User Reviews

This episode is about a space ship that goes off course and crashes on a desolate world. It's dry as a bone and hope for survival for the crew seems nil. As they try looking for water and food, order among the crew slowly dissolves--as the individual crew members become more concerned with self-preservation than the mission. Ultimately, as usual, there is a wonderful twist conclusion.

This is a very, very good episode provided you ignore one central problem with the plot--the whole idea of a ship being THAT lost and all seems very far-fetched and if you think too much, the twist ending seems silly. However, as a critique on human nature, it's great--with great insight into the baser instincts of people. Great? Nope, but well worth your time.

For many of us Twilight Zone fans who grew up with the series, I'm sure this episode offers a similar experience when watched today. It starts out totally unfamiliar as the story begins, while our memories search for some buried clue that might remind us whether we might have seen it before. Then, right near the finale, a final hint is offered and we recall the twist ending that made it so memorable the first time we saw it. For me, that moment occurred when Pierson drew the phone poles in the sand. That's it - the space ship never left Earth! What a blast it was watching these programs the first time around as a youngster and being totally enthralled, surprised and scared as the individual story warranted.

Watching today, some of those episodes don't carry the same impact, but tracing those feelings back to an earlier time and place is where the joy is when viewing now. For the second time in a row, Rod Serling uses an outer space theme to entertain and thrill, following the previous week's offering, "Third From The Sun". Whereas the prior picture had it's protagonists seek refuge on a far flung planet called Earth, this one tells the story of a handful of astronauts who never left.

With the passing of time however, one's experience calls into question certain elements that don't make sense, and so that's the case here as well. Confronted with a harsh environment with unrelenting heat, wouldn't it have made sense for Donlin, Cory and Pierson to shed some clothes? I mean those guys were really sweating. And when Pierson breaks down to discover that he was only a few miles from civilization all along, why would he find a distance marker for Reno, along with a sign for Nelson's Motel in the middle of a rock strewn desert? Wouldn't they have gotten more attention on a road?

But I guess that's all part of the charm for what has turned out to be my favorite TV show of all time. I'm still waiting to come across an episode I haven't seen before and it's bound to happen at some point. At least until I get to the end of a story and suddenly realize that I know what's about to happen after all.

Compelling, if flawed, tale of desperation and survival as three astronauts attempt to figure out the new world their space shuttle crash-landed on leaving several members of the crew dead. They seem to have landed on some desert, noticing similarities to Earth, such as the sun up above them in the sky. While I enjoy the irony of the twist which comes right at the end, I agree with Twilight Zone expert, author of the Companion guide, Marc Scott Zicree, in that the astronauts should have known where they were(to say anymore would give the twist away). While I understand it from a dramatic standpoint (and this behavior feeds the power of the final image), I have mixed feelings about the character of Corey portrayed by Dewey Martin. Practically immediately from the get-go, Corey is a bastard, outraged that his other two ship-mates, Col. Bob Donlin (Edward Binns) and Pierson (Ted Otis) would give a dying member of the crew water. Corey is aggressively hostile, a nuisance when he should be focused and level-headed (he is a trained astronaut, rigorously put through a process of procedures which prepare you for crisis situations; yet he seems to be a problem from the onset with little contribution to the others except as a pain in the ass), and just generally cold-hearted. We never see Corey—until the very end when it is too late—humane or, the very least, concerned for his fellow men. All Corey can think about are the canteens of water. He'll kill if he has to for water. Pierson and Corey are sent by Donlin to look for food or water, any signs of life, and the former doesn't return. Donlin notices that Corey has more water in his canteen than before he left, and this prompts the colonel to lead a search for Pierson, leading to tragedy. Corey is the antagonist, the villain, and pretty much is an asshole because the episode wants to present the lengths for which one will stoop in order to stay alive, not knowing that Pierson has found a "key to their salvation". Again, I think logically the Corey character would be better equipped psychologically to handle the situation if it were a realistic one, because of the preparations astronauts go through just in case they encounter scenarios as brought to us through this episode, "I Shot an Arrow into the Air". But, the show needs someone who cares more about his own hide so we can see him face the music when Corey does discover that his actions will come back to haunt him; he acted out of fear when if he would have kept his composure and remained objective, perhaps matters wouldn't have escalated as they do. If anything, Corey will be punished for what he did, but there's that feeling of "if only he had listened and followed orders" that might have saved him from the eventual repercussions that will result.

