One Step Beyond-Volume 10

Rating:
Summary: Easily the best volume in the One Step Beyond DVD series
Review: I don't think any other volume of the One Step Beyond collection can top Volume 10, as it contains four stellar episodes from the show's third and final season, one of which is my all-time favorite. You start off with To Know the End (which originally aired on November 1, 1960), in which a young woman knows years beforehand the exact time and place of an Allied raid on the coast of France during World War II. On vacation on the French coast, she wakes up to the sound of warfare and watches as a dying officer is brought into the house; the soldier calls her name and tells her he loves her, but the vision disappears when she reaches down to touch the dying man's brow. A few months later, she meets the man of her vision, promptly falls in love with him, yet agonizes over the vivid "dream" she had of his death. You can probably imagine how this story plays out, once war is declared against Germany.

Next up is a true classic called The Trap, which originally aired on November 15, 1960. Mike Kellin gives an amazing performance as Dominic DiNovio, a perfectly normal man who begins having fits of some kind; he struggles to breathe, calls out the name of another woman (not his wife) to save him, and even begins writing letters with no conscious awareness of what he is doing. I won't spoil the ending of this episode for you by telling you the explanation - this is one incredibly good episode.

Tonight at 12:17 is yet another classic. In this episode, which originally aired on December 6, 1960, a pregnant woman begins hearing the sound of a sick airplane every night at the same time. Each night, the sound of the faltering engine grows stronger, and she is more terrified each night that the plane is going to crash into the house. The only problem is that no one else hears anything, and her husband is sure she is imagining things. Don't go thinking this is an entirely predictable story, as the ending has quite a twist to it.

This volume closes with what I consider to be the ultimate episode of One Step Beyond: Where Are They? (original airdate: December 13, 1960) This episode tells the tale of two mysterious appearances (as opposed to disappearances). In the first part, we are taken to the small town of Chico, California where, as dependable as clockwork, giant stones fall straight down from the sky at the same time each day. The local news man calls in a couple of highly skeptical big city writers to witness the phenomenon, and they are in for quite a surprise. They just so happen to arrive on the day when "the Ghost" (who claims to be causing the stones to drop) demonstrates his victory over gravity by making some of the stones float as they drop straight down from nothing. "The Ghost" was never heard from again, nor did any more rocks fall from the sky, but host John Newland informs us there is even more to the story of Chico, California than meets the eye. Then you get the fascinating story of Charles Elton, a man who seemingly comes out of nowhere, demonstrates a "gasoline pill" that turns water into fuel, and then disappears off the face of the earth (despite efforts by the government to find him or any proof of his existence). Having demonstrated his miraculous pill to a Cabinet member and a group of scientists in 1917, he simply disappears when the men confer briefly among themselves. This miraculous fuel source was, according to Elton, incredibly inexpensive to make, and the excited scientists and Cabinet member are left mystified at his disappearance, for he was careful not to leave any sort of sample for them to analyze for themselves. What makes this episode work so well is the fact that One Step Beyond supposedly dramatized documented stories. True or not, it's a fabulous story, and this is an absolutely incredible volume in the One Step Beyond DVD series. As always, go by the titles listed on the DVD cover and not the product description of individual volumes.