episode #31 - Wild Adventure

episode #31 / Air Date: 9/21/66 (episode #2 of 2nd season)
written by William Read Woodfield, Allan Balter; Directed by Don Richardson

The Jupiter 2 passes through what turns out be merely a ball of cosmic dust (it was thought to be a solid meteor). The rest of the episode seems like a downward spiral for the series, revolving around Smith's constant sabotage of all the efforts by the rest of the group. No longer having the expansive area of a planet to mess around on, Smith's disastrous motions are now concentrated in the small area of the ship. I'm not saying that John should have jettisoned him off the ship, but at least strapping him in a chair for the duration would seem prudent; they are aware of all his potential nonsense by this time, after all.  
The conflict here stems from the different goals: Smith wants to go to Earth (as usual); John (and probably all the others) wish to hold true to their original mission - to go to Alpha Centauri. Oh, yes... this is also the episode with the first appearance of the green-skinned floating alien female with the inverted clear bowl for a helmet (she would re-appear in a later episode, The Girl From the Green Dimension). She coos a lot and has a hypnotic effect on some males, an obvious outer space take on the Lorelei myth. Smith is the only one who sees her for most of the episode, floating just outside the ship; there's a tiresome sequence where she goes out of sight every time Will looks in that direction. She turns out to be of an alien race that consumes fuel.  

They make it pretty close to Earth's sun in this episode - which is very close to Earth, by astronomical standards. And, I never really got the reason they weren't able to capitalize on this, even if just to float in; there is even brief radio contact with someone from home. But, for some reason, they are unable to stop from zooming to the edge of the galaxy after this near miss.    BoG's Score: 4 out of 10
Epilogue Tag:
the ship begins to approach a planet but suddenly some bands of radiation are approaching the ship, about to envelop it... freeze frame!