Three astronauts survive a rocket ship crash on a hostile unknown world. Morale amongst the men soon dissipates when their water supply begins to dwindle. Director Stuart Rosenberg relates the gripping premise at a snappy pace, builds plenty of tension, and makes excellent use of the dry'n'desolate desert location. Moreover, it's well acted by an able cast: The always dependable character actor Edward Binns does his usual sturdy job as the no-nonsense Colonel Bob Donlin while Dewey Martin cranks the obnoxiousness up to eleven as the ruthless and selfish Corey. Rod Serling's hard-hitting script starkly presents how a crisis situation concerning self-preservation brings out the absolute worst in certain people. The sharp black and white cinematography by George T. Clemens astutely captures the harsh unforgiving environment. The surprise ending packs a bitterly ironic punch. A worthy episode.

Even after seeing this episode probably over a hundred plus times in my life I still love watching it. The writer and producer of the show Rod Serling was a brilliant man. I see a lot of shows nowadays that have stolen tidbits from Rod Serling Twilight Zone episodes. This episode in particular is truly brilliant and shows how quickly things can go wrong on a mission where the morale in the discipline. This episode I shot an arrow in the air is one of my favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone. I love the ending when Cory finds out that he's on Earth and he has already murdered two of his fellow astronauts.

Yet I'm still not going to give it away.

After 15 episodes of "The Twilight Zone", one thing I am aware of is to never try to outguess the author. Sometimes you win but usually you lose because the writing is very clever. But something, just something told me what was going on here and I did not want to believe that I could outguess Rod Serling.

That doesn't mean that this isn't any good. In fact oh, it is just a suspenseful as the rest of the series even if you begin to believe you know what will happen. This is the American Space Program in the 1950s, sending a ship into space and who knows where they will end up. It's like playing spin the bottle. Where it stops is up to gravity and nature. But between Dewey Martin and Edward Binns, it is a game of who will keep their sanity because when their third astronaut simply disappears, it's one blaming the other for murder and the other's desperation for survival and the stakes are great, and once again, the script keeps you entrapped to the screen so when the inevitable does happen you either say "I figured that out!" or "Why didn't I see that coming?"

The premise here is that astronauts have crash-landed on an asteroid, one that happens to not only be in the same orbit as Earth (which they note explicitly), but which also happens to have an atmosphere identical to Earth's (which they mention in passing, without noting that this is physically impossible, as no asteroid has enough gravity to retain an atmosphere). Oh, and which also seems to have the same length day as Earth, meaning the asteroid is rotating at the same speed -- after first wondering whether the sun will in fact go down, they never mention this again.

No effort is made to portray the astronauts as being addle-brained as a result of crash trauma. So we have the classic flaw of the characters being in possession of the same facts as the audience, but not getting the "twist," which couldn't be more obvious. (This is true, alas, even if the episode takes place in an alternate reality where there *are* immense asteroids in the same orbit as Earth. The crew would know of those, and probably know their rotational speeds / day lengths, as well). If you work it backwards, there's absolutely no reason why the crew would have ever thought they *were* on an asteroid; there's no reason they would have ever given that answer after asking the obvious question "where are we?" It would have made as much sense to have them believe they'd crash-landed in Oz.

The human drama involves one astronaut who is immediately revealed to be a sociopath, concerned only for his own well-being at the expense of his crewmates. Again, it's hardly credible that someone like that would be among the crew of the first manned spacecraft. That drama would have been much more effective if he'd been initially portrayed as caring, and had devolved into selfishness from the stress of apparent imminent death. Had they been able to make that belief credible, that is.

A rare misfire from Serling, on every front that matters.

