and behold,
Spoilers
Series 1 - Episode 11 : And When the Sky Was Opened - When this episode of
The Twilight Zone aired Yuri Gagarin was yet to become the first human being to travel into space, and there was still a small amount of trepidation over what effects being in space would have on a person. In this we have the ultra-handsome and cool Rod Taylor as a hotshot pilot (Forbes), home again after a mission in an experimental aircraft that had travelled beyond the atmosphere. He's visiting his copilot in hospital, and is in an agitated and disturbed state, because even though the papers and his copilot (Jim Hutton playing Gart, what is it with
The Twilight Zone and the name Gart?) remember only the two of them going, Forbes remembers a third member of the crew, Ed Harrington. The night before Harrington had felt a bit funny, like he wasn't meant to exist, and then he disappeared. Now nobody remembers him. One minute he'd been having a celebratory beer with Forbes, and then Harrington calls his parents, who claim they don't have a son, then the beer, Harrington and everyone's memory of him is gone. Forbes starts to panic, and then before you know it only Gart remains in the room. The paper now mentions only Gart, who is in dismay himself now. Then, a doctor and nurse walk down the corridor of the hospital and inspect an empty room. A paper rests nearby, the front page story being about the unmanned space jet that had recently returned to Earth.
"Erased from existence" - the quote from
Back to the Future comes to mind over and over again as I watch
And When the Sky Opened. I think the title is a Biblical reference, but I'm not 100% sure about that. Anyway, something interesting to ponder is that this could be happening all the time - how would any of us ever know? We're so sure we would know, because we can trace time so well with our memories, but if it's all changed
including our memories then of course we'd feel that way. Yeah, nah. I don't buy it either. But it's an interesting enough concept to ponder. Here some malignant extraterrestrial entity has decided not only to steal away pilots Forbes, Harrington and Gart - but erase their very existence. If you're being wiped out, you have some consolation that the memory of you will endure, at least for a while. How would it feel if you were to die, and be wiped away as if you had never even lived? It would be the ultimate kind of death. No wonder Forbes was so upset.