Something Completely Different

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Without question one of the first shows to bring science fiction into the mainstream on television, The Twilight Zone is now recognised as one of the most popular and well-written anthology shows ever. Creator Rod Serling often used the stories - set in space, the future, alternate realities or sometimes just the plain old present - to moralise, teach, educate and even to warn. Some of the stories were so good they have passed into the general human consciousness, some were, well, not quite so good. The theme tune to the show has become a byword for whenever something spooky or weird happens, and the phrase has been referenced in songs by, among others, Iron Maiden and Golden Earring.

In this journal, I'm going to go through the series episode by episode, writing synopses and them discussing them in my usual way. I'll be asking which ones are the good ones, which the great, and which ones fail to measure up? I'll also be comparing the original 1950s series to its many reworkings, the last of which at the time of writing was  2020, and to my mind fell woefully short of the kind of quality we've come to expect from this show over nearly seventy years now. I'll also compare within series - was season one of the original better or worse than season five, and so on. Comments and debate as usual welcomed.



Original Series (1959-1964)
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Title: "Where is Everybody?"
Original transmission date:October 2 1959
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Robert Stevens
Starring:
Earl Holliman as Mike Ferris
James Gregory as General
Garry Walberg as Colonel
Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Loneliness, isolation, insanity
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: :4stars:


Serling's Opening Monologue

Every episode begins with a short comment by Rod Serling, either advising what is about to happen, giving clues to the plot or expounding on the theme in what may or may not be an abstract way. As this is the first ever episode, this opening monologue is missing, but from the next episode on, as far as I know without exception, each episode will have such a lead-in.

A man walks into a cafe where there is loud music blaring from a jukebox, but when he calls behind the counter for service nobody answers. He turns the music down but still nobody arrives to serve him, so after calling a few times he vaults over the counter and goes to see... nobody there. He looks back from the kitchen and sees a pot of coffee boiling, so he goes to take a cup and knocks down a watch, the glass of which shatters, the time stopped at 6:15, but whether this is AM or PM is not made clear. Talking to himself now, he admits he has a bit of a problem, in that he can't remember who he is, and on entering the cafe he had asked what the town was, but having received no response he is none the wiser.

Leaving the empty cafe he heads on down the road till he reaches the nameless town, but it is as deserted as the diner. Everything looks good and proper, all lawns mowed, no sign of any violence or disaster, but not a soul to be seen. A church bell peals, its lonely tones echoing across the roads, and he feels even more isolated, until he sees, finally, a figure, a person, a woman sitting in a car. He approaches her, careful not to spook her, but when he gets close enough he can see she is a mannequin, a dummy. Across the road, a telephone starts ringing but when he gets to the phone box the line is dead. So he tries calling the operator, but only gets a recording. When he tries to get out it seems he's locked in, but it's just that the door is one of those old concertina-type ones, and you have to kind of fold it to open it, whereas he's just pushing against and rattling it.

Once he finds his way out, he goes into the police station, which is as deserted as everywhere else, but here he does find a half-smoked (and still smoking) cigar, so he knows now that he is not alone. Somewhere in this crazy town, someone is watching him, playing with him, observing him, manipulating him. And he aims to find out who that is and what they're playing at, to use the parlance of the time. In one of the cells he finds running water and evidence someone has been shaving, or was in the middle of it when they suddenly left. He not unsurprisingly thinks he's dreaming and tries to force himself to wake up, but to no avail.

When night falls lights come on in the buildings, and he's drawn towards a cinema which is showing a movie about the US Air Force. This triggers something in his memory, and he remembers that he too is in the Air Force. It's not much but it's something, something to hang on to, something that might lead to his discovering his actual identity. The cinema is of course empty, but as he sits down a movie begins showing a B-29 flying, and realising that someone must be operating the projector (this is 1959 remember) he runs up to the booth, but there's nobody there. Running back down the stairs he crashes into a mirror, then, stunned, runs outside and just breaks down completely.

Now we see a group of people watching him from an office, all in military uniform. We can see that the picture they're watching shows a man hooked up to electrodes, and with a resigned look one of the men orders the release of "the subject". As these orders are carried out, the others debate the success or otherwise of the experiment. We see that this was all a test, an attempt to acclimatise a human being, a prospective astronaut, to the desperate loneliness of space, and that everything the pilot saw was manufactured by his own rambling brain. Eventually it became too much and he snapped. But they're getting closer. Soon, it will be for real.

Serling's closing monologue

Each episode also ends with Serling speaking a monologue, usually tied to and sometimes, though not always, offering an explanation of the story. His closing monologue usually ends with a direct reference to the show, such as "This could only happen in... The Twilight Zone."

The barrier of loneliness: The palpable, desperate need of the human animal to be with his fellow man. Up there, up there in the vastness of space, in the void that is sky, up there is an enemy known as isolation. It sits there in the stars waiting, waiting with the patience of eons, forever waiting... in The Twilight Zone.


The Resolution

Here's where I'll be commenting on whether the twist was good, whether the story concluded well, whether or not the resolution was believable and fit in with the story line. This first one dovetails nicely. Of course they could have gone with the obvious ending of the guy being in an asylum, or being studied by aliens, or even just having a dream. But I think Serling here tapped into the almost feverish sense of something great being on the horizon, with talk of the moon landings still a decade away but closer than before, man on the cusp of taking his first tentative steps out into space. Of course, back then he wouldn't have known that the moon missions would end up being mostly a colossal waste of time, money and resources, that we'd do nothing with the discoveries we made, and that in the end, our single satellite would turn out to be nothing more exciting than a big lump of dead rock.

But while authors had written and would continue to write about brave space adventurers plying the trackless depths of the interstellar deep, few if any would have grappled with the intrinsic problem of loneliness and isolation that comes with it. Serling had the foresight - he may not have been the only one but at least he was thinking about it - to consider the massive burden man would carry with him when he went up into space. Certainly, in reality it turned out that no single man ever went into space alone - it was always a crew, NASA being perhaps mindful indeed of the danger of depriving its astronauts of human companionship - but even with three or four men on the vessel, it could still be a struggle. Deprived of friends and family, loved ones and familiar people, who might not crack? In Serling's story, it's akin to being locked in solitary for - here the colonel says over 484 hours, that's roughly 20 days - a hell of a long time, and in addition being out in the unforgiving vast reaches of space. A very long way from home.

I'm sure NASA probably did conduct stress tests of this nature, or similar, with their astronauts before allowing them to blast off from the Earth and head out into the remote dark. It's a scary place out there, and you've got to be able to face it.

The Moral

Space can be a lonely place, so you had better be ready to spend a lot of time with yourself if you plan heading out there.

Questions and, sometimes, Answers


What about....?

The broken watch at the beginning? That was a clue; we see it right at the end, a gauge or clock in the booth in which the guy has been sealed. It's broken because he's banged his head against it in his frustration, and yes, it shows 6:15.

The telephone ringing? That's never explained, though you could imagine it's his desire for companionship, contact, the desperate need to know that there is at least one person out there besides him.

The cigar? Presumably the same; there is nobody else in the town, nobody watching him, and nobody running the film, because everything has been constructed inside his mind. It doesn't exist at all.

I do wonder why, when he hears the church bells (twice) he never thinks to go into it? If the bell is ringing, there's surely a half-decent chance there's a service on, so would be not be likely to find people there if anywhere? But he never goes near it.

The interrupted shaving? Hmm. Well it might be a metaphor in his mind for when he says "I never actually woke up this morning", finding himself instead on the road into the town created by his mind. Perhaps it's symbolic of something he knows he should have had to do, but could not remember having done.

Those clever little touches

When he runs down the stairs from the projection booth and runs into a mirror, the symbolism couldn't be clearer. He's crashing into his own self, the only thing that shares the booth with him, and his personality, his very sanity, is in danger of shattering with that glass. It also harks back to an earlier scene where, making an ice cream, he sees himself in a mirror and begins talking to himself, another indicator of his fracturing sanity.

In the shop, he finds a rack of books all titled The Last Man on Earth, 1959. This is especially clever, as it skews the viewer's thoughts in the direction that this may all be real, that he may in fact be the last man left living on the planet.

At the very end, he looks up to the moon and says "we'll be up there soon." That was 1959. Ten short years later Neil Armstrong was making his "one small step for man".


Themes

The main theme explored here is of course loneliness brought on by isolation, similar to a man being placed in solitary confinement, or living on a desert island alone for some time. The mind, desperate for company and rationality, begins to play tricks, inventing people and places, but often these constructs lack cohesion and so may not make much sense, such as empty cinemas, a cigar left in an ashtray when nobody is there, a mannequin sitting in a car, a jukebox playing in a deserted cafe. They're like badly-made cinema sets, liable to fall down at any moment and reveal the stark bare nothingness behind them.

The human animal needs companionship. This much is known, which is why imprisonment in solitary is one of the most feared of all punishments for the incarcerated. No matter how bad things are, there are others to talk to, listen to, argue with, laugh with, cry with or even fear. But being alone is one of the hardest things for any man or woman to contemplate. This may be why some people (myself included) tend to talk to themselves when alone, as if we're trying to make believe there's another person there with us.

In the episode, the pilot is desperate to find other living beings. Even just to sit with others and if not talk, just listen to them, but on his mission to the moon he will be utterly alone (as Serling saw it) and will have to be ready for that. His mounting terror and frustration, culminating in a nervous breakdown, shows that he is far from that place yet.

Insanity is the other theme. As it becomes increasingly apparent that he is alone, the pilot, trying to figure it out, slowly edges towards madness. This can't be happening, therefore the only possible explanation is that he has lost his mind. In the end, ironically, this is pretty much what happens.

