Taylor’s vulnerability may be the key here. Where another actor might have been content to play outrage at people’s denial of his friend’s exist- ence, he runs a gamut of emotion that reflects how we believe a person would react to crumbling reality: disbelief, anger, hysteria and—finally—wist- ful, philosophical acceptance. Taylor’s performance is as raw as anything I’ve seen.
The excellent Charles Aidman (who ended up narrating the 1980s incarnation of the series) is the first to go and his initial awareness is wonder- fully understated, looking as though an unseen shadow has passed over him. As he quietly ex- plains to Taylor, in what seems a metaphor for the fragility of existence: “I never felt anything like this before... It’s like I didn’t belong here... Like, if I was to let myself go, I’d... like I’d disappear...” Aidman convinces us he’s truly experiencing something for which mere words are inadequate. He’s seen the unknown. It gets worse after he calls his parents and they deny knowledge of him, and he subtly delivers the show’s defining speech, shot high angle in a phone booth: “I shouldn’t be here... None of us should be here. It’s as if... if maybe we shouldn’t have come back from that flight at all. Maybe... somebody—something made a mistake and let us get through when we shouldn’t have.” It’s a tribute to Serling that this is all the expla- nation we get, conjecture at that. Any more would contrive and diminish. It’s important to note that the script is not saying this is what happens when you go into space, but suggests a possibly ran- dom, larger unknown we cannot grasp. Wisely, we’re not shown Aidman’s erasure. Taylor simply returns to find an empty booth. This marks the first use of a newspaper headline and photo of the returning astronauts as reality barom- eter: now there are two. When Taylor begins to lose his grip, it’s an emotional roller coaster,
The principals of “And When the Sky Was Opened”: Charles Aidman, Rod Taylor and Jim Hutton.
culminating in the powerful crescendo of him walking through the glass door of a closed bar. As he relates all this to remaining crewmem- ber Jim Hutton, it’s his poignant, calm acceptance that haunts, leading to a transcendent moment that is the show’s true climax, where Taylor, direc- tor Douglas Heyes and cinematographer George T. Clemens really shine. The camera slowly booms down, having the affect of lifting Taylor up as he quietly reflects, smiling, almost beatific, in my fa- vorite line reading: “Oh, Bill... this is weird, just plain weird... like I just don’t belong...” Up until now, Jim Hutton (credited as James, later known for light comedy) had been cautiously tolerant of Taylor’s outrageous claim, with a bit of deft humoring (“Oh yeah... Harrington”). But, af- ter Taylor bolts from the hospital room and Hutton sees that his bed is suddenly gone, the actor re- acts with an electric shudder of hand-to-face ter- ror. The stark elemental fear in Hutton’s eyes stays with us, particularly since it’s the last thing we see as he slowly lies back in bed, falling out of frame for the final time.
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