Exploring The Twilight Zone, Episode #93: "The Little People"
If you could be a god, what kind of god would you be? Would you be kind and beneficent? Would you reign in terror? An astronaut is about to explore his inner deity.
The Twilight Zone, Episode #93: "The Little People" (original air date March 30, 1962)
The Plot: A two-man spaceship has landed on a desolate planet for repairs. Commander Fletcher (Claude Akins), better known as Fletch, is busy testing the ship's equipment and making plans for repairs. Meanwhile, his co-pilot Craig (Joe Maross) is sitting down, complaining. The man is clearly discontent. Fletch asks Craig what he really wants.
"I'd like to be the number one straw boss; I'd like to give the orders," Craig states plainly. Two days later, the heavily-perspiring Fletch observes that Craig is cool, calm, collected -- and very well-hydrated, which prompts Fletch to pump his subordinate for information.
It turns out that Craig has discovered new life; it's an entire civilization, a very, very tiny one. The citizens are tiny, but they have built a world that is a microcosm of our own. Craig has figured out how to communicate with them in mathematical terms, and discovered much about them. He has also taken advantage of his size to establish himself as their "number one straw boss," their absolute ruler. He takes delight in stomping on their world to remind them who's in charge.
Fletch tries to talk sense into Craig, but Craig is so lost in his fantasy-come-true that he refuses to listen to reason. After all, it's what he's always wanted: to be an absolute ruler, the god of his own world.
The Goods: Claude Akins, who so often played the heavy on other TV shows and in films, here plays a kind, reasonable authority figure, much as he played a reasonable man trying to calm a neighborhood in the Season 1 TZ episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street." As Fletch, he's hard-working and diligent, yet not dictatorial. He allows Craig sufficient space to do what he wants for a couple of days before finally yanking on the harness and crying out "Whoa!"
As Craig, Joe Maross gives a wildly-overblown performance as a budding megalomaniac. But it fits within the episode, which is unusually straightforward. Written by Rod Serling, it's absent much of his trademark biting speeches, limiting itself to concise expressions of Craig's tyrant-in-training and Fletch's diplomatic attempts to negotiate a truce. The allusions to the manner in which real-life dictators cruelly wield their power, one of the more prevalent themes in the original series, are certainly apparent.
The episode works wonderfully well for young people, and is amusing and satisfying even after multiple viewings because everyone likes to see cruel dictators get what's coming to them, as we see with what happened recently in Libya.
The Trivia: Maross began in television in 1952 and worked steadily until 1986. He was a regular on Peyton Place, made multiple appearances in different roles on Mission: Impossible, Mannix, The Rockford Files, and others, demonstrating his versatility and ability to disappear into character parts.
Akins began his career in 1952; mostly making his mark in television, though he was a memorable bad guy in Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo (1959). Like Maross, Akins also had multiple roles on certain TV shows; he made 10 guest appearances over 17 years on the long-running Gunsmoke, for example, each time as a different character. He finally got to star in his own series, The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo, after creating Lobo in the similarly lowest-common-denominator B.J. and the Bear series. He worked consistently until he died in 1994.
For many of us, though, Akins will be best remembered as General Aldo in Battle for the Planet of the Apes.
This was the third of four episodes helmed by William F. Claxton, who later worked steadily on Little House on the Prairie, directing 86 episodes.
If a couple of uniforms later in the episode look familiar, it's because they're from Forbidden Planet, another example of the series freely recycling costumes and equipment from the movie.
The episode has inspired at least three different animated parodies, courtesy of The Simpsons, South Park, and Futurama.
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