Tales of Tomorrow: The Search For The Flying Saucer

Tales of Tomorrow: The Search For The Flying Saucer

Originally broadcast on ABC on Friday, November 9, 1951 at 9:30 PM ET.

Plot: A reporter comes to New Mexico looking for proof of flying saucer landings.

Analysis: Gee, what could THIS be based off of?

Seriously though, this is one of the better Tales of Tomorrow scripts, but it suffers from time limitations. A story like this really needed at least an hour to be developed and flesh out the characters and their motivations. That being said, it is really quite good and a step up from some of the sub-par scripts we have been getting from the show.

It does also kind of make me wonder about the ties of television and the development of the science fiction genre around this time. Tales of Tomorrow is, as we have said, the first sci-fi television anthology series and one of the first to try and open up sci-fi to adult fans. Kids were buying into this stuff hook, line and sinker thanks to Captain Video on DuMont and the recent releases of movies like The Day The Earth Stood Still and The Thing From Another World. Truth be told, it is fair to suppose that these stories were not just creations of fertile imaginations but of recent world developments.

The science part of the science fiction comes from the leaps and bounds science was making in this time, best exampled by the splitting of the atom in Los Alamos, New Mexico. True, the power of the atom could level cities, but if you could harness that much power and channel it, then you would have a whole new means of powering the world. Obviously, that is something that will come up more and more as we go through the 1950s.

As for the other part of the story, the little green men visiting from other worlds that were capturing minds and imaginations, they too can be traced make to an incident in New Mexico and the basis for the plotline of the episode. In 1947, four years prior to this boom in science fiction, there was a crash of an object outside of Roswell, New Mexico. What exactly happened has been subject of debate ever since and I am not going to dip my toe into those waters. Suffice to say, the initial reports were enough to make people wonder what was out there. Take that and combine it with the leaps our own technologies were making and it is pretty easy to see why science fiction was becoming so popular around this time – purely because people were curious about both the possibilities of the unknown and what was becoming known. This too is something we will see more of as we go along.

The Bottom Line: As I have said, this story, while good, suffers from constraints of the media. That being said, this is also one of the few plots in the series so far to make any potential visitors look at least sympathetic. While not a classic television episode, the plot has enough promise for me to give a recommendation for the episode to be checked out.

The Search For The Flying Saucer is included with twelve other Tales of Tomorrow on Tales of Tomorrow: Collection Two (http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Tomorrow-Col....3581521 &sr=1-3). Take a look, if so interested, given it is not going to be too expensive these days.

Next time, we ride again with the Cisco Kid.