When you are supposed to die in an accident but somehow miraculous survive, death will come for you shortly after. You can't escape destiny. This simplistic but frighteningly effective premise forms the basis of the successful "Final Destination" franchise – five films and counting – but it shouldn't come too much as a surprise that a very similar premise already featured in the pioneer series "The Twilight Zone" nearly forty years earlier! This episode, which undeniably has one of the coolest sounding titles of all, can be summarized quite easily. Three astronauts turn up alive and in relatively good health after their spacecraft disappeared from the radars and crashed into the Mojave Desert, but Death soon erases its mistake by erasing the astronauts from existence. "And when the sky was opened" definitely isn't a favorite episode of mine. The plot may be original but also contains quite a number of holes and illogicalities. It's the first of no less than sixteen (!) episodes scripted by or inspired by a story of Richard Matheson; author of classic novels such as "I Am Legend" and "The Incredible Shrinking Man", as well as dozens of horror movie screenplays. Douglas Heyes's direction is unremarkable, but the three lead actors deliver good performances.
Review of And When the Sky Was Opened