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Title: "One For the Angels"
Original transmission date: October 9 1959
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Robert Parrish
Starring:
Ed Wynn as Lewis J. "Lew" Bookman
Murray Hamilton as Mr. Death
Dana Dillaway as Maggie Polanski
Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Arrogance and sacrifice
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: :0.5stars:

Serling's opening monologue

Street scene: summer, the present. Man on the sidewalk named Lew Bookman, sixtyish, occupation: pitchman. Lew Bookman, a fixture of the summer, a rather minor component to a hot July; a nondescript, commonplace little man to whom life is a treadmill, built out of sidewalks. But in just a moment Lew Bookman will have to concern himself with survival, because as of three o'clock this hot July afternoon, he'll be stalked by Mr. Death.

Lew Bookman, as described above, a nobody who scratches a meagre living trying to sell knick knacks, cheap toys and items from a collapsible stall is interviewed by a man in a dark suit who seems very interested in him. Turns out he's Death, and our Mr. Bookman is due to shuffle off this mortal coil at midnight. Trying to forestall his "departure", as "Mister Death" - yeah, that's what he calls him, give me a break - refers to his imminent demise, Bookman tells him that he's always wanted to do the perfect pitch - one for the angels. Intrigued, Death agrees. But Bookman believes he has fooled Death, intending, having gained the stay of execution, as it were, never to pitch again, and so not have to die.

Death is not happy. He tells Bookman that there will be consequences, and indeed there are. Maggie, a little child who lives in his building, is run over, and Death shows Bookman that if he thinks he's so smart, trying to cheat him, he'll find he doesn't know who he's messing with. When it becomes clear that Maggie can see Death - and Death has informed him that only those who are to die can see him - Bookman realises what he has done. He tries to go back on the deal, offer himself in Maggie's stead, but that ship has sailed.

When he is told by Death that he has to be in Maggie's room at precisely midnight, Bookman delays him by, well, pitching for the angels. At the end of his pitch he offers himself as a servant to Death, and that's it really: he interests Death so much in his stock that the Reaper forgets about Maggie and misses his appointment. The girl will live, and Bookman is happy to go with Death in her place.

Serling's closing monologue

Lewis J. Bookman, age sixtyish, occupation: pitchman. Formerly, a fixture of the summer, formerly a rather minor component to a hot July. But throughout his life a man beloved by the children, and therefore a most important man. Couldn't happen, you say? Probably not, in most places. But it did happen in the Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

One word: ridiculous. How anyone could believe that the personification of death would be remotely interested in such mundane items as ties, ribbon and string, certainly to the extent that he would neglect his charge and forget the time, is unthinkable.

The Moral

The only one I can think of is when it's your time to go, it's your time to go. Oh, and don't drink seven bottles of Johnnie Walker Black before trying to write, Rod! ::)

Those clever little touches

One of the first things we see - almost the first - on Bookman's tray is a toy Robbie the Robot, the movie that would go on to gain a cult following and be hailed as one of the most important science fiction films of all time, Forbidden Planet, having been released a mere three years previously.

Bookman asks Mr. Death (really? ::)) if he is a census taker? In a way, yes he is: the ultimate census taker.


Questions, and Sometimes, Answers

Only one really: how could a writer of Serling's calibre write such unadulterated crap? Also, considering he too was pitching his series, how could he expect that this could stand as a second episode, after the far superior pilot? And how did the series not get cancelled (thankfully) when the execs saw this? Okay that's three questions: wanna fight about it?

Themes

Although Bookman is seen as a fairly sympathetic, even pathetic man, we soon learn that he is devious and cunning, as he outwits Mr. Death by fooling him into allowing an extension to his intended date of death and then cites his intention to do all he can to avoid meeting the terms of the contract. It's pretty arrogant of him; he thinks he's really smart and clever, but Mr. Death has the last laugh when he then substitutes the young Maggie to go in his stead, and Bookman has to back down. By now though it is too late and so we see his skills as a pitchman (look, just let me get through this, okay? It's painful enough as it is) used to delay Mr. Death and cause him to miss his appointment to take Maggie, then sacrifice himself, which kind of is no real sacrifice as he was slated to go anyway. One would think that, with his failure to reap Maggie, the contract would have reverted back to Bookman? Maybe not, but I think it might have done.

Anyway, that's all the time I wish to spend on this blight on an otherwise superb series. Consign it to the trash bin of history, and let's move on.

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Title: "Mr. Denton on Doomsday"
Original transmission date: October 16 1959
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Allen Reisner
Starring:

Dan Duryea as Al Denton
Martin Landau as Dan Hotaling
Jeanne Cooper as Liz Smith
Doug McClure as Pete Grant
Malcolm Atterby as Henry J. Fate
Ken Lynch as Charlie
Bill Erwin as Man in Bar

Setting: Earth
Timeframe: The Old West, probably around late nineteenth century
Theme(s): Redemption, courage, pacifism, alcoholism
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: :4stars:


Serling's opening monologue

Portrait of a town drunk, named Al Denton. This is a man who has begun his dying early: a long, agonising route through a maze of bottles. Al Denton, who would probably give an arm or a leg or a part of his soul to have another chance, to be able to rise up and shake the dirt from his body, and the bad dreams that infest his consciousness.  [The camera pans up to a figure standing before a stagecoach]  In the parlance of the times, this is a pedlar: a rather fanciful-looking little man in a black frock coat. [A revolver mysteriously appears on the ground next to Denton] And this is the third principal character of our story. Its function? Perhaps to give Mr. Al Denton his second chance.



Al Denton, town drunk and butt of all jokes, finds a gun on the street. He used to be a gunfighter, but now he's the favourite whipping boy of the local cowboy gang. When their leader jokingly challenges him to a draw, Denton easily beats him although he seems to have no idea what he's doing, as if the gun is firing by itself. Nevertheless, suddenly he's respected and more to the point, finds new respect for himself. His joy is short-lived though, as he remembers how, when he was a gunslinger, every hot shot in the territory wanted to prove they could beat him. All were killed, and now he knows it's only a matter of time before it all starts up again.

Sure enough, it's no time at all before a cowboy called Pete Clark issues a challenge, and seeing that he still can't shoot like he used to, Denton decides to skip town. As he does though he runs into the pedlar mentioned in the intro (whose name just happens to be Henry J. Fate!) who gives him a potion which, he says, will make him the greatest marksman ever - for ten seconds. Armed with this new weapon, Denton decides to stay and face his rival.

However, when the challenger arrives, and Denton drinks his elixir, Grant does, too, and they can both see now that they are evenly matched, and when they fire, each hits the hand of the other, rendering his opposite number no longer able to wield a gun. Having proven his courage, and skill, to the town, Denton no longer has to worry about young guns coming in to challenge him, as the word will go out that he is not able to answer any, but that he proved himself. He can now look forward to a long peaceful life, lived with honour.


Serling's closing monologue

Mr. Henry Fate, dealer in utensils and pots and pans, liniments and potions. A fanciful little man in a black frock coat who can help a man climbing out of a pit—or another man from falling into one. Because, you see, fate can work that way, in the Twilight Zone.


The Resolution

Very clever. Rather than just make Denton fast enough to put Grant down, Fate (yeah) gives both of them the liquid, matching them and therefore allowing each to cripple the hand of the other, at least temporarily, but ensuring neither will use a gun again. Denton gets his redemption, while at the same time Grant is given the chance not to make the same mistakes his opponent has.


The Moral

I guess there are two: there's always the possibility of a second chance, and you don't have to answer every argument with violence and death.


Those clever little touches

As they await the arrival of Pete Grant, the camera zooms in on the clock, heading towards 10 pm. It's very similar to what happens in the classic western, High Noon, though of course in that case it's midday the clock is counting down to.

The saloon is called The Dalton Saloon, presumably a tip of the hat to the Dalton Gang, one of the legendary cowboy outfits of the Old West.


And isn't that...?


This is the first, but by no means the last of the episodes to feature either the debut performances of, or cameos by future stars.

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Martin Landau (1928-2017)

The leader of the cowboy gang who torment Denton at the beginning, and who is humiliated by the drunk as soon as he finds the gun. Landau has only really a small part in this, but would go on to become famous as Commander Koenig in Gerry Anderson's Space: 1999 and also star in Mission: Impossible, working alongside Cary Grant in the classic Hitchcock movie North by Northwest, as well as a host of other credits. He passed away in 2017.


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Doug  McClure (1935-1995)

Famous for an assortment of B-movie credits as well as series such as The Virginian. This would have been one of his early roles, he only 24 at the time. McClure passed on in 1995, and was famously parodied as Troy McClure in The Simpsons.


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Jeanne Cooper (1928-2013)

Famous (apparently) for her role as Katherine in the long-running American TV Soap The Young and the Restless, Cooper died in 2013.


Themes

Courage plays a large part here, initially in its absence, as Denton allows himself to be used by the cruel cowboy gang, the butt of their humour, and then later, when he prepares himself to face his death. Courage of a different sort is displayed by Grant, who rides into town in a cloud of youthful exuberance, eager to prove himself, but not so sure of himself that he doesn't take the help offered by Henry J. Fate.

Redemption of course looms large in the foreground, as Denton rediscovers his prowess with a gun but almost immediately finds it the curse it once was, yet is offered a way out by Fate and ends up being able to retain his honour and his life, and get a second chance, presumably with Liz. Then there's alcoholism, with Denton having sunk into the abyss of drunkenness thanks to his being responsible for so many deaths, one of which was a kid of sixteen. Every western town seemed to have a town drunk, and usually they were comedic figures, but here Serling paints Denton in shades of tragedy and pity; a man who once had it all has fallen so far he can't fall lower. It's notable that once he regains his gunfighting skills Denton no longer needs the bottle, nor does he want it.

