Season 1, Episode 19: The Purple Testament
 

Season 1, Episode 19: The Purple Testament

Airdate: 12/02/60
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: Richard L. Bare
Starring: Dick York, William Reynolds

Lieutenant Fitzgerald, serving in the Phillipines during Word War 2 develops the ability to predict who will die next by seeing a strange glow on the faces of his platoon members. Who will be the next to die?

Post your thoughts, reviews and comments about the episode and/or BD & DVD release for The Purple Testament here!

Rod Sterling (and the other writers) introduced several gifts/abilities in this season such as to be one to see the future and perfectly mimic other people and this was the first that I really wouldn't want to have as there is no way I'll be off to look at someone with that kind of knowledge.

As this was aired only six years after the Korean War had come to an end, it probably meant a lot more to audiences then than now and is one that really can be updated and set in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

Good episode. I think it manages to sell the horror and the waste of life that comes hand in hand with war without being graphic.

Some of this episode reminded me a little of the experience of watching a war movie in which you can pretty much identify who is not going to make it to the final credits. If someone shows a friend a picture of their 'girl back home', you know they're going to get shot in the next scene!

It's a solid enough episode, but it doesn't really move me -- although there are some very lyrical passages from Serling, particularly that opening narration (and what a chilling quotation of "The Army Goes Rolling Along" in the underscore!).

I wish the episode had ended as the jeep was driving off -- the subsequent scene about "was that an explosion or thunder?" feels unnecessary to me. Ending it at "I doubt it" would, I think, be a far stronger choice.

At any rate, though, not bad -- just not too memorable, in my opinion. I think the wounded soldier's sudden death in the hospital doesn't elicit a strong enough reaction -- then again, as the orderly says, "They go real fast, sometimes, real fast." Strongest when considered as a tribute to the brave men (and, today, women) of the armed forces... surely every one of them is "something special." And, perhaps, a reminder that the strange light Fitzgerald sees is, in a sense, shining in all of our faces, since none of us will live forever. It's another entry into the Zone's freqent meditations on the nature and inevitability of death.

(Also, more trivially: nice to see Dick York in something other than 'Bewitched'! Really nice to hear about his work with the homeless -- I never knew about that.)

(And I suspect the "war stinks" line would have been something stronger had it been written today!)

Especially if it was on HBO!