Episode 41: The Cold Equations / Stranger in Possum Meadows

The Cold Equations is a story of a stowaway with big aspirations who must face the hard, unyielding facts of deep space travel. Stranger in Possum Meadows tells the tale of an intergalactic collector who befriends a lonely boy.

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Noise Junkies. It's a music podcast, Babe, covering every musical genre.
What we got that the others don't, I'll tell you. We got Mondo,
Heathers, Heather drain or Junky.We got Wolf and raisins hp N
Junky, we got Dark Destinations,Father alone n and we got you.

(00:23):
We got music and we got youmade it and you getting a weird and
Wade media noise Junkies Weird. Hellothere, I'm Chris Stashue, I'm Mike

(01:17):
White, and this is follom Aloneand we are the hosts of Dreams for
Sale, a once a month lookat the Twilight Zone nineteen eighty five otherwise
Zone as the second iteration of thisshow, this show being the Twilight Zone.
On this show we talk about theTwilight Zone eighty five. Along with
the Twilight we talk about the TwilightZone in general for the most part,
all things Twilight Zone related. Onthis episode of the show, we're talking

(01:40):
about the sixteenth and seventeenth episodes ofthe third and final season of the show.
Those two episodes are The Cold Equationsand Stranger IMPASSA Meadow On the frontier,
any frontier, there can be littlemargin for error. Just as the
first covered wagons making their way acrossthe American desert had a finite supply of

(02:00):
food and water, so too,on this even vaster frontier are their laws
that must be strictly observed. ThomasBarton has been piloting emergency dispatch ships for
five years. He has never beenfaced with this particular law of the frontier.
Until now. Thomas Barton is aboutto discover firsthand that there are limits

(02:24):
even here in the boundless reaches ofthe Twilight Zone. Cold Equations aired January
seventh, nineteen eighty nine, isthe first episode of the New Year.
It's directed by Martin Lavett, writtenby our good friend Alan Brenner, based
off of Tom Godwin's short story ofthe same name, and it stars Terence

(02:46):
Knox as the captain of a spaceshipgoing to a planet. A young girl
appears on the ship and she hasto be jettisoned into space otherwise they'll both
die. Isn't that sad and fuckedup and a really stupid fucking area to
put your characters in. I thinkthis was probably a good short story,
but did not translate to the screenat all. Um From what I have

(03:08):
read it sounds like it was agood short story until the editor was like,
no, you have to kill thefemale character. That was like the
editor. The editor sent it backto Godwin three times and said you need
to change the ending. And whathe was wanting him to do was kill
the female character because quote Godwin keptcoming up with ingenious ways to save the

(03:31):
girl is what John w Campbelly,which of this, which is why I
don't like this fucking story because thereare so many ways. Just I'm not
a fucking spaceman, but I thought, I'm sure we all thought of ways
that they could have lightened the load. When some stuff and they share the

(03:54):
close up share the load. It'sa it's a really dumb episode because,
like you said, Father Malone,there are I hate to say dumb,
but again it goes to this lackof logic thing that the show has been
doing, where it's writing episodes thathave no logic. Everybody like, oh,

(04:15):
yeah, she would have to killlike yeah, she kills herself for
what? Like for what? Likefor what? Well to say that that
colony that is being raged by someform of disease, I don't know what
the fuck is going on, Likethey need supplies. Yeah, I mean

(04:38):
if beals it feels like a reallyit feels like they could have adapted this
for a next generation script and itwould have been so much better, like
to give that to the writers thereif they probably could have handled that.
Isn't this just like the trolley scenario? Right? Yeah? The trolley scenario?

(05:00):
And you guys correct me if I'mwrong here. The way I heard
it or I've been told it isthere's a trolley going down the hill.
There's a hundred people at the bottomof the hill, but you have to
run over some people to stop thetrolley, right, is that what it
is? Yeah? So like therehas to be let these people die or
these people do right? Do youlet the smaller group die so that the
bigger group is saved or vice versa? No, my responses don't use trolleys.