And finally, there's pacifism. Odd, perhaps, in an episode set in the Wild West, but we learn that all Denton wants is to have a peaceful life. He has lived as a gunfighter and no longer wishes to, so when his hand is hurt and he can no longer hold a gun he is delighted, and so much more so for Grant, who, young and impressionable, would surely have gone on to make the mistakes Denton had made, or be killed young, had Fate not stepped in.

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Title: "The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine"
Original transmission date: October 23 1959
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Mitchell Leisen
Starring:
Ida Lupino as Barbara Jane Trenton
Martin Balsam as Danny Weiss
Jerome Cowan as Jerry
Ted de Corsia as Marty Sall
Alice Frost as Sally

Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Isolation/seclusion; wishing for the past
Parodied? Yes, at the very least in the American Dad episode "A Star is Reborn"
Rating: :2stars:


Serling's opening monologue

Picture of a woman looking at a picture. Movie great of another time, once-brilliant star in a firmament no longer a part of the sky, eclipsed by the movement of earth and time. Barbara Jean Trenton, whose world is a projection room, whose dreams are made out of celluloid. Barbara Jean Trenton, struck down by hit-and-run years and lying on the unhappy pavement, trying desperately to get the license number of fleeting fame.


A woman sits in a room alone watching films, films of herself. She is an actress, or was: her time has now long passed, her best years behind her, and she is reliving her past glories as bitterness twists her up inside. Barbara's becoming increasingly reclusive and retreating more from reality, trying to regain her past, unwilling to face the world. When Danny, her agent comes to try to coax her out of the room she is initially resistant, until he breaks the news that he has a part for her to play, and suddenly visions of her golden years come flooding back, and she is happy to leave the room.

However, it turns out that the part is not what she was expecting. She refuses to see that she has grown older, that the world has moved on and nobody wants her anymore. She can't "demand" the roles she wants, as she says herself, and anything she does get is going to be for the more mature woman. She refuses the part, rushes home, locks herself in again, wishing herself back in the 1930s. Danny tries to shake her into reality by having one of her co-stars call by, and at first she is excited, as she hasn't seen him in twenty years, but Gerry is older now, and she almost doesn't recognise him. Stupidly, when told he was coming, she had pictured him as he had been in the movies in which she starred with him. It's a big shock, but does the reverse of what Danny had hoped, and sends her scurrying back into her room, eager to avoid the present and the fact that she too has grown old.

When the maid comes to bring her coffee, she can't find her, and then looks up at the screen and screams. A while later Danny arrives, confirming that Barbara is nowhere to be found. Reluctantly, he turns on the projector, and is amazed to see Barbara on the screen, as she is now, talking to all her old friends (as they were then, and not as characters but as the actors and actresses they were). He calls to her and she responds, coming to the screen, smiles, blows him a kiss and turns away. The film ends. Danny picks up the scarf she threw to him, from the screen, which is now at his feet, and smiles.

Serling's closing monologue

To the wishes that come true, to the strange, mystic strength of the human animal, who can take a wishful dream and give it a dimension of its own. To Barbara Jean Trenton, movie queen of another era, who has changed the blank tomb of an empty projection screen into a private world. It can happen in the Twilight Zone.


The Resolution

Again, highly ridiculous. Barbara, unable to cope with her fading fame in the real world, simply "wishes" herself into the screen. It's absolute nonsense. At least if she had wished herself into one of her old movies, with no sign of her in the house and one of the old films perhaps betraying a wink or a smile not there originally, to hint at the possibility that she had somehow managed to transfer into the film, but here, she's shown in her own house but in the 1930s, surrounded by all her friends, actors who have passed on. It's, as Burt Reynolds once said on The Simpsons, garbage.

The Moral

A very poor one I feel. If you want to live in the past, and can't face the future, why then just wish really hard and you'll be back in the past for which you crave. Never mind cowboying up and facing reality!

Those clever little touches

I don't know if it's intentional, but when Danny talks of Barbara's room, he says it's "dark, damp and full of cobwebs". And she's sitting there, alone, in the dark, trying to relive the past or at least blot out the present. Reminds me of Miss Havisham from Great Expectations.

Iconic?

Although Serling's scripts are mostly original, there are one or two episodes which seem to draw from previous writings, either on television or on film, and of course it often goes the other way too, as later writers copied, used or built on his ideas. This isn't the same, of course, as parodying the episode or parts of it, which is why this is in its own section.

This episode draws heavily on two movies of the 1950s, one totally indeed iconic, Sunset Boulevard, and the other perhaps lesser so, Bette Davis's The Star.

And isn't that...?

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Ida Lupino (1918-1995)

She plays the fading actress. Ida Lupino was a film maker in Hollywood at a time when the industry was almost completely male-dominated. She is acknowledged as one of the finest filmmakers of her age, and also starred in films and on television.

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Martin Balsam (1919-1996)

How odd! Born one year after Lupino and died one year after her too! Balsam was a Hollywood actor who appeared in three iconic movies - Pyscho, Breakfast at Tiffany's and the original Cape Fear. He was also originally cast as the voice of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey but was rejected by Kubrick for sounding "too American".

Themes

Basically we have two: the self-imposed seclusion by Barbara of herself from the rest of the world, living in her own darkened little picture house, unwilling to accept that she is older and that the world has changed. There's an almost admirable, Trumplike quality to Barbara's refusal to accept reality, and in the end, it seems, she gets her wish. There's a definite theme of loneliness here too, as Barbara cuts herself off from her old friends and co-stars, who are either dead or have grown too old (she does not see herself as old, but still as she appears on the screen in her old movies, and hates to be reminded of the passage of years) and becomes the sole inhabitant of her own world. Like a vampire hiding from the sun, she keeps the curtains drawn and the windows closed, living in a fantasy land where time never moves on, nothing changes, but in this world she is completely alone, and on some level she knows this, even though she resists it.

The other real theme is one of wishing for and living in the past. All Barbara wants is for it to be the 1930s again, when people were more sophisticated, kinder, more elegant. She abhors the "new rock and roll" and everything the fifties (verging into the sixties) brings with it. She's happy to live on - and literally in - past glories, rather than face the fact that the world has changed, and she needs to change with it.

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Title: "Walking Distance"
Original transmission date: October 30 1959
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Robert Stevens
Starring: Gig Young as Martin Sloan
Frank Overton as Robert Sloan
Irene Tedrow as Mrs. Sloan
Michael Montgomery as Tweenage Martin
Ron Howard as Wilcox Boy
Byron Foulger as Charlie
Sheridan Comerate as Gas Station Attendant
Joseph Corey as Soda Jerk
Buzz Martin as Boy with Car
Nan Peterson as Woman in Park
Pat O'Malley as Mr. Wilson

Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Childhood, innocence, longing for the past, pressure of modern life
Parodied? Oh I'm sure it has been, many times, but no clear example springs to mind.
Rating: :2stars:

Serling's opening monologue

Martin Sloan, age thirty-six. Occupation: vice-president, ad agency, in charge of media. This is not just a Sunday drive for Martin Sloan. He perhaps doesn't know it at the time, but it's an exodus. Somewhere up the road he's looking for sanity. And somewhere up the road, he'll find something else.

Leaving his car in for a service at a gas station, an executive realises he's stopped near the town he grew up in, and since the service is going to take about an hour, he decides to walk into town, to see how things have changed. Turns out they haven't. He can still get his favourite ice cream - at the price he used to pay as a kid - and the boss of the ice cream soda parlour or whatever the damn hell you Americans call those things - soda fountains? - well whatever - is still alive when he should be long dead (though the businessman does not see this; it happens after he leaves the shop). Heading into town, the executive, Martin Sloan, meets a kid, but he gets spooked when he tells him his name, saying he knows Marty Sloan and he (the executive) is not him.

Things take a weirder turn (I know; you and I know where this is going, but let's just run with it as if we don't, eh?) when he meets the so-called Martin Sloan, and recognises him as himself. Intrigued (but perhaps not quite getting it right away) he goes to his old house, and meets his mother and father, as they were when he was eleven years old. They of course don't recognise him, grown now into a man, and indeed think he's mad when he tries to tell them who he is, and slam the door in his face. After a second, similarly unsuccessful attempt to convince his parents of who he is, Sloan decides it's more important to use this god-given opportunity to right his past than to establish his identity here, which nobody will believe anyway.

He goes to talk to his younger self on the merry-go-round, but there's an accident when past Martin runs from future Martin and falls. Later, his father comes to see him, saying he has looked in his wallet and the evidence there seems to confirm that he is who he says he is. Even if the father does not understand how it's happened, it has. He tells future Martin he has to leave and he does. When he returns to the soda thing, it's all modernised (back to how it should be) and things cost 1959 prices. The old owner is indeed dead, and he's told the merry-go-round he just rode on was condemned and torn down twenty years ago. He heads back for New York, in a sober silence, carrying now the inherited limp he got when he caused himself to fall off the fairground ride.

Serling's closing monologue

Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice-president in charge of media. Successful in most things but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives—trying to go home again. And also like all men, perhaps there'll be an occasion, maybe a summer night sometime, when he'll look up from what he's doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of the people and the places of his past. And perhaps across his mind there'll flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. And he'll smile then too, because he'll know it is just an errant wish, some wisp of memory not too important really, some laughing ghosts that cross a man's mind, that are a part of the Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

There really isn't one. Sloan discovers that he doesn't belong here and kind of bogs off without doing anything, other than perhaps gaining a new perspective on adulthood. And a new limp.

