William Mason stars in a Michael Healy story that is ultimately about abduction by alien life forms and their possibly nefarious duplication of humans. Are they planning to take over the world... or is it something else? It’s definitely not your typical Suspense story. It is low-level science fiction at a time when such topics were popular. There were attempts to mimic the success and style of television’s Twilight Zone, even on Suspense. Unfortunately, this production does not come close to measuring up to Suspense standards or that of TZ.
But there’s a twist to the story that makes it a bit creative when it is learned what their real plans are. It modern computer terms, are they making a backup copy of the human race?
Astronaut Thomas Manning is assigned to a space mission to investigate the disappearance of two previous astronauts. His wife, Mary, fears he will also disappear. When his vehicle gets to its desired distance he reports feeling a “blue rapture.” He sees something glowing and his spacecraft is heading toward it, and he loses control. Something must have happened, as he wakes up at the base hospital with a painful headache, exhausted. The reactions of his superiors to him, and especially by his wife, Mary, are strangely wooden, functional, essentially at arms-length. They’ve known him or been with him for so long that it is really odd that they don’t understand everyday little things about him. He realizes something is seriously wrong. He escapes the hospital and heads home where he sees Mary again. She is very cold to seeing him; she treats him like almost like an acquaintance. She warns him to get away, and the military personnel arrive to take him away. He protests… and is carted away. But there is a different Major Manning already inside the house. The man they took away was the real Manning, but it seems everyone in the program has been replaced by aliens studying human life by taking the forms and appearance of individuals involved in the space effort. Why?
The story can be confusing, especially if you are of the deeply-ingrained inclination that stories like this always have aliens wanting to take over the world. If that’s the case, you may miss an important aspect of this production. Classic radio enthusiast and researcher John Barker explains that this is not that kind of story. The last lines of dialogue set it straight.
The aliens are not planning an invasion of earth. They’re making “copies” of the people, “doppelgängers,” and on a separate second Earth. That German word literally means “double-goer.” A person has a doppelgänger when another person looks just like them but are not their biological twin or other genetic relation that would have physical similarities. The true Major Manning landed on a second Earth filled with doppelgängers. He notes that “the aliens in this story are quite benign, and a planned invasion of the Earth doesn't figure into the story at all.” As for why the two astronauts “disappeared” but are still being held on the second Earth and not returned, he states that the aliens “don't want their own existence known and fear the potential for an attempted invasion of their planet by our own Earth,” In the concluding lines of the drama, the second Earth military officers say that our Earth and their second Earth “might need each other” at some time in the future. These and the other explanations rule out invasion as a plotline. Are the two Earths and their doppelgänger populations like a flesh-and-bone computer backup mentioned earlier?
There are many examples of science fiction short stories and novels published throughout the full span of the 20th Century that involved some kind of “second Earth.” Many of such stories have characters in the one world that are the exact opposite of the way they are in the other. In this story, they are intended to be the same.
Aliens have been meeting earthlings on Suspense since their broadcast of The Outer Limit. The episode Re-Entry did not involve aliens, but it used the plot element about an astronaut who did not return. In that case, it was by choice because of the euphoria he felt on his mission and wanted to experience again. This is similar to the “blue rapture” described in this story.
The alien invasion theme is a common one in sci-fi media, and was used in Twilight Zone. The episodes that involved aliens infiltrating the population are the 1960 episodes The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street and People Are Alike All Over and the 1961’s Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up? The classic TZ about alien invasion is To Serve Man. John Barker, however, considers this Suspense episode as most closely resembling a 1963 TZ hour long episode, The Parallel. The episode was written by Rod Serling and has similar elements.
A Strange Day in May was author Michael Healy’s only Suspense script. He might be a “one-hit-wonder” for whom this was his only radio script and there are no indications of other writing in print or other media. Nor are there indications his name is a pseudonym.
Maurice Tarplin of Mysterious Traveler fame plays a newscaster in this story named… Maurice Tarplin.
The program was recorded on Wednesday, September 5, 1962. The start and finish time of the session is not known.
This episode was originally planned to air on September 2.
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https://archive.org/details/TSP620909
THE CAST
William Mason (Maj. Thomas Manning), Tony Darnay (Mary Manning), Reynold Osborn [Ted Osborn] (Col. Alvin Marks), Herbert Duncan (Lieutenant, Driver), Maurice Tarplin (Newsman Tarplin), Bill Lipton (Countdown Voice, Guard), Bill Smith (Doctor)
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