episode #24 - Moonstone

Air Date: 3/9/64 writer: William Bast, based on story by Lou Morheim & Joseph Stefano
Directed by Robert Flory

There is no moonstone in this one, despite the title. There is a moon base. The few inhabitants stationed there find a globe in the sand (the moonscape is reminiscent of Destination Moon). This globe turns out to contain these floating eye stalks which are actually highly advanced alien lifeforms who have universal knowledge. The bad news: they are the last benevolent of their kind; the others are tyrants, on their way to reclaim them. This cosmic storyline is interwoven with the personal tensions of several humans: the commander (Alex Nicol) is about to marry the only female there (Ruth Roman) and is in conflict with his 2nd-in-command (Tim O'Connor) over a military incident in Korea.
This one is pretty good - the only sloppy scene is one with the two engaged personnel indulging in soap opera-talk when they should be concentrating on the newly-found globe - damn, that's tiresome. This is an early version of the Space:1999 series. But, there's also an underlying theme of pacifistic scientists in eternal distrust of a brutal military, yet this is reversed in the end when it's shown that some threats cannot be solved with just peaceful intentions or optimism. The premise about the advanced aliens was copied somewhat by Star Trek TOS in the episode Return to Tomorrow and is always challenging for the mind. BoG's Score: 7 out of 10


Outer Trivia: O'Connor played another astronaut-type, a captain of a ship, in the Twilight Zone episode, On Thursday We Leave For Home, and much later was a regular on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century; he would also return to O L in the 2nd season's Soldier.
Another of the moon personnel is played by Hari Rhodes, who later starred in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)