The Moral

I expect it can be interpreted two ways: either "you can't go back home" or "be happy with what you have." Either way, I personally find it weak.

Iconic?

You'd have to say yes. I don't know if this was the first story wherein someone is magically transported back to their childhood (more than likely not) but it certainly set the template for a slew of science fiction adaptations, and would also crop up periodically in this series again and again. To some lesser degree, its themes tie in to time travel movies such as Back to the Future and series like Future Man.

And isn't that...?

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Ron_Howard_Cannes_2018.jpg/440px-Ron_Howard_Cannes_2018.jpg)
Ron Howard (1954 - )
The small boy Sloan meets when he first enters Homewood is played by Howard (surely if not his first acting part, one of the first?) who came to fame as Richie Cunninham in the seminal series Happy Days, also the movie American Graffiti, and who went on to become a very successful movie producer.

Personal notes

I find it odd that this is rated so highly, ninth best episode of the series according to Time Magazine. For me, it's pretty empty; an episode that promises much and leads up to... nothing. Sloan does nothing while he's "back home" other than weakly call after his younger self to cherish these childish years (yeah, great advice pal); he changes nothing and contributes nothing. In fact, if you want to balance it on a scale of good to bad, he goes in the opposite direction, collecting for himself a dodgy leg along the way and scaring the **** out of everyone. In the end he kind of shrugs and heads off. Would not be one of my favourites, that's for sure. Even Serling himself admitted it showed up his inexperience as a writer, and I agree.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

You have to laugh at the innocence of the time though. Consider today, a man coming into a small town and sitting down beside a small boy to strike up a conversation. Or pursuing another young boy on the roundabout yelling "I'm not going to hurt you!" Seems to me he would be seeing the inside of a jail cell pretty damn quick!

Questions, and sometimes, Answers

Why did his father so readily accept the rather mind-blowing premise of his son having come back from the future? All he saw was some printed money and a licence that could have been manufactured in some joke shop. But this is all it takes to convince him that a near impossibility is in fact the truth?

Sloan talks about the roundabout. Don't Americans call them carousels?

Themes

One which will be retread often in this series is the idea of returning to or reliving your childhood, going back to the place you grew up in and somehow magically finding that nothing has changed, often meeting your  younger self. The theme of pressure is there too, pressure from a high-paid and stressful job, the enormous burden the "modern" world puts on those who want to make it, and what is sacrificed in attaining that goal. The innocence of youth is presented starkly contrasting with the reality of adulthood, and the idea of perhaps re-examining your life.

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Title: "Escape Clause"
Original transmission date: November 6 1959
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Mitchell Leisen
Starring: David Wayne as Walter Bedeker
Thomas Gomez as Mr. Cadwallader
Virginia Christine as Ethel Bedeker
Dick Wilson as insurance man #1 (Jack)
Joe Flynn as insurance man #2 (Steve)
Wendell Holmes as Bedeker's lawyer
Raymond Bailey as Bedeker's doctor

Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Greed and hubris; eternal life; the devil; trickery
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: :3.5stars:

Serling's opening monologue

You're about to meet a hypochondriac. Witness Mr. Walter Bedeker age forty-four. Afraid of the following: death, disease, other people, germs, draft, and everything else. He has one interest in life and that's Walter Bedeker. One preoccupation, the life and well-being of Walter Bedeker. One abiding concern about society, that if Walter Bedeker should die how will it survive without him?

Walter Bedecker is a sick man. In his mind only. He thinks/wishes he is dying, but in reality he's perfectly healthy, as several - mostly unnecessary - visits from the doctor have shown. He's basically a hypochondriac who worries about every ache and pain, every sneeze and sniffle, and thinks he has everything from measles and whooping cough to bubonic plague. He is, in short, a pain in the arse. His is very rude to and unappreciative of his long-suffering wife, who leaves him to rest after a particularly snippy argument.

Suddenly, a man appears in the bedroom. He introduces himself as Cadwallader, and offers Bedecker a bargain: immortality and invulnerability  in exchange for his soul. Cadwallader is of course the Devil, and Bedecker realises this, but the deal is too sweet, and once he has made some adjustments (such as never ageing) Cadwallader shows him his escape clause, which allows him, if he ever gets tired of living, to call the Father of Lies to release him, whereupon, of course, his soul becomes the property of Hell. Happy with the contract, Bedecker signs.

He immediately tries out his powers, and begins to use them for scamming every insurance company he can: jumping in front of trains, buses, running into burning buildings and claiming for damages. But soon it becomes apparent the novelty is wearing off. When you can't be hurt, can't die, where's the thrill in life? Even the least of us get the tiniest frisson from, say, walking down a deserted street at night or crossing against traffic. When the possibility, however remote, exists that you might hurt or even kill yourself, there's interest, there's danger, there's excitement.

There's fear.

But not for our Walter. Oh no. Everything bores him now, and once again he's moaning. But he's still the same selfish, heartless scumbag he was before the deal. When he accidentally knocks his wife off the roof of their apartment building and she falls to her death, he doesn't even try to save her, even though he could easily. He just shrugs, probably envies her the final rush, the terror, the disbelief as her young life comes to an end. Eventually he considers turning himself in, so that he can try out the electric chair, and so he does. Unfortunately for him, his guilty verdict does not bring in a sentence of death, but life imprisonment. And back in 1959, life meant life! With no option left, he calls up Cadwallader and exercises his escape clause, suffering and dying from a heart attack.

Serling's closing monologue

There's a saying, "Every man is put on Earth condemned to die, time and method of execution unknown." Perhaps this is as it should be. Case in point: Walter Bedeker, lately deceased. A little man with such a yen to live. Beaten by the devil, by his own boredom, and by the scheme of things in this, the Twilight Zone.


The Resolution

Clever. I like it. I couldn't see it myself, but yes, eternity spent behind bars would have been a fitting end for this loser. It's kind of a pity that the Devil didn't renege on the contract and leave him there, or maybe say the decision might be tied up in committee or appeals procedure for a few hundred years. But well handled, yes.

The Moral

No matter how clever you think you are, there's always someone cleverer, and you may think you have all the bases covered, but the Devil always finds a way to get his man.

Questions, and sometimes, Answers

When the doctor leaves Bedecker's bedroom and his wife follows the doctor out, why does she leave Bedecker's bedroom door open, only for him to call after her and whine he's cold? Why not close it, knowing he was going to raise a fuss, and particularly if she believes - incorrectly - that her husband is sick?

Oops!

Being the nitpicker I am, here's where I'll point out any errors I find in episodes.

It's being a prick I know but who cares? The actor playing Bedecker, David Wayne, gets one line wrong when he compares man's life to that of the world. Instead of saying microscopic he says microscropic. There: I told you I was a bastard, didn't I?

I would also classify Cadwallader's contention that "five or ten thousand years is not much; the world will go on ad infinitum" as inaccurate and wrong. The world will not go on forever. In a matter of a few billion years the sun will cool and go out and die, and long before that the Earth will be a barren rock. Had he said "life will go on" or "man will go on", then maybe: Man may very well escape into space before his home planet dies, but that insignificant ball of mud spinning in the cosmos will not be spinning till the end of time, far from it.

You'd also have to point to the fact that, on Cadwallader's departure, the contract having been signed and stamped, Bedecker says "Everything seems to be in order" but does not bother to read the contract. How does he know everything is in order?


Personal notes

This is the first in what you might term "lighter" stories in the series. These were usually characterised by upbeat, whimsical music, pretty crazy scenarios, mad names and trippy endings. I imagine they were written, or chosen, to balance out the darker stories, of which there were certainly many. This could have been quite a dark episode - and in some ways, it is - but the gleeful malice exhibited by Bedeker, the cherubic smile of Cadwallader, and the casual disregard for such things as the death of the protagonist's wife all serve to make us take this one with a larger grainer of salt than is usually required.

Stories about deals with the Devil are hardly new. You can go back hundreds of years for tales of souls exchanged for money, power, women, or anything else, so even in 1959 the challenge would have been to put a twist on a very old story. Serling manages better than he doesn't, casting a fat, jolly old man in the role (which he will do again) and making him hardly scary, and even quite generous in the terms of the contract he offers Bedecker. Of course, as in all such stories, the moral is "if you're going to sup with the Devil use a long spoon", for his ways are wily and he knows all the tricks, and like stories of wishes granted by genii, they never turn out well.

It's a decent twist, as referred to above, and I also like when Bedecker asks Cadwallader how he got into his room the Devil replies that he has always been there, intimating that evil has been in the nasty hypochondriac's heart for a very long time, just waiting for the right time to show itself and make its move. I like, too, how Bedecker, thinking he is so smart and has covered all his bases, still gets tricked into giving up immortality, and after a very short time too. He could have used his power for good - going into burning buildings, for example, not for the insurance money but to save people - and he might have not had to put himself in the position he ended up in, but he didn't think along those lines.

It's also poetic justice how he isn't forced or tricked into jail. He smugly and arrogantly places himself in that position, believing nothing can harm him, but unaware that his under-appreciated lawyer is working hard to have his sentence commuted, the worst possible outcome for him. Of course, given that he is invulnerable, I suppose you could say he could punch his way out of the cell without damaging his hands, and just go on his way, but he would be a fugitive.

Forever.

