Remembering The Biblical Twilight Zone Episode “Probe 7, Over and Out”

Are you at all familiar with the term “shaggy god story”?

Coined by writer Brian Aldiss in the 1960s, the term is a play on “shaggy dog story” (i.e. a long-winded tale with an anticlimactic ending) that refers to a narrative, ancient aliens-style trope in which biblical elements are funneled through the lens of science fiction. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction defines it as a “crudely rationalized Biblical myth.” The website continues: “A typical specimen would derive its entire impact, or lack of impact, from the revelation that two experimental lifeforms released to populate an empty world are in fact Adam and Eve.”

One of the most notable examples of the “shaggy god story” in action can be found in the fifth and final season of the original Twilight Zone, which airs regularly on SYFY (click here for scheduling details). The episode in question? “Probe 7, Over and Out.”

The Twilight Zone episode “Probe 7, Over and Out” turned an iconic Bible story into a sci-fi yarn

Written by series creator Rod Serling and directed by Ted Post, “Probe 7” follows Colonel Cook (Richard Basehart), a lone astronaut stranded on an unknown planet several lightyears from a home planet slowly creeping toward thermonuclear destruction. With a broken arm and no conceivable way of repairing his damaged ship, Cook resigns himself to a lonely existence on a habitable, yet profoundly lonely, world.

That is until he meets another stranded traveler, a woman calling herself Norda (Antoinette Bower). Despite a language barrier and severe distrust on Norda’s part, the two decide to keep each other company and set out for a lush, garden-like area near Cook’s crash site. In the episode’s final moments, we’re given several twists at once. First, the mystery planet full of dirt is christened “Earth” by way of Norda’s mother tongue. Then Colonel Cook shares his first name, Adam, with Norda, whose given moniker is — you guessed it! — Eve. We’ve been watching the Book of Genesis — or at least a genre interpretation of it — kick off before our very eyes, and we didn’t even know it!

As they make their way to what will someday be known as the Garden of Eden, Norda plucks an apple off a nearby tree and hands it to Cook. No snakes, no temptation, no divine punishment — just an act of pure generosity between two individuals unwittingly kicking off the entire human race. The unspoken irony, of course, is the fact that despite the chance at a clean slate, at a world devoid of hate and wholesale murder, the species Adam and Eve are destined to birth will one day repeat the apocalyptic mistakes of Cook’s home planet.

Talk about original sin!

The Twilight Zone airs regularly on SYFY, check out the official schedule for details.