I Shot an Arrow Into the Air

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The Twilight Zone original series Season one (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5) Fall 1959 – Summer 1960 List of The Twilight Zone episodes
Episodes: Where Is Everybody? One for the Angels Mr. Denton on Doomsday The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine Walking Distance Escape Clause The Lonely Time Enough at Last Perchance to Dream Judgment Night And When the Sky Was Opened What You Need The Four of Us Are Dying Third from the Sun I Shot an Arrow Into the Air The Hitch-Hiker The Fever The Last Flight The Purple Testament Elegy Mirror Image The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street A World of Difference Long Live Walter Jameson People Are Alike All Over Execution The Big Tall Wish A Nice Place to Visit Nightmare as a Child A Stop at Willoughby The Chaser A Passage for Trumpet Mr. Bevis The After Hours The Mighty Casey A World of His Own

“I Shot an Arrow Into the Air” is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

[edit] Details

Episode number: 15
Season: 1
Production code: 173-3626
Original air date: January 15, 1960
Writer: Rod Serling, story by Madelon Champion
Director: Stuart Rosenberg
Producer: Buck Houghton
Director of photography: George T. Clemens
Music: uncredited

[edit] Cast

Officer Corey: Dewey Martin
Colonel Donlin: Edward Binns
Pierson: Ted Otis

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

A manned space flight crash lands on what the astronauts believe to be a passing asteroid. Their expectations of survival or rescue are bleak. Only four of the crew survive, one of whom is barely alive. After he dies, the three remaining men, Corey, Donlin, and Pierson decide to trek out into the barren desert to see if there is anything — shelter, water — that might improve their chances of survival. When Corey and Donlin reconvene, it seems that Pierson is dead and Corey filched the water supply from his dead body. Donlin, the commanding officer, forces Corey at gunpoint to lead him to Pierson's body. They find Pierson, still barely alive, who with his last bit of strength draws a primitive diagram in the sand with his finger. Corey then kills Donlin and sets out alone, confident that he will survive longer now that he has all of the water supply. After wandering aimlessly for an extended period, he sees a set of power lines and realizes that that's what Pierson was attempting to draw. A highway and road signs reveal that the ship crashed on Earth and the men had been in the Nevada desert the entire time.

[edit] Trivia

When Serling first started collecting material for The Twilight Zone he offered an open call for scripts. Anyone could submit a script based on any science-fiction idea they had. The results of this open call were disastrous.

"I got fourteen thousand manuscripts in the first five days. Of those fourteen thousand, I and members of my staff read about five hundred. And four hundred and ninety-eight of those five hundred were absolute trash; hand-scrawled, laboriously written, therapeutic pieces of writing from sick people. Of the two remaining scripts, both of professional quality, neither fitted the show." —Rod Serling quoted in The Twilight Zone Companion

Despite this, Serling did end up producing an idea from an industry outsider when he paid Madelon Champion $500 for the idea on which this episode was based, an idea that came up in a social conversation between the two. Though Serling was frequently approached with suggestions for the series, such a purchase was never repeated.

Much of this episode was filmed in Death Valley National Park. This is indicated in the credits. Additionally, the view from Zabriskie Point is shown a few times.

“I shot an arrow into the air, it fell to earth I know not where," is the opening line of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's “The Arrow and the Song”.

The title of this episode was also used by Serling for a prospective Twilight Zone pilot episode that was eventually shot, in modified form, as “The Gift”.

The plot resembles Serling's script for Planet of the Apes. Astronauts crashing in the desert, assuming they are on an alien planet, only to discover at the end they've been on Earth the whole time.