“On Thursday We Leave for Home” quotes from The Twilight Zone (1959)

Rod Serling

This is William Benteen, who officiates on a disintegrating outpost in space. The people are a remnant society who left the Earth looking for a Millennium, a place without war, without jeopardy, without fear--and what they found was a lonely, barren place whose only industry was survival. And this is what they've done for three decades: survive; until the memory of the Earth they came from has become an indistinct and shadowed recollection of another time and another place. One month ago a signal from Earth announced that a ship would be coming to pick them up and take them home. In just a moment we'll hear more of that ship, more of that home, and what it takes out of mind and body to reach it. This is the Twilight Zone.

Isn't living tough enough here we shouldn't have to go by the book? Isn't it hot enough and miserable enough there shouldn't be rules? We shouldn't have to suffer by the numbers? Will somebody please make the simple comment there's more happiness going into that grave? More peace of mind than all the mourners put together. Nothing but anguish here. Captain Benteen, let us live with it our own way. Or let us die from it - in our own way!

[addressing the crowd] Young Mr. Baines would have us lie down in the sun. Young Mr. Baines would have us give in to death, while there is still life. He'd end the rules. Throw away the regulations. No more standing in line for water. We'll let the strong take away from the weak. And no more food rationing. Let the young steal from the old. And when that ship does arrive, it won't find a society. Just a pack. Not one human being left alive. Only animals.

Rod Serling

William Benteen, who had prerogatives: he could lead, he could direct, dictate, judge, legislate. It became a habit, then a pattern and finally a necessity. William Benteen, once a god, now a population of one.