I've been taking advantage of Netflix and re-watching some of my favorite episodes of the original Twilight Zone series. Last night, while cruising through the list of episodes, I noticed one I had never seen - The Little People.
This is how Netflix captioned the episode "On a desolate planet, two astronauts discover a society populated by beings only 1/100th their size. One astronaut decides to rule the society as God." Okay...and it stars Claude Akins! Hell yeah!
Our heroes are trying to fix their ship. Peter Craig (Joe Maross) the navigator, is a grouser. William Fletcher (Claude Akins) is the can-do captain. When Fletcher notices that Craig hasn’t touched his water supply, he confronts him. Craig shows him what he has found - a civilization people (“no bigger than ants”) living in a sheltered area in a nearby valley. They have a high tech society, complete with bulldozers and Victorian-style homes. They also have the misfortune of making first contact with Craig. He has decide to set himself up as their god. A very angry god, at that, who occasionally stamps on their towns in order to make himself feel powerful. The little people build him a life-sized statue overnight, which pretty much pushes his sanity over the edge. When Fletcher fixes the ship, Craig refuses to leave, threatening to shoot Fletcher. Fletcher leaves, warning Craig that he will go made from loneliness. By all appearances, Craig is already mayor (or maybe god) of Crazy Town. While Craig is ranting about how he is going to lord over the little people, another spaceship lands. The crew of this ship are enormous humans, towering over the mountains. One picks Craig up, accidentally killing him. As the giants leave, the little people pull down the statue of Craig.
Science and logic mean nothing in this episode, of course. Creatures the size of the giant aliens would collapse under their own weight. And, the scale of the little people and their civilization changes from shot to shot. At one point, Craig holds a dump truck in his hand, a tiny speck in his palm that requires a microscope to be seen. In another, his foot is just a little larger than the house it crushes. It is not explained how this society developed technology that looks just like that on Earth. It is not explained how they managed to construct a statue that, to them, would be miles high in the space of one night. And so on.
But, as an allegorical fantasy, it works pretty well. What would a vastly superior race/culture do when they find a weaker one? Some, like Fletcher, ask for forgiveness for the damage that has been done. Others, people like Craig, see it as an opportunity to play god. We see this happening every day. And, like Craig, those who try to twist others to their way of living often come to a bad end.
The episode also looks at what happens when people are able to actualize their dreams born of personal inadequacies. Craig feels like everyone is out to get him, that is a "little man" of no importance. Of course, he thinks this is a great injustice. But, when he finally gets is chance to be a "big man" he can only torment the little people. He is only satisfied when they do something that strokes his stunted ego.
Akins is good as the no-nonsense commander. He sells Fletcher's professionalism, as well as his genuine concern for Craig. Maross' performance, unfortunately, is a significant weakness of the episode. He plays his character so broadly, so manically, one wonders how he every got into the space program. He’s basically a dick from scene one. His only development is to become an unbalanced and homicidal dick at the end. Even with the short runtime (24 minutes) the character of Craig needed some subtlety. In particular, the final ranting scene - where he tells the little people that he has plans for them - really didn't need his forced cackling and rolling around on the ground.
The special effects are pretty bad. The Twilight Zone was never known for its effects; here, we get some bad blue screens and one sub-Godzilla moment of a boot crushing a miniature home. While some Twilight Zone episodes have impressive images (e.g., bookworm Burgess Meredith sitting the bombed out ruins of a library, his shattered glasses in his hand), modern fans of The Twilight Zone don't watch it for the effects; we watch it for the stories.
Is this one of the best episodes? No. The problems with the Craig character and Maross' portrayal are enough to relegate this to the ranks of the weaker episodes. However, Rod Serling and his writers (this episode was written by Serling) knew how to tell thematically rich stories in a limited amount of time. If you can get past the bad effects, character and acting problems with Maross and the more obvious plot holes, you might just find yourself enjoying this tale of the temptations and dangers of playing god. I know I did.
I found the episode on Youtube and embedded it below. Check it out
As Terrence Stamp said in an interview once, "We like to think we'd be Superman, but in reality, if we had that power, we'd all be General Zod."
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