Themes

On the face of it, a comedic episode but with a dark side (Bedecker's wife does after all die, an innocent) with a very serious and timeless message: no matter what you do, you can't outsmart the devil. Stories of immortality are as old as, well, the idea of immortality, and everyone in them thinks he can cheat the devil, or whoever is offering eternal life. They're always wrong. Just ask Dr. Faust. Greed is a recurring theme in many episodes as the series goes on; people trying to get all they can out of life regardless of what it costs them or others. And of course man;s hubris always leads him down a dark and slippery path, running faster and faster down those slick stairs till he loses his balance and falls.

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Title: "The Lonely"
Original transmission date: November 13 1959
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Jack Smight
Starring:Jack Warden as James A. Corry
Jean Marsh as Alicia
John Dehner as Allenby
Ted Knight as Adams
James Turley as Carstairs


Setting: Unnamed asteroid
Timeframe: Unknown, but the future, as there is space travel and also there are prisons in space
Theme(s): Loneliness, companionship, artificial intelligence, punishment for crime, isolation
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: :3stars:

Serling's opening monologue

Witness if you will, a dungeon, made out of mountains, salt flats, and sand that stretch to infinity. The dungeon has an inmate: James A. Corry. And this is his residence: a metal shack. An old touring car that squats in the sun and goes nowhere—for there is nowhere to go. For the record, let it be known that James A. Corry is a convicted criminal placed in solitary confinement. Confinement in this case stretches as far as the eye can see, because this particular dungeon is on an asteroid nine million miles from the Earth. Now witness, if you will, a man's mind and body shriveling in the sun, a man dying of loneliness.

A man has been sentenced to life imprisonment (as you can read above) on a lonely asteroid millions of miles from Earth, as a self-contained solitary confinement. His only companions are the crew of supply ships that visit him four times a year, so when he sees one land he's delighted. Human company! He's somewhat crestfallen though to find that they can only stay fifteen minutes, which is nothing when you're on your own for years. Captain Allenby, whom he has become friends with, tells him that back on Earth there's growing unrest about this kind of punishment, that people think the likes of him should be imprisoned back on Earth, that having to serve out his sentence out here in space all alone is cruel and unusual punishment, but so far nothing has been changed.

One of the other crew seems happy with the situation, crowing over Corry's dilemma, angry that he personally has to spend so much time in space doing these runs that his own kids sometimes don't know who he is when he gets home. Corry complains that he's going crazy out here, that it's unfair: he's not a murderer, he says. He killed in self-defence, and the Captain seems to believe him. He tells him he has brought him something special, in a big crate, but that nobody can know about it or he'll lose his job.

When the ship leaves, Corry goes out to open the crate. To his surprise it turns out to be a robot woman (yeah). Apparently she can feel and think and reason and talk and do everything a real woman can do, but he knows it's still a robot and is disgusted by it. He soon warms to it - her - though and in a short enough time is in love with Alicia. She makes his loneliness go away, gives him someone to talk to, to share things with, to pass the time. So when the ship arrives and he's given the great news that he's received a pardon, he's thrown onto the horns of a dilemma. The ship is full and there's only room for him, not Alicia as well. As he tries to save her, Allenby takes the initiative and shoots her. Now there's nothing to stop Corry getting on the ship and heading back to  Earth.

Serling''s closing monologue

On a microscopic piece of sand that floats through space is a fragment of a man's life. Left to rust is the place he lived in and the machines he used. Without use, they will disintegrate from the wind and the sand and the years that act upon them. All of Mr. Corry's machines, including the one made in his image, kept alive by love, but now obsolete—in The Twilight Zone

The Resolution

Poor. I really expected something else; either that Corry would choose to stay on the asteroid, having fallen in love with Alicia (though who would then supply them I guess) or that Alicia, seeing he wouldn't leave without her, would sacrifice herself by pretending to be just a machine. In the end, it's a clunky, awkward ending that leaves a very bad taste in the mouth.

The Moral

Not sure. The selflessness (if such can be said of a robot) of Alicia in keeping Corry sane is not repaid, and she's cast aside in a rather hamfisted stab I guess at misogyny, but if you want a moral, maybe Futurama said it best: Don't date robots!

Iconic?

Again, the idea of robotic companions for lonely men (ooer) has been explored before in science fiction, however I think this might be the first time a female one was used in a television series. It would certainly lead to the idea being recycled right up to today, in series like Star Trek and Red Dwarf among others.

And isn't that...?
(https://alchetron.com/cdn/jean-marsh-28b4a571-1d54-44f0-a278-8fae570fd00-resize-750.jpeg)
Jean Marsh (1934- )
Known for creating and starring in the English period dramas Upstairs, Downstairs and House of Elliot

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/84/Ted_Knight_1972.JPG/440px-Ted_Knight_1972.JPG)
Ted Knight (1923 - 1986)
The snarky crewman is played by a man who would go on to become another snarky favourite, untalented radio host Ted Baxter in the iconic Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Oops!

It's not necessarily wrong, but is annoying the way everyone on the episode refers to Alicia as a ro-but and not a ro-bot (though she does have a nice butt).

I think the idea of the ship having to take a particular orbital window from the asteroid to get back to Earth is just some technobabble; I don't believe there are any factors in a planet or indeed asteroid's rotation that could contribute to any flight plan, or could prevent a ship plotting a course for Earth. I think this was just written in in the hope - realised - that nobody would question it and would assume it was based on science.

Corry says he and Alicia have been on the asteroid for eleven months when the ship comes back, but Allenby when leaving the first time said "see you in three months." That would mean that they have been back twice before, and nobody has noticed or seen Alicia? They certainly act - all of them, including Allenby - surprised at the presence of the robot. I suppose he could have hidden her, or asked her to go off away from where they could see her, but still, on a flat asteroid which is all desert and has no cover, where was she going to go?

Themes

Again we have the overarching theme of loneliness, which, given the show's premise and its rather bleak opening credits and mournful music, is not surprising. This time though it's loneliness due to being marooned (intentionally, by the powers that be) on an asteroid, and how the slow and steady march of time slows to a slouching crawl when there's nobody else to share your days with. The first episode to deal with robots, and therefore artificial intelligence, it can be looked on as either a hope of companionship for a lonely man, or a deeply misogynistic story that envisions women as nothing more than helpmates for him. In fairness, it's Alicia's tears that move Corry, rather than have him envisioning a sex doll as it were (which might have been too much for the times) and he does fight to take her with him, but when she's shot it's as if he realises she was just a robot, and is content to leave her behind.

At its core though the episode also explores the notion of love between, as it were, different species, if you can consider a robot a species, though no mention is made or even hinted at of a sexual relationship (he does say he's fallen in love with her, but it could be seen as a platonic kind of love) and how love - and companionship - is one thing, perhaps the only thing, that can keep a man sane when he is left on his own.

The idea of crime and punishment is also tackled here for the first time in other than ways already known, and while the idea of banishing one man to his own asteroid, necessitating shuttles having to be sent every three months with supplies is pretty unlikely, not to mention hardly cost-effective, this kind of thing does reverberate through later science fiction, with penal colonies established on dead planets and asteroids, though these are normally manned and guarded, and invariably for more than one prisoner.

Mention is made of unrest at home, so we can see the government is not entirely popular, and given that the pardon is eventually forthcoming, we might also assume the authorities have been deposed or replaced, whether through elections, succession or even revolution we're not told. Serling's vision of the future is certainly a bleaker, but more practical and likely one than that of Gene Roddenberry.

Personal notes

This is the first ever episode set off-world, and indeed, in the future.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Burgess_Meredith_Twilight_Zone_1960.jpg/500px-Burgess_Meredith_Twilight_Zone_1960.jpg)
Title: "Time Enough At Last"
Original transmission date: November 20 1959
Written by: Rod Serling (from the short story by Lynn Venable)
Directed by: John Brahm
Starring: Burgess Meredith as Henry Bemis
Jacqueline de Wit as Helen Bemis
Vaughn Taylor as Mr. Carsville
Lela Bliss as Mrs. Chester

Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time); possibly near future
Theme(s): Loneliness, suicide, nuclear war, societal intolerance
Parodied? Multiple times, by among others Futurama, Simpsons, Family Guy
Rating:  :5stars:

Serling's opening monologue

Witness Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers. A bookish little man whose passion is the printed page, but who is conspired against by a bank president and a wife and a world full of tongue-cluckers and the unrelenting hands of a clock. But in just a moment, Mr. Bemis will enter a world without bank presidents or wives or clocks or anything else. He'll have a world all to himself... without anyone.

Henry Bemis is more interested in reading books than paying attention to his job as a bank teller, constantly short-changing people and messing up, and his boss is having no more of it. He issues an ultimatum: either Bemis stops reading at work and devotes himself to his job, or he's fired. Fairly understandable really: you can skive off to the toilets and read if you're not busy at work, but it's a bit brazen to be reading at your desk. Bemis counters by explaining that his wife is totally against reading, and refuses to allow him do so at home. Mr. Carsville is not impressed and has no sympathy for the teller.

We see his wife's shrewishness in sour action when she vindictively defaces one of his poetry books, telling him he is a child and should devote more time to her and less to books. We also see he is quite the hen-pecked husband, she a stern, unforgiving, vinegary old tart who probably thinks she married beneath her, he the quiet,  submissive man just looking for a bit of peace and harmony, and willing to put up with her nasty ways.

The next day at work he takes his break as usual in the vault, snatching the opportunity to do some reading, and while down there he experiences a tremendous explosion. His fob watch face cracks and when he exits the vault he sees that some terrible disaster has struck and the world has been destroyed. Wandering out of the ruins of the bank and through the ruins of the city he sees he is alone. There is food enough to last him forever, but no human company. In the rubble he finds a gun, but just as he contemplates ending his torment he sees the ruins of the library, and suddenly is seized by a wild delight. All the books he could ever want to read, and all the time in the world, now, to read them!