(05:27):
I don't know. Was that therewas a recent one which was what
the skittles thing, where it's like, if you one of these skittles might
be poisoned, so do you eatthe skittles? Like each skittle represents a
life, So do you eat theskittle and save a life? But one
of them might be poisoned? Ithink it was like the immigration argument,

(05:50):
like do you let people in butone of them might be a terrorist or
not? Right? I just rememberone person response was, I'm gonna eat,
eat all these fucking skittles because Iwant to save all of these people
and I don't care if I dieas long as all of these other people
are saved. And I think I'dbe eating those skittles too. Well,

(06:12):
I mean it's like any I meanagain, it's you know, it's like
any disaster scenario, right, Likewhy do the firemen run to the top
of the building to save the peopleeven though they know in doing so they
may die. That is their job. That is literally what they signed up
for. If they didn't do that, they would be shitty firemen. And

(06:33):
any fireman who hears me say thiswould agree because that's literally what they're there
for. And in this episode,you are an astronaut who is delivering cargo
to a world, and yet indoing so you kill someone. Your mission
is now invalidated in my mind,Like, yeah, and which could have

(06:54):
been you know, fertile territory hadI given a shit about either of these
human beings. Yeah, there's nonuance of her adalyts. That's like the
same stock kind of bullshit. She'sjust a nafe trying to get to her
family. And you know, andthis guy, I know nothing about him
from beginning to end. I didn'tlearn one thing about him. And it's
convenient that they live in a universewhere everything is calculated. Precisely they don't

(07:17):
give them enough extra fuel. Whatthe fuck story in reality, in the
world that we live in, wherethe people are writing these stories about magical
worlds, even in our real world, fueled planes don't just have enough fuel
to get to where they're going.That makes no fucking sense. That is

(07:38):
that, if you're trying to makethis seem somehow efficient and economical, this
makes zero sense. Efficient and economicalsystems work only when there aren't possible bad
things that can happen, And ifbad things happen, economic and efficient systems
tend to not have a way todeal with it unless they've taken that into
account. This is so unbelievably dumbit boggles the mind. If you run

(08:01):
out of gas while you're in anairplane, I mean the airplane, how
can it land? Right? Justwe'll go around forever. Yeah, it's
just just bona fide insanity. Andagain, like you said, have the
moment, there's a lot to minehere. It is a question worth asking.
Do the needs of the many outweighthe needs of the few? Like
that is one or the one?Yeah, that's the what Star Trek right,

(08:22):
Like that's a question that Star Trekasks all the time. You're asking
that question, and yet you can'teven ask that question in an interesting way,
not at all. It's like thescenario was enough of sort of tantalizing
for Alan Brennert as the writer,but then chose not to really explore it
at all because they don't even reallyhave the conversation of like why should I

(08:45):
have to die? Like it's it'sjust like, okay, we're gonna try
and keep you alive. I didn'teven realize that when she walked into that
airlock that was the end of theepisode. They gave it such little emotional
weight. Well, yeah, therewere no emotions. I mean, was
the main guy unable to have emotions? I mean he, I guess there

(09:05):
was. It just felt like hewas so wooden the whole time, and
I was like, okay, ishe like a company a little bit more?
Yeah, I didn't get the samestoicism will get you somewhere is anything
interesting about you? And this guywas not. He's just some pilot.
I don't know where he came fromor where he's going or in some girl.

(09:26):
Okay, if you're going to writea character piece, you have to
have characters. And if he wasan android, Mike, wouldn't it not
matter if he were on the thing? I couldn't he just hurl himself into
space and then like another ship comeby and get him, Like that's what
I like. There's no scenario thatmakes sense here that they could explain this,

(09:48):
like, oh, we can't getrid of the extra weight. We
can't get rid of the extra suppliesbecause that would mean people on the planet
died. Like you're telling me youcan't take like a hundred pounds off.
It's all one giant pack. It'slike there's too many logic leaps that are
just like base level logical leaps forme to not be able to get past.
Like it's the scene where she becomeslike she's resigned to the fact she's

(10:11):
sitting in a chair that I immediatelywent throw out that chair, Come on
everything, When when she first showedup, he like contacts his like superior,
and my immediate thought was, okay, that is jettisonable, Like clearly
this is where this is going.You have to start thinking, now what
do I need to get rid ofin order to save this girl? And

(10:31):
it's so easy to have done,Like at least, if you're going to
make it a no win scenario,make it a no win scenario. They
didn't even bother with that. Theygave us the possibility of of I mean,
I guess because that's dramatic. Butbut if your solutions don't equal the
fucking drama, who care? Idon't know. I think my favorite thing

