The Ray Bradbury Theater (TV Series) The Earthmen (1992) User Reviews

Another piece of Bradbury's _The Martian Chronicles_

[gatebanger · 7/10 · 21 October 2020]

A review posted here indicates support for my thinking that no one seems to bother reading books any more. This is a story from Ray Bradbury's _The Martian Chronicles_-- not a novel but, as A.E. van Vogt called it, a fix-up.

Many of the stories that comprise the "Chronicles" were published as stand-alone pieces in the pulps. This one first saw print in 1948 and deals with the Second Martian Expedition landing near a Martian reservation populated by psychotics and other assorted nut cases.

The fun of it is that, since Martians are telepathic, they sometimes produce real-seeming hallucinations. Guess what they thought of four men in weird clothes knocking on doors and explaining about being from another planet?

This teleplay is a pretty good adaptation of the story--not a big surprise seeing as both the story and teleplay were written by the same writer. Indeed, if the boneheads in the networks would give actual writers more creative control, the science fiction on television would be a lot better.

This episode is fun to watch, *if* you understand what's going on.

What Dreams! What Dreams!

[Hitchcoc · 6/10 · 2 April 2015]

I suppose the mind of a writer can stir up the surreal at a moment's notice. Four astronauts arrive on Mars on a lander, while the rest of the crew waits aboard a ship. The Martians go by lettered names and accuse the Captain (David Birney) of being psychotic, saying that his crew and everything around them is his dream. Once all this starts, we are stuck with interpreting reality. What's going on. The Earthmen have the best intentions but are victimized by a perception that makes no sense to them. The Martians have telepathy, but, obviously, can't interpret what they absorb. Anyway, this is so weakly set up that it once again leaves us cold. Allowing our own interpretations is fine if we are given the proper substantive information.

"Now, if you name your problem, we can solve your problem."

[classicsoncall · 7/10 · 6 March 2022]

Except for the ending, this felt like one of the original 'Star Trek' series episodes. Crew arrives on a habitable location on Mars and tries to take stock of the place, but runs into various Martians who point them in different directions. Finally they arrive at a location where they are greeted like heroes, only to learn that they're stuck in an alien insane asylum! Try as he might, Captain Williams (David Birney) can't convince Mr. X (Gordon Pinsent) that the other members of his four man team aren't a figment of Martian imagination or some sort of hallucination. X is so perplexed by what he takes to be unreal, that he winds up shooting every one of the astronauts, just to convince himself that they don't really exist. When that doesn't work out, the leader of the Martian lunatic asylum takes his own life. The ending is abrupt enough to wonder what the point of the story was, suggesting there might have been something more to it when Bradbury first wrote it.