Review of People Are Alike All Over

The Twilight Zone is a show with such a wealth of episodes that it can be difficult to remember all the classic ones that aired during its five year run. One episode that many people have never heard of is People Are Alike All Over. It's one of the episodes that includes a certain moral at the end, which is subtle, but can still be interpreted by cerebral viewers. The story begins with a rocket ship preparing to leave the earth in order to travel to Mars. Onboard are two men, Sam and Marcusson. Marcusson is injured during the landing and dies soon after, telling his crew mate how he wants him to remember how people are everywhere the same, even on other worlds. Sam doesn't think the way his friend did and regards the martians he later encounters with suspicion, despite them appearing to be friendly. It's also strange how they are actual humans and not some grotesque alien species. Later on, the martians give Sam a gift in the form of a full sized house made to resemble the ones they have on earth. Eventually though, Sam realizes something is wrong because the house inexplicably has no windows. Shortly after trying to break out of the house (which he can't accomplish), a wall is lifted upward to reveal a set of vertical metal bars and a crowd of martians staring at Sam in amazement and interest. He's in a zoo. A martian girl named Teenya (Susan Oliver) who was attracted to Sam but couldn't bring herself to tell him what they would do to him runs away in embarrassment. People Are Alike All Over is an adaptation of a story called Brothers Beyond the Void by Paul Fairman, with some slight changes, mostly regarding the appearance of the mars inhabitants. This is probably one of the most ironic TZ episodes, because Sam starts the space voyage as someone who is afraid of visiting other planets, but Marcusson tells him the inhabitants (if any) will be just like earthlings. This helps make him less nervous. An interesting fact about this episode is that one of the martians is played by Vic Perrin, who would later go on to be the narrator for the Outer Limits, another show that epitomizes quality when it comes to strange or outlandish stories, but with a bigger focus on science fiction.