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Second Chance: And they called their planet....

posted 10 years ago by silovik812
5 replies | jump to latest

..."You Gotta Be Kiddin' Me"! Seriously? THAT was the big shocking twist ending?

THERE'S SPOILERS DOWN BELOW, BOYS, THERE'S SPOILERS DOWN BELOW!

Joe: Well, here we are, my dear! Our spaceship is kaput, and these clothes aren't going to last very long, we'll end up running around buck naked before you know it. Still, we've got this big ol' uninhabited planet to populate, so we might as well get busy being fruitful and multiplying. As long as we've got a second chance, we might as well change our names. That's what people do when they get a second chance, they give themselves new names, right? Adam is a nice name, don't you think? Much nicer than "Joe", I always hated that name. And I'll call you, um..."Eve", yeah yeah, that's a good one - because it's the dawn of a new civilization. Get it? Huh? Oh, and don't worry about that serpent, he's probably quite harmless. And look! We've got apples here! What a paradise, huh?

Seriously, this kind of ending (which James Blish called "The Shaggy God Story") was so old and overused by the Sixties that when Rod Serling used it in a 1963 Twilight Zone story, the reaction was one collective head-slap.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probe_7,_Over_and_Out

The worst part is, I liked the story pretty well up to the point where they went into the negative space wedgie, and was looking forward to some big surprise ending on the other side of it. Boy, was I surprised all right!

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"Oh, well" said Zanoni, "to pour pure water in the muddy well does but disturb the mud !"

[–] silovik812 10 years ago

"Shelter Me" was a pretty good bottle episode, except for an ending you could see coming a mile away. What did we think she was going to find outside the shelter? Mayberry RFD? I actually thought the twist ending was going to be that she was his wife all along, who had lost her memory. Well, anyway the acting was good, and so was the cinematography. It was nice to see something other than splashy space opera for a change.

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"Oh, well" said Zanoni, "to pour pure water in the muddy well does but disturb the mud !"

[–] ToHelenBackAgain 10 years ago

I liked it. I don't think I've seen that plot in at least thirty years, other than in re-runs, and I thought it was a fun throwback.

Please only click "Reply" on my post if you are replying to what I said in my post.

[–] silovik812 10 years ago

As much as I felt a bit cheated by the ending at first, I can take it as a tongue-in-cheek parody of the old Shaggy God story. They came out of the ship with their uniforms torn, totally by accident of course, into caveman couture. We got a good shot of this garden-like planet, then a pan over to the serpent AND an apple. . THEN we got a dinosaur, or some other fearsome creature, howling in the background and an erupting volcano. I'm sort of figuring that things will not end well for Joe and his helpmeet.

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"Oh, well" said Zanoni, "to pour pure water in the muddy well does but disturb the mud !"

[–] ToHelenBackAgain 10 years ago

Joe did say he had a bad feeling about this...

Please only click "Reply" on my post if you are replying to what I said in my post.

[–] ughmoretodealwith 10 years ago

It's not an ending. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaggy_God_story

It's a whole entire genre. Nor is it a twist ending. Battlestar Galactica 2004 was a shaggy dog show as was the original one.

http://www.humanoids.com/blog/The-Humanoids-Blog/tag/MHC/1#.U2IDkfldWSo that provides some images from the magazine to go with the episodes shown.

http://www.figures.com/forums/news/15286-comic-review-metal-hurlant-vol-1-2-a.html
Provides even some more images. Including two images from Second Chances. They actually for the tv show in a few places remain faithful to the art from the comics.

Christians call it faith ... I call it the herd.
-- Friedrieh Wilhelm Nietzsche