Death Ship story
Three astronauts discover exact duplicates of their spaceship and themselves on a distant planet. Directed by: Don Medford. Story by: Richard Matheson.
15 total · 7 major · 7 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| coming to terms with one's own death | major | After reading a telegram notifying his wife he that he had died in the line of duty, Mike came to embrace that they he was dead and looked forward to being reunited with his family in the afterlife. Ted ultimately followed suit, but Captain Ross stubbornly refused to accept this reality. |
| commander and subordinate | major | Captain Ross quarreled with two men under his charge over the best course of action to take given their strange circumstance. |
| ghost ship | major | According to the closing narration, the flying saucer was much like the Flying Dutchman of legend. |
| stubbornness | major | Spelled out in the closing narration was that the reason for everything that occurred, was in fact Captain Ross' stubborn refusal to accept his own demise. |
| the afterlife | major | It transpires that the three men were, in fact, dead spirits re-enacting their final hours over and over again. |
| what if I caught a glimpse of the future | major | The three space surveyors were shown a future in which they were dead, and this fact dictated their actions for the remainder of the story. |
| what if I repeated a portion of my life over again | major | It transpires that, because of their Captain's stubbornness, the three men were in fact stuck in an afterlife and repeating their dying incident over and over again. |
| father and daughter | minor | Ted encountered his young daughter in a dreamworld of some sort. |
| flying saucer | minor | Captain Ross and his crew manned the flying saucer E-89. |
| human overpopulation | minor | That the Earth was overpopulated was casually stated in the opening narration. |