met with guns and bombs, but with a welcome party and access to all the excesses the Earth has to offer.

History is full of stories about invading armies wiping out indigenous cultures and imposing their own. The reverse is less often spoken about. Satire hasn't had much of a place in the show to date, but this story is a sharp satire on American consumerism and its corrosive effect on the rest of the world. The short running time of the episode means the invading force's fall is necessarily abrupt, which doesn't serve the plot at all. There are some nice moments, like an encounter with an evangelical envoy, and the overall tone is mischievous.

Ben Cross is far too serious an actor for the likes of this and he looks confused as to how he ended up here at all. This works quite well for his rather po-faced character, but does put a slight damper on the fun being had by everyone else.

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THE UTTERLY PERFECT MURDER

When he was a boy, all Doug wanted to do was play piano and be friends with Ralph. The first he excelled at, to the point of making a living from his music at age 60. The bullying from Ralph, however has haunted him his entire life, so he determines to go back to the small town they lived in and carry out an utterly perfect murder.

There is no genre content in this melding of two of Bradbury's favourite concerns, the misty-coloured memories of childhood and bullying. It's a straightforward tale of an ordinary man who faced trauma in his youth that has blighted his otherwise perfectly fine life. The decision to finally go back and murder the source of his angst is perhaps understandable, but the nonchalance with which he drives away from his wife is not. The episode may be called The Utterly Perfect Murder, but there is no evidence to suggest that Doug has the perfect plan, or any plan at all in fact.

We get to see the bullying in flashbacks, spread amongst the otherwise interminable trip from one town to another. This story isn't about murder, per se, but about memories, the good the bad and the ugly. The grip those memories can hold on us and they way they can fester and grow is what this story is about. The idea of murder is just something to hang that examination of memories on.

The eventual denouement may be a bit anticlimactic, but it fits the nature of the tale well, utterly perfectly in fact.

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LET'S PLAY POISON

A teacher who sees the favourite student he could not protect die as a result of bullying returns to teaching with a changed outlook on the profession and the children. He goes so far as to declare war upon them, but is it a war he is incapable of fighting?

Considering the almost daily reports of assault on teachers by students and their family members, the tone of this episode hasn't aged all that well. The first half tells of a gentle man who is changed by one moment of trauma. Upon his return, he is a tyrant of the highest order and is determined to break the wills of his class, simply because they remind him of the bullies that caused the death of his prized pupil. Since that could also be laid at his door, there is a side order of guilt in there as well. This fuels his anger and his drinking.

We've said it before and we'll say it again, kids are inherently creepy when they're not acting like kids. Since our society no longer allows any sort of meaningful sanction or action against troublesome children, the scenario played out here is less unlikely than it once was. The glorificaton of murder of teachers is a far more troublesome tone now than it was when this story was written, or filmed.

And to be clear, the game of poison involves not stepping on paving stones that have a name carved into them.

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THE MARTIAN

When his dead son shows up at his doorstep, a grieving father suspects it is really a martian, trapped into that shape by his and his wife's memories. Whilst she accepts the newcomer, he struggles with the concept. A trip into town, however, proves disastrous.

This story was also featured in THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, but for once doesn't suffer from the comparison. Shorn of its context, the abilities of martians to take on other forms is not as clearly explained as it might have been, which makes the events in the town less effective than perhaps could have been the case. We also don't get enough time to meet the newcomer, so the tragedy of events upon him/her/it is somewhat muted. This is partly down to the limited running time forcing the story into a length it can't quite meet its best potential in.

John Vernon plays the father and does most of the heavy lifting here. Why he agrees to the trip into the town on the first night his dead son has returned remains a mystery, but he can handle the mournful quality of a bereaved parent only too well.

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