The Arrow One, the first manned craft into space, goes off course, crashing in a desolate landscape with only four of its eight-man crew left alive. With a limited supply of water, cowardly crew-man Corey (Dewey Martin) turns to murder to increase his chances of survival.

We are told early on by the ship's commander, Col. Bob Donlin (Edward Binns), that the Arrow One has crashed on an asteroid, a deliberate attempt by writer Rod Serling to mislead his audience. Anyone with an ounce of gumption will quickly figure out the truth-the breathable atmosphere, the Earth-like gravity and size of the sun giving away all one needs to know. To believe that highly-trained astronauts wouldn't figure out the reality of their situation is utterly ridiculous, and the final revelation is unlikely to surprise all but the most gullible of viewers.

Also, why did they take guns with them on the spacecraft? To shoot aliens? Sorry, Rod, but this one is a dud.

I was impressed by how well this episode was acted. The best part is easily the very end. It's probably because of not knowing what will happen to the last guy. I thought that the episode might just end there and it would show the guy just being lost forever. I like how they bring up the fact that the asteroid they crash land on might have no night. I really wasn't expecting him to actually kill the other characters. I was in fact able to predict the ending but not until after awhile. I can't say it isn't original because it came before "The Planet Of The Apes".

I guess the real tragedy is that the last guy is just going to die before actually being able to reach civilization. He was probably just as lost as he was before. I think "Probe 7, Over And Out" did this sort of thing better. This is still a great episode, mostly because it really does build up tension. It doesn't just save the good parts for the end. I really was eager to find out what he meant by drawing those lines in the sand. Yep, they landed on Earth all along. ***1/2

Three astronauts - Corey (Dewey Martin, "The Thing from Another World"), Colonel Bob Donlin (Edward Binns, "The Verdict"), and Pierson (Ted Otis, "The Best of Everything") - crash land on an asteroid after their spacecraft was launched. The practical Donlin has to contend with an angry, selfish, argumentative Corey, who stops at nothing to ensure his survival. The environment is forbidding - mountains, rocks, and sand in every direction - and they have to ration their water, although Corey greedily downs as much of it as he can. They will have to live like this for God knows how long since NASA has no idea what happened to them, and can't track them.

Scripted by Mr. Serling from a story by Madelon Champion, this is a good, solid episode for most of its running time. The character of Corey is a real case study of a human being resorting to his basest and most selfish impulses, with seemingly no regard for his fellow man. With this episode being filmed in Death Valley, it does an excellent job of capturing the foreboding nature of this terrain. The acting is truly superb from top character actor Binns and especially Mr. Martin. Corey may be a heel, but is not exactly impossible to relate to. Who's to say that some of us might not behave in the same manner under the same circumstances?

And then we come to the classic 'The Twilight Zone' big reveal at the end, which isn't as impactful as it might have been given that it's really no surprise. But it does serve the purpose of underscoring just how completely unnecessary Corey's descent into evil was. People under an extreme level of pressure (or who *think* they are) are perfectly capable of being irrational.

The best bit: Corey and Donlin trying to decipher the image that Pierson draws in the dirt.

Eight out of 10.

An enjoyable dramatic episode with memorable shots of Death Valley.

A space ship disappears from Conrol's radar and crashes on what the three surviving crew members conclude is an asteroid. It's dry and hot, and the men argue over water. The CO, Edward Binns, tries to keep order but Dewey Martin is one of those rebarbative characters that these kinds of stories often include -- whining, arguing, negative, selfish. Finally, Martin kills the other two, only to discover that the craft crashed 37 miles outside of Reno Nevada and he didn't bring any nickels with him for the slot machines.

Again, I was impressed with the fact that, unlike another episode shot in that hostile environment, nobody spritzed the characters clothing and faces with oil to simulate perspiration. You sweat in Louisiana; you don't sweat in the desert.

The acting is nothing to write home about but it's a neatly structured story with a surprising twist at the end.

