This installment finally has Rice leaving the California base where he trains men to fight in combat, and actually does some fighting himself. The battlefield was the smoldering powder keg of Viet Nam, only weeks away from large scale US involvement. He's on temporary duty, delivering valuable knowledge about a radar-like device, when he's shot down by Viet Cong in a transport helicopter with a small group of other marines. They're overtaken by the guerrillas, and all are killed except Rice, and, in due time,one other passenger, a traitor in an American uniform, who prevented Rice's death at the massacre to obtain Rice's secret information. At one point he tries to justify why he fights for a communist take-over, and his contempt for Democracy with reasoning like, "We can't eat ballots!" At length, Rice out-wits and finally kills his trigger happy adversary, and some R & R is his back in the city. Things like a friendly but gruff fellow from HQ and an oriental stewardess he runs into twice, and that somehow he can't make his return flight yet, indicate pretty obviously they intended that a second season would be full of action and these new characters. But it must have just had no chance with any potential sponsors, so Lieutenant Rice's career ends with but one kill to his name. Too bad, it was fun while it lasted.
Review of To Kill a Man
