Description: Season 4, Episode 2
Air Date: January 10, 1963
Plot Summary: A navy ship stumbles across a mysteriously sunken submarine and the connection to one of their crew.
Review: This episode really epitomizes the dragging that I was talking about in the last review. The plot simply is not strong enough to be stretched out for an hour; it would have been a more enjoyable and memorable experience had this been condensed into a half-hour. I'm not saying this episode is bad necessarily, but it had serious pacing issues and a lackluster payoff.
All that happens is a navy ship detects a strange banging noise on the sonar. When they further investigate they discover a sunken submarine that was actually from WWII. I do like when the captain says that whoever is aboard the submarine "dies damn hard." That's a great line--might have to put that one alongside potato pancake. While this is happening, another crew member is going crazy and seeing ghosts. As it would turn out, this particular officer was the only surviving crew member of the submarine when it sank. He believes it was his mistakes that let them die and feels guilty that he was ironically the only survivor. The weakest aspect of this episode is we don't get much in the way of resolution as the officer goes apeshit and seemingly drowns himself as a way of returning with the dead crewmen. Divers explore the sub and find that it was a piece of swaying equipment making the banging rather than any ghosts; they do throw in the caveat that a dead body did look like it was banging too. Ehh...they could have worked this material differently. The mystery is not hard to guess at all and the final act is weak. They appear to have spent a larger budget making this episode, so it's all the more disappointing in that respect. I do like the themes, however, I wish they handled it more intimately and to the point.
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