Air date: May 2, 1963
Thirty years ago, Earth sent Pilgrim I, a spaceship housing a colony of 113 interstellar explorers, to V9-Gamma, a planet surrounded by endless desert, kept at smoldering temperatures by the light and heat of two suns. The expedition was unfortunately stranded, and the survivors had no choice but to begin a ramshackle settlement. Their survival has been maintained by William Benteen (James Whitmore), a charismatic leader who believes that his strict discipline prevents them from giving up hope in the harsh, unyielding environment. When a rescue mission from Earth finally arrives, Benteen is initially as jubilant as the others, but he soon sees his power and influence diminishing. When he realizes that the colonists don't want to stay in a group upon their return to Earth, he tries to persuade them to stay. Everyone else chooses to return home, but Benteen announces that he will remain behind on the planet, all alone, if he must.
When Thursday comes around, the colonists board the ship. As they come aboard, the head of the rescue mission, Colonel Sloane, and one of the colonists, Al Baines, search for Benteen to give him one last chance to change his mind and come with them to Earth, but he is nowhere to be found. After they give up and leave, Benteen emerges from atop the cave that sheltered his people. As the ship prepares for takeoff, Benteen talks to his followers as if they're still there. Suddenly remembering the beauty of Earth, Benteen realizes that he wants to go home. He rushes out to the ship, screaming for it to come back, but the ship takes off. Just as he promised, Benteen has been left stranded on V9-Gamma for the rest of his life, having only the lifeless desert for company.
On Thursday, We Leave for Tropes:
- Accentuate the Negative: Benteen tries to convince the other colonists not to go to Earth by playing up the planet's negative qualities, portraying it as a complete hellhole. In the end, the only person he's able to convince is himself.
- The Aloner: Benteen ends up stranded on an endless desert with no company, his punishment for his insatiable craving for leadership and control.
- Binary Suns: V9-Gamma's star system has two suns. As a result, the planet experiences Endless Daytime. One of the youngest colonists, a boy named Jo-Jo, actually has no concept of what "night" is.
- Bittersweet Ending: The colonists escape and return to Earth, but Benteen is left alone, pleading to go back to Earth with them.
- Commander Contrarian: Al is this for Benteen at first. Years of living on V9-Gamma have made him pessimistic and frustrated with Benteen's optimism, while the latter kept trying to keep everyone's spirits up and act as the voice of reason. Ironically, when Benteen became more and more unhinged, it's Al who tries to be the voice of reason in the end.
- Commune: In order to keep controlling "his" people once they return to Earth, Benteen intends to obtain a land grant from the US government so they can set up their own community, isolated from the outside world. He takes the fact that the other survivors will follow him unquestionably for granted, but when Colonel Sloane advises him to discuss the matter with them, Benteen discovers that they all intend to go their separate ways and settle in different states, devastating him.
- Control Freak: Benteen became this sometime after his spaceship crashed, and refuses to let his people return to Earth as a means of continuing being their leader.
- Death from Above: The survivors are forced to take shelter from a meteor storm in a cavern, soon after the funeral of a woman who committed suicide. The rescue ship Galaxy 6 arrives as soon as the storm is over.
- Desperate Plea for Home: When he can't convince his former followers to stay, Benteen decides to remain behind on V9-Gamma by himself, only to remember the stories he would tell the others about the beauty of Earth, and realize that he wants to go home too. He's too late, as the ship has already taken off, and he is left futilely pleading for them to come back and not leave him stranded.Benteen: Don't leave me here! Don't leave me here! Please... I... I want to go home.
- Driven to Suicide: Nine of the colonists are shown to have committed suicide in the last six months as a desperate means to escape the hellish conditions of V9-Gamma.
- Fatal Flaw: Benteen's stubbornness and need for control, which ends up leaving him stuck on the world he survived on for months.
- A God Am I: Sloane sees Benteen as believing that he's the god of his fellow colonists.
- Hero Antagonist: Colonel Sloane is the leader of the rescue crew meant to take the colonists back home. He's merely just following his mission objectives, but Benteen's increasing incooperation and stubborness gradually forces his hand.
- His Own Worst Enemy: Benteen, whose stubbornness and desire for control is his downfall.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When asked about the Earth, Benteen mentions it being a place of color. The original series was shot in black and white.
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: An Earth colony is stranded on V9-Gamma, a hellish desert world orbiting two suns, which means it's in another solar system. The planet is described as being either ten billion miles from Earth (in the previous episode's teaser) or one billion (repeatedly, in the episode itself). In either case, it's much closer to the sun than another star (or stars).
- Sanity Slippage: Benteen starts losing his marbles after it becomes clear he's lost control over the colonists. He first tries wrecking the ship by attacking it with a pipe. After everyone else goes to leave, he hides himself away in the caves and talks to his now-absent former followers. He snaps out of it towards the end and realizes that he doesn't actually want to stay behind, but by that point, it's too late.
- Single-Biome Planet: V9-Gamma is a desert planet because its two suns shine perpetually.
- Survival Mantra: Benteen instructs "his" people to chant "There's a ship coming!" in order to maintain their hope after Al raises doubt in their minds.
- Tragic Hero: Benteen, whose stubbornness kept himself and the colonists alive, then marooned him on the planet.
- Tuckerization: William Benteen is named after Captain Frederick William Benteen, who fought in the Battle of Little Bighorn. The real Benteen is mentioned several times in "The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms".
- 20 Minutes into the Future: Earth ship Pilgrim I, containing 113 people, landed on V9-Gamma in August 1991. A rescue ship, Galaxy 6, arrives to bring the impoverished survivors back to Earth in 2021.
- Wasteland Elder: Benteen has done all he can to keep the colonists together and their hopes for rescue alive, but it's subverted when Sloane provides an escape from the desert wasteland. Benteen is less than willing to give up his role as a leader, willing to keep his "followers" on a desert planet, barely scraping out an existence while forever looking to him for guidance, than go back to Earth, where they won't need him anymore.