The one thing that was weighing on his mind was the loneliness, having nothing to fill the empty hours, and now he has books. Books, books, books! Enough reading to occupy his mind until he dies.

And then, as he bends down to retrieve one book, his glasses slip off his face and crack. Unable to see without them, he is now surrounded by all the books he ever needed, and unable to read even a single one. As he says himself, it's not fair.

Serling's closing monologue

The best-laid plans of mice and men...and Henry Bemis, the small man in the glasses who wanted nothing but time. Henry Bemis, now just a part of a smashed landscape, just a piece of the rubble, just a fragment of what man has deeded to himself. Mr. Henry Bemis, in the Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

It's a bit tough on the guy. The ending would have worked well enough had he been left there, sitting in the rubble of mankind's empire, reading to his heart's content. I feel it's an unnecessarily cruel ending, especially when he was such a mild-mannered man, though to be fair he did get a little on my tits. Still, it's kind of unexpected the first time you see it, and has provided fuel for so many parodies of this clever story.

The Moral

Not really sure. Initially it would seem to be a kind of version of the meek shall inherit the earth, but then it turns that on its head, so what lesson are we meant to learn from the ending?

And isn't that...?
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9d/Burgess_Meredith_1954.JPG/440px-Burgess_Meredith_1954.JPG)
Burgess Meredith (1907 - 1997)
A famous Hollywood actor, popular for his roles in, among others, the Rocky franchise and as The Penguin in the classic sixties Batman series.

Personal notes

Classic though this episode is, and deservedly regarded as one of the best in the series, I find the speech patterns used by Mr. Carsville odd: he says things like "I will tell you something and this is the route by which I will approach it" and "I give my reaction thus". It's stilted and surely intentional, but I'm not sure what it's meant to convey, other than to make the boss seem like the straight man in an Abbott and Costello movie or something.

Nasty and vindictive though it is for his wife to cross out all the poetry in his book, if you look at it from her side she could have been crueller. Considering Henry was hiding the book in his pocket, obviously intending to sneak off and read it later, would it not have made more of an impact upon him, and served her purposes better, had she not revealed her horrible deed beforehand? As it is, she goes out of character (which even he must suspect) and asks him to read to her. Yes, it raises his hopes but he can't be fooled, can he? And how much more crushing would it have been for him to have thought he had beaten her, only to find she was two steps ahead of him in petty malice?

I also think the author got it wrong with Bemis. While reading is a solitary occupation usually, it's not an antisocial one. We don't closet ourselves away and read and then do nothing about it. We want to tell everyone about what we have read, how good it was (or not) and while Bemis does try to force his character summaries on the bank customer who is not in the least interested, this isn't how it goes. You'll tell someone you read a great book and IF they show interest THEN you MAY go on to describe roughly what it's about. You will not give away character names, or plots, or twists, in case you convince that person to read the book themselves. And that is the biggest triumph any reader can hope for, that his or her love of a book will inspire others to try it.

Bemis though forces his appreciation of the books he reads on others, knowing (surely he must know) quite clearly they are not interested, and when someone tries desperately to get you into something or tell you about something for which you have not the slightest enthusiasm, you will actually resist their advances and think them rude to keep forcing them upon you. Obviously Bemis is never going to get his bitch wife to see the value in reading, nor his boss, who seems to consider such activities beneath him, so if he just shut up and read his book instead of drawing attention to what he's doing, he would get on a lot better.

In a way, you can't help but smirk at his fate, in the end, as he has become something of an annoying, opinionated, superior bastard and you're kind of glad that he is surrounded by books he can never now read. Sort of poetic justice for foisting his obsession on others.

Oops!

Classic this episode might be, but it is rife with errors and inconsistencies. For one thing, Bemis escapes the (supposedly) nuclear holocaust by virtue of being in a bank vault. While some vaults are indeed underground, and would afford some protection from a standard bomb, they're not by any means built to withstand a nuclear assault, so the bank vault should have been no safer than the rest of the bank.

Emerging into the shattered landscape, Bemis would have been walking into a highly toxic, radioactive atmosphere, yet he walks around, totally unaffected.

Similarly, the food he mentions that will last him forever would all also be contaminated, and unfit for human consumption.

The public library is knocked down but the books survive. Why? Surely fires raged through the place, which would have consumed the books and turned them to ash?

With his glasses broken, would it not have been possible for Bemis to find either replacements (from some unlucky corpse, of which there must have been many around) or even from an optician which might still be standing, as some of the buildings appear to be? At worst, he could surely rig up some sort of crude magnifying glass to enable him to read. He's not blind, just very shortsighted. In time, with enough effort, this could be overcome.

When the explosion rocks the building, the face of Bemis's watch cracks. Why, then, do not the lenses on his glasses?

Iconic?

Totally. This whole idea has become very popular in science fiction, mostly, as noted, through parodies, but also in other areas.

Themes

Again we're looking into loneliness. When the  Earth is destroyed, and Bemis wanders disconsolately through the ruins of his city, the isolation weighs heavily upon him, and he considers ending it all rather than face being alone for the rest of his life. America's strange intolerance for "readers", even this far back, comes up here, with Bemis considered odd and strange, a bookworm and, used pejoratively, a reader. Almost as if to read is an undesirable trait. But Bemis can also be accused of societal intolerance; all he wants to do is read his books, and badger others about how great they are, so in a way he's withdrawing from society in the same manner as Barbara in "The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine", sinking into his own world and refusing to engage in the real one. A balance could be struck, but neither Bemis nor his harridan wife wish to consider a compromise.

The ever-present fear of nuclear war and MAD (Mutally Assured Destruction) that hung over America - and indeed, the world - during the worst years of the Cold War is clearly evident here. We're not told what happened to destroy the world, but Bemis is reading an article about how deadly the H-Bomb is just before the incident, so we can probably assume a nuclear strike.

Although written by Serling, this is the first episode where the idea was not his, where he adapted the story from the writing of another, in this case Lynn Venable, who wrote the short story. It also makes it the first input to the series by a female writer.

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Title: "Perchance to Dream"
Original transmission date: November 27 1959
Written by: Charles Beaumont
Directed by: Robert Florey
Starring: Richard Conte as Edward Hall
John Larch as Dr. Eliot Rathmann
Suzanne Lloyd as Maya/Miss Thomas

Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Dreams, terror, supernatural
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: :3.5stars:


Serling's opening monologue


Twelve o'clock noon. An ordinary scene, an ordinary city. Lunchtime for thousands of ordinary people. To most of them, this hour will be a rest, a pleasant break in a day's routine. To most, but not all. To Edward Hall, time is an enemy, and the hour to come is a matter of life and death.


Edward Hall, looking much the worse for wear, staggers into his doctor's office where he collapses on the couch. He tells the doctor he's been awake for 87 hours, that he can't afford to sleep, because if he does he will never wake up; he'll die in his sleep. He tells the psychiatrist that his imagination works to overpower him, that once he crashed because he thought there was someone in the back seat of his car. He also says that he "dreams in sequence", experiencing episodes each time, following on to each other.

He relates a dream he had where he ended up in a nightmarish carnival, where he had a bad feeling about a girl, an exotic dancer called Maya. He fears she's trying to kill him, by causing his heart to speed up. From childhood, he had a weak heart and was advised by the doctors to avoid all shocks, and now he thinks this Maya is trying to give him a shock so as to kill him. She enticed him, he tells the doctor, onto the rollercoaster and then urged him to jump. He just managed to force himself to wake up before obeying her, and now he's terrified that if he goes back to sleep, resumes the dream that he will jump, and the shock will stop his heart and kill him in reality.

But then, he notes, if he stays awake the strain will kill him anyway. As he dejectedly goes to leave the surgery, he sees the doctor's receptionist, and recognises her as Maya, the woman who has been tormenting him. In despair, he hurls himself out the window to his death.

The doctor calls in his receptionist, asks her to confirm with him that Mr. Hall is dead. The receptionist is amazed, saying that Mr. Hall only just entered the surgery, and the doctor agrees, saying that within two seconds he was asleep, but he seems to have suffered a fatal heart attack in his sleep.

Serling's closing monologue


They say a dream takes only a second or so, and yet in that second a man can live a lifetime. He can suffer and die, and who's to say which is the greater reality: the one we know or the one in dreams, between heaven, the sky, the earth - in the Twilight Zone.


The Resolution

Decent; everything that has happened since he entered the surgery seems to have been in his mind, though this does lend itself to the question, if he was afraid of going back into the dream, where he would be on the rollercoaster with Maya, why did he then instead end up inside a different dream, where the reality was played out in a different way? Why did he imagine himself in the doctor's surgery, seeing Maya and taking a flying header out of the window? Shouldn't he just have ended up back on the rollercoaster, ready to jump?


The Moral

None that I can see. It's a pretty weird story.

Iconic?

No, not really. There have been thousands of stories about people dying, or thinking they have died or will die in dreams, and this one, while it's an interesting slant, really adds nothing all that new to that idea.

Those clever little touches

When Hall shoots at a target at the fairground, it's a spiral, one that would be used in later seasons of the show in the opening credits.

And isn't that...?
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/RICHARDConte.jpg/500px-RICHARDConte.jpg)
Richard Conte (1910 - 1975)

Hollywood actor, contemporary of Frank Sinatra, best known for his portrayal of Don Barzini in The Godfather.


