"I Shot an Arrow into the Air" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone

The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)

The Twilight Zone is an American anthology television series created by Rod Serling, which ran for five seasons on CBS from 1959 to 1964. The series consisted of unrelated episodes depicting paranormal, futuristic, dystopian, or simply disturbing events; each show typically featured a surprising...

.

Synopsis

A manned space flight crash lands on what the astronauts believe to be an unknown asteroid

Asteroid

Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...

. Their expectations of survival or rescue are bleak. Only four of the crew survive, one of whom is barely alive. After he dies, the three remaining men, Corey, Donlin, and Pierson decide to trek out into the barren desert to see if there is anything that might improve their chances of survival. When Corey and Donlin reconvene, it seems that Pierson is dead and Corey filched the water supply from his dead body. Donlin, the commanding officer, forces Corey at gunpoint to lead him to Pierson's body.

They find Pierson, still barely alive, who with his last bit of strength draws a primitive diagram in the sand with his finger. Corey then kills Donlin and sets out alone, confident that he will survive longer now that he has all of the water supply. Corey later sees a sign for Reno, and then sees telephone poles, which were what Pierson had attempted to draw before he died. Realizing that they had in fact never left Earth and that he had killed his partners for nothing, Corey breaks down weeping.

Episode notes

• When Serling first started collecting material for The Twilight Zone he offered an open call for scripts. Anyone could submit a script based on any science-fiction idea they had. The results of this open call were disastrous:

Despite this, Serling did end up producing an idea from an industry outsider when he paid Madelon Champion $500 for the idea on which this episode was based, an idea that came up in a social conversation between the two. Though Serling was frequently approached with suggestions for the series, such a purchase was never repeated.

• Much of this episode was filmed in Death Valley National Park
  Death Valley National Park
  Death Valley National Park is a national park in the U.S. states of California and Nevada located east of the Sierra Nevada in the arid Great Basin of the United States. The park protects the northwest corner of the Mojave Desert and contains a diverse desert environment of salt-flats, sand dunes,...
  
  , particularly around Zabriskie Point
  Zabriskie Point
  Zabriskie Point is a part of Amargosa Range located in east of Death Valley in Death Valley National Park in the United States noted for its erosional landscape...
  
  .

• In addition to the usual opening and closing narration, this episode features a rare bit of narration from Serling in the middle of the show -- after Corey kills Donlin, Serling narrates Corey's travels through the desert landscape.

• The title of the episode comes from the opening line of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...
  
  's "The Arrow and the Song": "I shot an arrow into the air, it fell to earth I knew not where." Serling also used this title for a prospective Twilight Zone pilot episode that was eventually shot, in modified form, as "The Gift
  The Gift (The Twilight Zone)
  "The Gift" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.-Synopsis:A humanoid alien crash-lands outside a mountain village just across the Texas-Mexico border. He accidentally kills a police officer and is wounded by another. When he reaches a village bar, he collapses...
  
  ".

• The plot idea of astronauts thinking they had crashed on an unknown planet, only to discover that in fact they had been on Earth
  Earth
  Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
  
   all along, would be adapted by Rod Serling
  Rod Serling
  Rodman Edward "Rod" Serling was an American screenwriter, novelist, television producer, and narrator best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his science fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen and helped form...
  
   in his work on the initial screenplay of Planet of The Apes
  Planet of the Apes (1968 film)
  Planet of the Apes is a 1968 American science fiction film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, based on the 1963 French novel La Planète des singes by Pierre Boulle. The film stars Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, James Whitmore, James Daly and Linda Harrison...
  
  .

• This is one of several episodes from Season One with its opening title sequence plastered over with the opening for Season Two. This was done during the Summer of 1961 to help the season one shows fit in with the new look the show had taken during the following season.

Further reading

• Full video of the episode at CBS.com
• DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1593931360
• Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0970331090