Astronaut crash-lands on a planet with friendly aliens who it turns out have an ulterior motive in creating a nice place for him to live--it's a cage in a zoo! OK, this has been done many, many times before in both visual and written SF but it is a fun TZ episode, especially for the time-capsule effect of the 1960 house and the ideas of what we might find on Mars.
Another poster mentions this episode as being just like the Star Trek episode "The Cage". Not really. However, the use of the same actress in both episodes is kind of strange... The only similarity in the theme of this TZ episode to the ST episode is that the protagonist is lured into a cage. Roddenberry wrote the ST episode and a writer named Paul Fairman wrote the original TZ story with the teleplay being written by Serling. There is no evidence that these are connected. You can find this theme of aliens with ulterior motives everywhere: Remember, "To Serve Man"? A fun TZ with MacDowell giving an eccentric performance and a Mars that no one would believe. Not the best episode but definitely not the worst.
Another poster mentions this episode as being just like the Star Trek episode "The Cage". Not really. However, the use of the same actress in both episodes is kind of strange... The only similarity in the theme of this TZ episode to the ST episode is that the protagonist is lured into a cage. Roddenberry wrote the ST episode and a writer named Paul Fairman wrote the original TZ story with the teleplay being written by Serling. There is no evidence that these are connected. You can find this theme of aliens with ulterior motives everywhere: Remember, "To Serve Man"? A fun TZ with MacDowell giving an eccentric performance and a Mars that no one would believe. Not the best episode but definitely not the worst.