Questions, and sometimes, Answers

The big one is, who is Maya and why was she trying to kill Hall? Was it really petty vindictiveness, as he walked off during her dance? And what link was there between her and the receptionist in the doctor's surgery? Did Hall somehow transplant her image onto the dream one after having been at the doctor? But that's impossible, as this was his first visit there and he already had his problem before going to the psychiatrist. Are we then to believe the face - eyes only seen - glimpsed in the back seat of his car are the ones belonging to Maya, that he has somehow invited a figment of his imagination - or some demon - into his dreams from the almost-waking world?

The doctor's query to Hall when he enters - "Mr. Hall, what's the matter? Are you ill?" - seems a bit superfluous. He's a fucking doctor! Does he think people come to see him because they're in the pink of health?? Yes okay he's a psychiatrist but still. Also, he mentions that "sometimes running away is the best solution". When? When is running away - presumably from your mental problems, given that he's a shrink - the best solution?

Personal notes

The first episode written without Serling's involvement, written entirely by Charles Beaumont, from his own short story of the same title. It shows a darker, edgier, more morose theme than previous episodes, providing a nightmarish ending.

Themes

It's always been claimed that if you die in your sleep you can die for real, but that has never been proven, no more than the idea that waking a sleepwalker will kill them has been shown to have any merit. This is a confusing one for me; the weakness of Hall's heart doesn't explain his wild imagination, and while he relates the story of staring at a picture till he believed it moved, it's all a little up in the air. It is, in my view, a badly written episode with a Huh? kind of ending, never properly explained (though this can be said of many episodes, which leave you to draw your own conclusions) but it does explore the nightmare world dreams can be, and the power over people they can have. It's also the first, I believe, to truly bring in supernatural elements rather than those usually found and used in science fiction. Well, other than "Escape Clause". But that was played in a much more light-hearted manner, so let's say, then, the first serious (deadly serious) episode to use supernatural themes.

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Title: "Judgement Night"
Original transmission date: December 4 1959
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: John Brahm
Starring: Nehemiah Persoff as Carl Lanser
Ben Wright as Captain Wilbur
Patrick Macnee as First Officer
James Franciscus as Lt. Mueller
Hugh Sanders as Potter
Leslie Bradley as Major Devereaux
Deirdre Owens as Miss Stanley
Kendrick Huxham as Bartender
Barry Bernard as Engineer
Richard Peel as 1st Steward
Donald Journeaux as 2nd Steward

Setting: Earth (North Atlantic Ocean)
Timeframe: Second World War, 1942
Theme(s): Punishment and retribution
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: :3stars:

Serling's opening monologue

Her name is the S.S. Queen of Glasgow. Her registry: British. Gross tonnage: five thousand. Age: Indeterminate. At this moment she's one day out of Liverpool, her destination New York. Duly recorded on the ship's log is the sailing time, course to destination, weather conditions, temperature, longitude and latitude. But what is never recorded in a log is the fear that washes over a deck like fog and ocean spray. Fear like the throbbing strokes of engine pistons, each like a heartbeat, parceling out of every hour into breathless minutes of watching, waiting and dreading... For the year is 1942, and this particular ship has lost its convoy. It travels alone like an aged blind thing groping through the unfriendly dark, stalked by unseen periscopes of steel killers. Yes, the Queen of Glasgow is a frightened ship, and she carries with her a premonition of death.

A supply ship which has become separated from the convoy steams through the fog of the North Atlantic during World War II, fearing attack from German U-Boats. Carl Lanser, standing out on deck, seems very disoriented and even surprised to find himself here. He seems to know a lot about U-Boats, as he discourses at the captain's table - not with the sense of someone imparting information he is glad or even arrogant to supply, but as someone who dreads every word that falls from his own mouth. When the captain jokingly remarks that Lanser knows so much about U-Boats he might be a captain of one, Lanser drops his coffee cup and gets very agitated. He hurriedly excuses himself and goes back out on deck.

While there, he talks to Miss Stanley, an officer who is on board, and confides to her that she looks familiar - indeed, they all do: Lanser has the uncomfortable feeling he has lived through all of this before. And it's not just deja vu - he can't remember how he got on board and there are other things he can't recall, or says he can't. He does confirm he is German, born in Frankfurt, but can't or won't say why he was in England, nor what he does for a living. He almost lets it slip, it seems, to Miss Stanley, but either forgets or stops himself revealing his secret.*

He's called up to the bridge where the captain questions him and asks him to provide his passport, but he says he must have left it in his cabin. While unpacking, the valet finds a German U-Boat captain's hat, which Lanser snatches off him, only to see his own name stitched into the lining. Up on the bridge, the captain of the ship asks his engineer to increase speed, but is told the engines need to rest. In the bar, Lanser says he can hear that the engines are not in the best, and that something terrible is going to happen at 1:15 AM. He doesn't know what, but there's only an hour to go.

When he sees a light out at sea he panics and runs around telling everyone it's the U-Boat and they must abandon ship, but the people appear and then disappear without a word. Taking the binoculars and looking at the U-Boat he sees... himself, looking back at him as the crew prepare the guns to attack. As the ship goes down he dives into the water and next thing we see is him on the U-Boat, exulting about sinking the British vessel, while his second agonises over killing unarmed men and women, and theorising that perhaps they are now damned, damned to sink the same ship every night, to experience the terror and death of the crew for all eternity. Perhaps, he says, there is a special Hell for people like us.

*(It's not much of a secret is it? He's obviously the captain of a U-Boat, one from which he has been mysteriously transported onto this ship, which is now going to be hunted down and sunk by his own crew)

Serling's closing monologue

The S.S. Queen of Glasgow, heading for New York, and the time is 1942. For one man it is always 1942—and this man will ride the ghost ship every night for eternity. This is what is meant by paying the fiddler. This is the comeuppance awaiting every man when the ledger of his life is opened and examined, the tally made, and then the reward or the penalty paid. And in the case of Carl Lanser, former Kapitan Lieutenant, Navy of the Third Reich, this is the penalty. This is the justice meted out. This is judgment night in the Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

A little predictable, though back then probably quite fresh. Given the man's name and his admission to be German, or at least having been born there, it's relatively obvious that he's the U-Boat captain. If we needed any more confirmation, his almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the attack strategies of the wolf pack seals the deal. Sort of interesting that he's in both places at once; makes the ending a little more cerebral.

The Moral

Defenceless ships should not be legitimate targets, though you can bet that had the positions been reversed the Allies would have had no compunction about sinking German or Japanese supply ships. One of the conceits of war: it's always the enemy who's evil, never you. It was a cowardly tactic in the North Atlantic, even with the understanding that Hitler was attempting to starve Britain into submission - the idea of attacking unarmed ships is repugnant, and there doesn't seem to be much on record from the Kriegsmarine in the way of protests from their crews or captains at these tactics.

Oops!

The lady on board is referred to as Miss Stanley, yet she clearly displays a sergeant's stripes on her arm, so should she not be addressed as Sergeant Stanley? Is this not a male conceit, to kind of indicate that a woman officer is nothing more than a girl pretending at playing at being in the military? It's not only Lanser who refers to her as such, but her commanding officer too.

The U-Boat surfaces to shell the freighter, and Lanser has already said the target is usually a convoy. This is true, however I've seen in Das Boot that the subs would readily pursue a straggler, and would always take it down with a torpedo, only surfacing when the ship was done for. After all, you never know what might be in the area. So I think Serling's understanding of U-Boat tactics is flawed here.

Iconic?

Not really; it's just retreading in its own way the old ghost story of the Flying Dutchman, isn't it?

And isn't that...?
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/Patrick_Macnee_Columbo_1975.JPG/440px-Patrick_Macnee_Columbo_1975.JPG)
Patrick Macnee (1922 - 2015)

Famous British actor, best known for his role as the suave John Steed in the adventure/spy series The Avengers and its later spinoff The New Avengers.

Questions, and sometimes, Answers

Why is it that Lanser does not fall immediately under suspicion? Yes, the captain has his doubts, but fails to act quickly upon them. This is 1942, the height of the Second World War and the Battle of the Atlantic. There's a German on his ship who can neither account for his reason for being there or what his role is. He seems confused and disoriented but knows a fuckload about U-Boats. Why are they not clapping him in irons right away? Yes, right, I know that technicallly he's a ghost, but then, he kind of isn't, is he, as he's clearly talking to Lanser, as is Sergeant/Miss Stanley and others. So I think my criticism stands.

Themes

The main one here is punishment; for having attacked a defenceless freighter the captain is condemned to relive the sinking of that ship - with him on board - throughout eternity. There is also a basic theme that while war itself may not necessarily be wrong, it should be conducted along certain inviolable principles, one of the most important of which should be that civilians should not be considered targets. There is of course a supernatural element to this too, and other than the church bells in "Where is Everybody?" and the vague half-reference at the end of "One For the Angels", I believe this is the first time God is specifically mentioned.

We've had the first episode set in the Old West, now we have another setting which will be used and re-used in the series, that of World War II. We'll also see the American Civil War, the gangster era and of course World War I, among others.