(10:54):
is the way I would write thisin a comedy scenario is like the woman's
looking around like what about that?No, no, I need that?
Like what about that? No?No, Like I need that too,
Like take only what you need tosurvive. Like he's got like this giant
espresso machine on the countertop, likeno, but I need my espresso.
Like there you go, Like that'sfunny as hell, Like he just like

(11:15):
is so oblivious that she's gonna diebecause he's an idiot. But no,
this is just this this lamp.Yeah, it's instead it's just like nope,
I just we just don't care.We just we just don't care.
Let's just kill this character because thatwould be shocking exactly how entire episode was
based on the bummer ending, right, and the bummer ending creating an emotion

(11:39):
within me, which it doesn't like. I was just disappointed, Like there's
the emotion that you got out ofme was not like shock or horror.
It was like, okay, likewhat a bummer. I need to care
about you in order to feel badwhen you're gone. Yeah, it's not
enough to just go one. Humanlife is as equal as I don't care,

(12:00):
invest us in some way. ForGod's sake, you can't lament a
character who isn't a character at all. Right, That's what like early two
thousands horror movies that did not understand, like I don't care about these characters
because like I know that I'm notsupposed to because you don't care either,
and you've done nothing to get meto care about them. So I just
want to see them die, andlike you know where that they you know

(12:22):
where this episode is going. Themoment it's on and you see this girl
show up, you're like she's gonnadie, Like that that's the show's idea
of a good twist. Their thoughtprocess, obviously, was that the ending
will justify everything that comes before,Like, we don't really have to there's
no heavy lifting involved. We justset up the scenario, set up the
complications and how they are or arenot solved, and then the ending will

(12:46):
be such a bummer or like slapin the face to the viewers that they'll
forgive everything that came before. Girl, we call it a gut punch ending.
Yeah, yeah, what I mean, I guess because we can't do
the twist endings this season. MaybeI guess we go for the gut punch
I guess, sure, Yeah,yeah, twist twist endings are out killing

(13:07):
characters with want and abandon is in. Yeah, that's what's hot this year.
It must be because coherent storytelling isdefinitely not on the docket for this
year, especially not an eighty ninefor this show. And speaking of incoherent
storytelling, let's talk about the seventeenthepisode, Stranger in Possum Meadows. For

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Danny Wilkins, a sunny afternoon isa world of adventure. He's a typical
boy who likes nothing better than followinga trail just to see where he goes.
But today that trail will lead Dannythrough a private reserve which lies just
inside the borders of the Twilight Zone. So this episode air January fourteenth,

(13:54):
nineteen eighty nine. It is directedby Sterla Gunnerson, written by Paul Chitlick
and Jeremy Bertrand, and it starsSteve Canley as a small child who meets
an alien. Yeah, alien questionmark, intergalactic species acquirer, the collector,
one might even say, indeed,and yeah, that's it, good

(14:18):
night, folks, that's really it, that's really it. Yeah. Twist
is that he's an alien. Goodbye. Okay. I didn't see that coming
at all. This mean, thisweird guy in the middle of nowhere is
actually an alien. Weird the manwho speaks very stiltedly Mike Farrell from mash

(14:41):
It was not, but I cansaw you would think that. I really
thought it was him the whole episode. Yeah, And you know, this
episode started out and it wasn't necessarilypromising, but when the kid's toy boat
was floating into that fog, Ithought, oh man, we're gonna get
like a different world, Like he'sgonna wander way and something. It will

(15:01):
be going back and forth with themom trying to find him and like this
new whatever it is, and allthat promise just went out the goddamn window.
Nope, there was just missed onthe ground that day. Yeah,
yeah, that whole stay away fromPossum Meadows thing And it's like, oh,
what is possum Meadows? Oh thatsounds like it could be, you
know, possibly a pet cemetery orsomething something anything, something's forbidden and bad

(15:26):
that that will come to bear onthe drama that we're supposed to be engaging
in. It's just an over makeupto actor from Dallas. Yeah, who
would have thought? Yeah he almosthad that, Like I know, his
forehead wasn't nearly as tall, buthe had kind of a forbidden zone alien
thing going for him. But itwas just like it was like textbook how

