On Thursday We Leave for Home

"On Thursday We Leave for Home"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 4 Episode 16
Directed by	Buzz Kulik
Written by	Rod Serling
Featured music	Stock
Production code	4868
Original air date	May 2, 1963
Guest appearance(s)
James Whitmore: Captain William Benteen Tim O'Connor: Colonel Sloane James Broderick: Al Baines Paul Langton: George Jo Helton: Julie Mercedes Shirley: Joan Russ Bender: Hank Danny Kulick: Jo-Jo (as Daniel Kulick) Madge Kennedy: Colonist John Ward: Colonist Shirley O'Hara: Colonist Tony Benson: Colonist (as Anthony Benson) Lew Gallo: Lt. Engle
Episode chronology

"On Thursday We Leave for Home" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

Opening narration

“

This is William Benteen, who officiates on a disintegrating outpost in space. The people are a remnant society who left the Earth looking for a Millennium, a place without war, without jeopardy, without fear, and what they found was a lonely, barren place whose only industry was survival. And this is what they've done for three decades: survive; until the memory of the Earth they came from has become an indistinct and shadowed recollection of another time and another place. One month ago a signal from Earth announced that a ship would be coming to pick them up and take them home. In just a moment we'll hear more of that ship, more of that home, and what it takes out of mind and body to reach it. This is the Twilight Zone.

”

Plot

Thirty years before, in 1991, an expedition to the hellish desert planet V9-Gamma was stranded, and the 113 colonists had no choice but to begin their small settlement there, under the perpetual daylight of two suns. The group's current leader, Captain Benteen, was 15 when the expedition first landed. He maintains a totalitarian grip upon the group of (now) 187 men, women and children; he believes that his strict discipline prevents them from giving up hope in the harsh, unyielding environment. The children born on V9-Gamma hang on his every word when he tells them about the Earth, "a place of color ... with streams of water ... clouds, white billowy things ... night skies, like endless black velvet (that came out) when the Earth went to sleep ... darkness, that felt like a cool hand..."

When a rescue mission from Earth finally arrives, Benteen is at first as jubilant as the others, but then he quickly begins to raise objections to his loss of control over them. When Benteen tries to run a meeting about weight restrictions and documentation, the colonists are more interested in stories of modern Earth told by the rescue mission's Colonel Sloane. Sloane later tells one of his crew that Benteen is quite a guy, who kept his people alive, but that he "thinks he's a god, that we're bullying him out of his heaven." Benteen tells Sloane that "his" colonists are like children, who will want to stay in a group under his guidance on their return to Earth. He is shocked when they announce their own ideas for when they return, so he tries to persuade them to stay on V9-Gamma as Earth is a place of "violence... hatreds... jealousy... we will DIE". When they still choose to return home, Benteen announces that he will remain behind – alone if he must – despite Sloane's warning that no other ships will return.

On the day the colonists board the ship, Sloane and Benteen's second-in-command, Al Baines, search for Benteen to give him one last chance to change his mind, but he is nowhere to be found. After they give up and leave, he is seen to be hiding inside the cave that had sheltered his people. As the ship takes off, Benteen tells his stories of a garden like Earth to the children—as if they are still sitting with him. Then, remembering the beauty of Earth, he realizes that he wants to go home. He rushes out screaming for the ship to come back, but he is now stranded on V9-Gamma for the rest of his life, completely alone in the barren, lifeless deserts.

Closing narration

“

William Benteen, who had prerogatives: he could lead, he could direct, dictate, judge, legislate. It became a habit, then a pattern and finally a necessity. William Benteen, once a god, now a population of one.

”

Production notes

The rescue crew's ship and uniforms were leftover props from MGM's 1956 film Forbidden Planet.

When you see the captain in the cave near the power panel a few minutes into the episode, you can see a filming mistake where a microphone boom appears on the bottom right of the picture for some time.

A crew member shirt, also used in the episode "Death Ship" was offered at auction in late September 2015 by Profiles in History with an estimated value of US$1,000 to $1,500, with a winning bid of US$1,600.^[1]

References

↑ Hollywood Auction 74. California: Profiles in History. 2015. p. 358. Lot 1017. Shirt made for Forbidden Planet and used in Twilight Zone episodes. (CBS TV, 1959-1964) Vintage futuristic shirt consisting of an iridescent gray blue short sleeve shirt with zipper front closure, 2-breast pockets, and soft sculpture bright red fabric crescents attached to shoulders. Ultimately unused in Forbidden Planet, the shirt does appear in two episodes of The Twilight Zone; "Death Ship" and "On Thursday We Leave for Home". With minor fading and discoloration to some areas. In vintage very good to fine. $1,000 – $1,500. (Auction took place September 29, 30, October 1, 2015.)

Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)
DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0

External links

The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes

Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgment Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"

Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "The Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble with Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"

Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"

Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"

Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander with Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"

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