Third from the Sun

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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

“Third from the Sun” is an episode of the television series The Twilight Zone.

Edward Andrews in “Third from the Sun”

Details Episode number: 14 Season: 1 Production code: Original air date: January 8, 1960 Writer: Rod Serling (story by Richard Matheson) Director: Richard L. Bare Producer: Music:

[edit] Cast

• Fritz Weaver,
• Joe Maross, and
• Edward Andrews.

[edit] Synopsis

Certain that a nuclear war is imminent, a scientist (Fritz Weaver) and a pilot (Joe Maross) plot to steal an experimental spaceship and escape with their families to a planet eleven million miles away. They are almost stopped by a government agent (Edward Andrews), but manage to overpower him. Once up in space, they wonder what their new home will be like—from radio broadcasts, they know it is called Earth.

[edit] Themes

• The black-and-white filmed episode's use of unusual camera angles, along with some futuristic aspects to the families' '50s style of living adds additional subtle suspense & confusion as to where the story is really taking place.

[edit] Trivia

• The experimental spaceship shown is the saucer-shaped cruiser seen in MGM's 1956 film Forbidden Planet, there described as the United Planets Cruiser C-57D. For the episode, the full-size lower underside with retractible stairs was modified, along with a smaller command/pilot center.
• No explanation is given as to how a planet could be ' 11 million miles away '. Even the closest approach to Earth from Mars is 34M miles (2003), and asteroids are even further away, between Mars & Jupiter.