(15:50):
do you make someone look like analien when you have no budget? Right,
Like, dress them in weird clothesthat are too bright, maybe,
puts more makeup than they need ontheir face to look them, make them
look kind of orangy and strange.Make his teeth super white, Like I
guess he looks like an alien?Sure? Sure, why not? They're

(16:11):
telling us he is he is,but we're not going to spend one dime
on makeup this season. So getthat out of your heads when you start
writing your Alien episodes. Oh andman, oh man, does the kid
have a thick Canadian accent? Doesn'the? And he's he's so expressive,
I think in the in a serieswith an incredible amount of bad child acting,
this one, this kid he's theworst, right, Yeah, the

(16:34):
most stilted delivery. You can justlike that. You can hear, you
can almost hear the director saying theline and then the kids saying the line.
Yeah. He was last seen inBilly Madison as the tenth grader,
So yeah, that was a hardrole. A lot of people were up
for that role. Long and fruitfulHollywood was a buzz, long and fruitful

(16:55):
career for that one. Everyone's sendingin moundition tapes. Do you have a
callback? I bet this kid didnot? This kid new somebody? Go
ahead, go ahead. I don'twant to be a dork, but how
does this kid? So we shouldprobably say so. Basically, the guy
is one of these interstellar collectors,as we said, and he's collecting the

(17:21):
kid and the dog and I don'tknow, frogs or whatever. How does
the kid escape? Does the guyjust jettison them out of the ship,
or because it's just like the kidjust shows up. It's it's Spielbergian.
It's best left unseen, though,did you get on the ship? You'll

(17:42):
never know. It's it's just it'sit's too wild. It would blow your
mind. Our minds would be ableto comprehend how that happens. Yeah,
I mean this is the one episodethey thought too much. Yeah, they
were like, we don't want topair it back just so weird, understand.
I mean, I didn't like lookdown and miss something today. No,
no, okay, they literally don'tsay how the kid comes back.

(18:04):
He's just there in the grass,you know why, because it would be
too big of a bummer if thealien went away with the child inside of
his spaceship. You can murder thewoman in the previous episode, but you
can't steal the child from the motherand Mike. To be fair, though,
haven't we seen that our culture reallydoesn't you know, care about women.
Hasn't true had brutally apparent to youin the last you know, a

(18:27):
couple of days, So they cansteal the host. They can kill the
host body, but they must leavethe fetus. Okay, all right,
God have priorities here. Yeah,that's if they had. If the alien
had taken the mother and left thechild defend for itself, defenseless in the
middle of nowhere, that would havebeen unacceptable. Yeah, but then nobody

(18:48):
would have helped it either or that'sthat's my point. Well, that's fair.
Yeah, well that was a personsince conception. Correct. Yeah,
it's a pizza when you put it, put your hands on the dough cherry.
Yeah, that's how you do it. That chicken was fried while it
was on the bone. That's howwe eat fried chicken. Eat bite the
chicken, and the chicken is justcooked. That's the way it works.

(19:11):
There's no such thing as a waitingperiod. I think for me, it's
an okay episode, but it justdoesn't offer much in the way of substance.
No, Like, it's not bad, right, and I think that's
kind of they've been. The lastcouple episodes have been bad. Like the
last episode is a bad episode isa dumb, factually problematic without any sort

(19:37):
of reasoning why it does things.I mean, this episode has the I
don't know how the kid gets backin and alive at the end. But
it's not terrible. It's not activelyoffensive, which is what we've been running
into lately, right right, whichat this point is that like all we
can ask for is don't be activelyoffensive anymore. Yeah, yeah, don't
don't. Like you can tell yourgentle story with no point as long as

(20:02):
you don't do something egregiously dumb atany point during it. Yeah. I
mean again, it feels like I'veseen this story before. I mean,
the whole idea of like a humanzoo where you know what, first episode
of Star Trek the Cage, right, So it's like, Okay, I've
seen this kind of stuff, andeven this whole idea of like taking the
kid, it felt very like Gammerato me, you know, Gammera versus

(20:23):
Gearon when they climb aboard the shipand the ship takes them to the planet
with the Midwestern aliens. You knowit just I've seen this to before,
and I've seen it done better.It feels it feels almost like, you
know, Richard Kelly's going to adaptthis and stretch it out to two hours
and you know, try to likeadd weird shit to it just to make

