There are several similarities in the story's theme, plot, and structure to William Shakespeare's Macbeth, and many critics agree it was the series' take on that play.

But when this passion becomes lust, when its flame is fanned by greed and private hunger, then aspiration becomes ambition – by which sin the angels fell.

One night after Richard has left the lab, a peaceful bioluminescent extraterrestrial from a world which "hovers just above the ceiling of your universe" rides the laser down to Earth.

Recognizing that this technology would bring her husband great acclaim and fortune, Judith gets Richard to leave the house by persuading him to go fetch his father.

Northwestern University professor Jeffrey Sconce interprets the "shield" as a metaphor for television, a tool of "domestic asylum" that kept women of that era locked up within the home.

Between the alleged 1961 abduction and the airing of the episode in 1964, Betty Hill's writings had described the aliens as short black-haired men with large "Jimmy Durante" noses.