This is one of my favorite episodes of the entire series. The story is clever and dark, the acting is great, and it contains so many classic Twilight Zone elements: doomed space travel, paranoia, man vs. Nature being superceded by man vs. Man, and - of course - a twist ending!

Based on an original story by Richard Matheson, this episode also credits Rod Serling as a writer, and it's evident in the dialogue that compares the men's situation to that of war. Throwing out the rulebook, throwing away your humanity, etc. -- these are themes that Serling almost always included in his stories. He served in WWII and suffered from PTSD the rest of his life, and I can only imagine the things he saw in humanity over there. (His mid-episode voiceover expresses so much disgust for Corey that it almost gets comical.)

Side note: anyone calling the ending "predictable" sounds like a moron. The only reason you would predict it is because Rod Serling made it famous in the first place. Not just from this (and a dozen other) TZ episodes, but HE WAS THE ONE WHO WROTE THE TWIST ENDING OF PLANET OF THE APES, FFS.

Three man survived of a crash and try to survive and think they are in an other planet. So all things are for survival and they tried to find something while one of the survivor try to survive to any cost even to kill the others and that happened. So scared to not survive, he killed the others for their ressources. But the twist at the end let us know that they never leaved earth and he realised that he will be in big trouble and regret his acts. A nice episode who question the people to survive and the selfish acts of some of them. I really enjoyed that and i really get into the episode. Nice revelation too.

Asteroid City is what I Shot an Arrow in the Air is about, and the twist is a bit bittersweet, but not as inspirational as the previous episode, Third from the Sun. Also, the reality is wouldn't the astronauts know if they are on asteroid? Anyway, this episode plays upon alienation, and Marc Scott Zicree, in his superb Twilight Zone book, theorizes that The Twilight Zone's appeal was that it dealt with themes of alienation, particularly after world war two when the triumphant defense personnel returned and married and moved their families to tracts in the suburbs, where people kept themselves to themselves.

The core issue with this episode is that the main antagonist is comically pathetic and stupid. He literally murders his crewmates for water over the course of a single day... nobody goes crazy that fast. Also, once he does get water, he sloppily drinks it so that is splashes everywhere yet he is supposed to desperately care about preserving water.

The whole conflict just doesn't make any sense because these are supposed to be professionals who have gone under rigorous training, yet this man is pathetic, weak, stupid, and comical. It kills the whole tone.

Lastly, the ending was super obvious. We know that there is going to be an ironic twist, and there were already hints that they were on Earth. Overall, just a really weak Twilight Zone episode.

A very dumb episode for several reasons.

Firstly, the notion that a lost crew of highly professional, well-educated astronauts couldn't figure out that they were on Earth - is utterly ludicrous. They didn't even suspect it! The familiar Sun in the sky wasn't a "subtle" enough hint? The atmosphere? The landscape even? Absolutely NOTHING out there reminded them of Earth?! So, ironically, these guys grew up on Mars or Saturn then?

Not to mention how utterly cliche this generic "plot-twist" is. It was already old news by the 50s, having been used in countless pulp stories and sci-fi/horror comic-books.

Serling's usual daft, one-dimensional and unconvincing characterization only exacerbates things. One of the astronauts is so mentally unstable and sociopathic that he immediately rebels, and stirs trouble constantly. Did these astro-dolts undergo any psychological evaluation before being selected for this "historic mission"? Did they even pass their IQ tests with a score higher than 85? Does this future, clownish NASA hire their astronuts in high-security prisons? Their bickering is instantaneous i.e. It doesn't at least gradually escalate as a result of hours and days of uncertainty and thirst, but straight away, which is utterly laughable. Worse yet, their behaviour is childish. The dialogue is pedestrian, inexcusably silly.

The scene when the dying astronaut can't speak so he has to draw them a HINT that they are on Earth... so lame and stupid. Or the cretinous moment when the psycho actually speaks with the astronut he'd just shot, actually berating him. Then Serling's voice starts berating the psycho! The narrator as the righteous pompous putz... Sarcastic even.

The only good thing here is the remote setting which sets up some measure of mood. Otherwise bargain-basement sci-fi.