(20:45):
it deep. Hey, Mike,don't forget you've you've seen this idea on
this show in children's zoo. Yeah, that's true with a human zoo,
like there you go. And thatwas directed by a Better West Craven Yeah,
yeah, better how long? Andthat was an interestitia one, like,
yeah, get out and make thepoint. Yeah exactly. We don't

(21:06):
have to have dinner with the guywho's stealing the children. No, right,
yeah, Scout, that's an interestingname. Oh yeah, thank you,
my father Atticus gave me that name. Oh, twilight Zone, Why
have you forsaken me? Yeah?Do we honestly like we have what two,

(21:26):
four, six, eight ten,We have eleven episodes left before the
end of the show, genuinely,do we think that even half of them
will be good? Or do wethink at this point it's like if we're
basing it on what we've gotten sofar. Yeah, no, I'm very
curious because we've got another Harlan Ellisoncoming out right towards the end. It's

(21:48):
Harlan Ellison, directed by Paul Lynch, who I think we saw a lot
of his stuff in the first season, So like, is this the last
hurrah? Or will they have justremoved the teeth from this. You know,
the article that I read about thesort of production of the show when
they decided that they were going tosplit season two up and throw some into

(22:10):
season three and then pad out therest of it. Like, I don't
honestly know which episodes were holdovers fromthe previous season, so theoretically we might
get a couple of good episodes.Oh, I mean, if anyone had
any mercy at all in the runningof this show, they would have said,
let's at least go out with abang and save everything for the last

(22:30):
few That's I know, that's hopefulin the face of very little hope.
But I'm gonna I'm gonna continue toOh don't want for hope. It is
forbidden that these lands. I thinkif Tales from the Crypt has taught us
anything father them alone, it's thatthere is no God. I mean,

(22:55):
the Twilight Zone did not pull upout of the nose dive it or not,
excuse me, Tales from the Cryptdidn't pull up out of the nosedive.
It crashed into the ground with inctacularly. But yeah, but not enough.
That's the thing. Like, ifthey had really gone for it,
a Viking funeral. Then you know, I would have been ecstatic, but

(23:15):
and you don't care about anything anymore. Yeah, I honestly worry that this
is where this is going. Isthis kind of like limps along to the
finish line? You know, thisis how the world ends, not with
a bang, but with a whimperslike that's I think that's where this is
going. So stupid. Oh theyHarlan ellis an episode as crazy as a

(23:36):
Soup Sandwich, which was a funnyshort story. But I'm I'm petrified at
the adaptation that we're going to endure. So, speaking of enduring things,
on the next episode of this show, we're gonna be talking about Street of
Street, Street of Shadows, andsomething in the walls. Cool. Sound

(23:59):
fun? They could be good,could be, could be. I've watched
ahead they're not. Oh well great, But don't stop. Don't let that
stop you from tuning into the nextepisodes. Want to hear three idiots complain
about a show that nobody gave ashit about. Come on back next both

(24:19):
we got more for you, somuch so than they fucking canceled it,
and just throw a third season togetherfrom scraps. This is the Twilight Zone
in sausage for scraps from a caveuntil then? Where can people find you?
Hosted the Projection Booth podcast, misterMike Waite, Well, you may

(24:42):
or may not have heard, butI am the host of the Projection Booth
podcast and you can find that atProjection Booth podcast dot com. And you
you're Chris, and I talk aboutBarney Miller on the Barney Miller Podcast and
you can hear us talk about rankingand bass on the Ranking on Bass Podcasts,
So enjoy that. How about you, Father Malone? Where can people

(25:03):
find you? You can find meover at father Malone dot com, where
there are links to my podcast,Dark Destinations, it's half hour radio drama
I do. There's links to myYouTube channel which you can see my sort
of cuckoo animations and video essays onmovies. And you can also hear me
occasionally on the Culture Cast and otherthings. See stashi dot com is where

(25:26):
you can find me c stacchiw dotcom. Things that I work on that
they've already mentioned, along with mymain show, The Culture Cast, where
we talk about movies, and thenthe other main show, Scary Stories We
Tell, where we talk about weirdthings that are weird and will stay weird,
so come be weird with us.As for this show, twilight Zone

(25:47):
eighty five dot com Dreams for saleon all your podcast platforms. Big thanks
as always to roxy Drive and NeutronDreams for the awesome music for this show.
We'll catch on the next episode.M