Sometimes, Rod Serling is all about the "morality play," a kind of Aesop's Fable that sets up a situation, then pays it off with that meaning meant to make you think about the story and the end result. This is one of those times.
Nehemiah Persoff (himself a Jewish person born in Jerusalem and who turned 100, August 2, 2019) is the center of this World War II tale of a ship called the S.S. Queen of Glasgow, a military transport from Liverpool to New York. A small group of civilians were aboard the vessel, which lost contact with her escort ships in the thick fog.
We learn the name of the man in question is Carl Lancer, as he seems to learn with us. He has a bit of amnesia. He also doesn't seem to remember his occupation, his purpose of traveling or even getting aboard the ship at all.
There is a serious threat: German U boats are looking for targets and they are potentially a big one, alone in the ocean. In the meantime, The captain and other passengers chat with Mr. Lancer and he starts to remember. He was born in Frankfort (not Kentucky, GERMANY), and he seems to know a whole lot about how the Deutschland Navy works.
The captain, suspicious but not wanting to alarm anyone, called Lancer to the bridge. But again, he could remember nothing and didn't have his passport. The captain sent a steward to Lancer's cabin to check. And it was there we got the confirmation we suspected. The steward found a Nazi Germany U Boat commander's cap in Lancer's belongings. And when Lancer turned the hat over, his own name was inside.
The trouble really started when the ship's engines died from overwork. The other passengers were not concerned (including a pre-"The Avengers" Patrick MacNee) but Lancer was frantic. At 1:15am, something was going to happen.
And with German precision timing, the attack occurred, with no warning and no mercy. Lancer runs and screams through the ship as the bombing continues. That's when he is confronted by the faces of the friends he had made aboard the craft staring silently back at him. And on deck, Lancer finally saw the attacker through binoculars. It was, of course, himself in his cap.
Later, having sunk the ship, and having rescued no one, Commander Lancer chats with a young officer (James Franciscus) who learned that women and children were on the ship and felt guilty about not issuing a warning. Lancer mocks the young man for being too soft, but he goes on to suggest that maybe they are damned and their hell is to relive this night over and over again, to suffer what those people suffered, to die as those people died, for eternity.
As his officer said those words, Lancer drifted into a dreamlike state for a moment, and was standing on the deck of the S.S. Queen of Glasgow, headed from Liverpool to New York on a foggy night.
Knowing what I know about Mr. Serling, and knowing that this message isn't particularly effective against Nazis at that stage of history, I have to believe, in his typically subtle methodology, that the moral was directed at people who treat anyone that is different, be they immigrants, minority members of society or simply people you don't know, with derision or as if they do not matter. It's a "Golden Rule" lesson that still applies in the 2020s as it did in the 1950s.
I give "Judgment Night" an 8 out of 10.
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