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Title: "And When the Sky Was Opened"
Original transmission date: December 11 1959
Written by: Rod Serling (from the short story by Richard Matheson)
Directed by: Douglas Heyes
Starring: Rod Taylor as Lieutenant Colonel Clegg Forbes

Charles Aidman as Colonel Ed Harrington
Jim Hutton as Major William Gart
Maxine Cooper as Amy
Sue Randall as Nurse
Paul Bryar as Bartender
Joe Bassett as Medical officer
Gloria Pall as Girl in bar
Elizabeth Fielding as Blond Nurse


Setting: Earth
Timeframe: The near future (I tried to get a date from the newspaper but it's too blurred)
Theme(s): Alienation, fear, panic, paranoia, a sense of not belonging, cover-up/conspiracy
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: :4.5stars:


Serling's opening monologue

Her name: X-20. Her type: an experimental interceptor. Recent history: a crash landing in the Mojave Desert after a thirty-one hour flight nine hundred miles into space. Incidental data: the ship, with the men who flew her, disappeared from the radar screen for twenty-four hours...But the shrouds that cover mysteries are not always made out of a tarpaulin, as this man will soon find out on the other side of a hospital door.


Having returned from an experimental flight into space, their aircraft crashed in the desert, one of the pilots visits the other in hospital, and he's agitated. He tries to explain to his friend that there were originally three of them, but nobody - including the man in the bed - remembers the third officer. Forbes, the guy trying to convince the other guy, Gart, remembers the third officer, Harrington, after they had hit a bar started feeling really strange and weak, and said he felt as if he didn't belong here anymore. When he goes to phone his parents, Harrington is shocked and scared to find that they don't seem to know him; they say they have no son. He advances the theory that maybe he wasn't supposed to come back. Maybe none of them were. Maybe it was... an error? Something that shouldn't have let them through slipped up and did?

Forbes goes to get him a drink but then picks up a newspaper from one of the tables. Instead of the headline he read earlier, proclaiming THREE SPACEMEN RETURN, now there are only two spoken of, like the paper he saw in the hospital room, the one Gart showed him. Turning around, he sees the phone booth Harrington was in now empty, and the barman can't remember him coming in with anyone, says he was alone. The drink Harrington dropped a moment ago, the smashed glass, is gone, the floor completely clean as if it has never happened. Angry and confused, Forbes runs out of the bar.

He goes back to his motel room and puts in a call to Anderson Air Force Base, and while he waits for the return call his wife arrives, but he can't convince her either; she seems never to have heard of Ed Harrington, as if the man never existed. As his desperation increases, the base rings back, but they never heard of any officer named Harrington. Running off again, Forbes goes back to the bar, thinking his pal is in there hiding, that it's all some elaborate joke, but of course he's nowhere to be seen.

That was yesterday, now he's back in the room with Gart, who still can't understand who he means when he talks of Harrington. Something Ed said comes to Forbes though, something about him not having been meant to be here. Suddenly terrified when he can no longer see his reflection in the mirror, he rushes out, and suddenly nobody knows who he is. He's vanished too, leaving only Gart, alone now in a one-bed room that had been three, then two. He picks up the paper, half-knowing and fully dreading what he'll see, and he sees it. The headline: LONE SPACEMAN RETURNS.

And then, he's gone too. The room is empty, and nobody remembers any of the three space pilots, their historic flight, or the craft they flew in. They've been erased from time.

Serling's closing monologue

Once upon a time, there was a man named Harrington, a man named Forbes, a man named Gart. They used to exist, but don't any longer. Someone – or something – took them somewhere. At least they are no longer a part of the memory of man. And as to the X-20 supposed to be housed here in this hangar, this, too, does not exist. And if any of you have any questions concerning an aircraft and three men who flew her, speak softly of them – and only in – The Twilight Zone

The  Resolution

Like a large percentage of episodes, there is no explanation for why the three space pilots vanish from existence. A vague, half-hearted theory is expounded by Harrington, essentially that God (though God is not mentioned) made a mistake letting them come back home, that they were never supposed to. But the lack of a logical reason for what happens does not lessen the impact; in ways, it only strengthens it. You can see the progression, as the newspaper headline changes from three spacemen to two to one, but it's still something of a shock when, at the end, the nurse opens the bedroom in which up to then three men had been recovering and tells the general that it is empty.

The Moral

None, other than sometimes things are not meant to be, or maybe even God slips up occasionally, but that time always rights itself one way or the other.

Personal notes

You have to give it to Forbes. When asked by a ravishing beauty at the bar what it was like up in space, he can only come up with "it was really... out there." Like something a hippy might say, even though they haven't been invented yet. Smooth!

I also find it interesting how the pilots are referred to as spacemen, a term usually describing aliens, but then, this is 1959, and the word "astronaut" had probably not been coined. Still, it does add to the whole sense of alienness about the men who are soon to no longer exist.

Iconic?

Well, as I mention below, the germ of an idea is presented here, that perhaps in some way the whole concept of the failure of the spaceflight is some sort of government cover-up, though exactly how the US government is able to erase people from time is a worrying and disturbing question. Still, it does parallel generally the plot of the later movie Capricorn One, where the survivor of an attempt at a moon landing is hunted down to prevent him giving away the secret that the whole thing was staged.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

Weird to see two guys happily smoking in a hospital ward. Wouldn't even be able to smoke in the building these days!

Oops!

Forbes crashes right through the door of the bar, but doesn't seem to sustain any appreciable injuries. This seems unlikely. Not only that, no alarm goes off. Is there no security in a bar of all places, where there's expensive equipment, booze and maybe money?

Questions, and sometimes, Answers


How is it that of the three of them only Forbes remembers events before Harrington vanishes? He remembers Ed being there, remembers drinking with him, remembers the original headline and his own note for a telegram to his wife, telling her they were both at the motel, though when he gets the note and uses it to try to convince her he's not gone crazy, it has only his name on it. Gart does not remember Harrington at all, so why does Forbes? Is it because he spent so much of what would turn out to be the last moments of Harrington's existence with him, while Gart stayed behind in the hospital?

And if Gart does not remember Harrington, how is it that, moments before he too vanishes, he remembers Forbes existing when nobody else does? What happens to the newspaper headline? Does it no longer exist? Have the timelines realigned so that the mission never took place, or was the craft mysteriously (sorry) lost in space?

And isn't that...?

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/09/Rod_Taylor_-_1963.jpg/440px-Rod_Taylor_-_1963.jpg)
Rod Taylor (1930 - 2015)

Who needs to be told who this man is? Famous for, among other movies, Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds and H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, worked with movie giants Rock Hudson  and James Dean, as well as his female namesake Elizabeth Taylor on Giant.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/Jim_Hutton_Ellery_Queen_1976.JPG/440px-Jim_Hutton_Ellery_Queen_1976.JPG)
Jim Hutton (1934 - 1979)

Famed for, among other things, but mostly, his role as sleuth Ellery Queen in the TV series of the same name which was very popular in the 1970s.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Edd_Byrnes_Kookie_Sue_Randall_77_Sunset_Strip_1964.JPG/440px-Edd_Byrnes_Kookie_Sue_Randall_77_Sunset_Strip_1964.JPG)
Sue Randall (1935 - 1984)

Found fame as the teacher Miss Landers in the American sitcom Leave it to Beaver

Themes

Loss of self, mostly; usually a condition of the mind, where one finds oneself not belonging, alien, an outsider. In this episode the feeling is literal, as the contention is that none of these men should have come back, and now time is reasserting itself and "cleaning up the mistake" by erasing them from existence. In an odd way, there are echoes of George Orwell's seminal novel Nineteen Eighty-Four here, where the Ministry of Information constantly changes newspaper articles, editing out or changing the faces, names and deeds of people no longer considered loyal to the Party. Here though, the editor is unseen (presumed to be God) and the intent is not malicious revenge nor a desire to punish or obfuscate, but the natural realignment of the time line.

Paranoia and panic are evident here too, and why wouldn't they be, when everything you have taken to be true is suddenly turned upside-down, and you're the only one who seems to remember how things were? How do you maintain your sanity in the face of every other person telling you you're wrong, that it didn't happen that way, that your friend never existed? And how much more does that panic increase when you begin to literally fade away?

There could also be an oblique reference to military cover-ups here. When something doesn't go to plan, and there are those left who can expose the error, quite often (at least in fiction) they are tracked and hunted down and killed, so that any embarrassing evidence is erased. Forbes even suspects, wildly, everyone of being involved in some massive conspiracy to drive him mad, though he refers to it in the parlance of the time as a "gag".

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BOTUyNzk3MzE4OV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMDg2OTEyMjE@._V1_.jpg)
Title: "What You Need"
Original transmission date: December 25 1959
Written by: Rod Serling, based on Lewis Padgett's short story
Directed by: Alvin Ganzer
Starring: Steve Cochran as Fred Renard
Ernest Truex as Pedott
Arline Sax as Girl in Bar
Read Morgan as Lefty

Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Greed, hubris, prediction of the future, intimidation
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: :4stars:



Serling's opening monologue


You're looking at Mr. Fred Renard, who carries on his shoulder a chip the size of the national debt. This is a sour man, a friendless man, a lonely man, a grasping, compulsive, nervous man. This is a man who has lived thirty-six undistinguished, meaningless, pointless, failure-laden years and who at this moment looks for an escape—any escape, any way, anything, anybody—to get out of the rut. And this little old man is just what Mr. Renard is waiting for.


A little old man enters a bar selling things on a tray. He approaches a young girl, who off-handedly offers to buy some matches from him, but he tells her she doesn't need matches, and produces instead a bottle of cleaning fluid, guaranteed, he says, to remove any stain. He then heads to the bar where a man sits alone, but this man tells him the old guy doesn't have what he needs. He used to be a baseball pitcher, it seems, till he hurt his arm and now he just comes in and sits at the bar mourning his loss. After thinking about it, the old man hands him a bus ticket to Scranton, Pennsylvania, telling him this is what he needs.

Just then he gets a phone call, a job to coach a junior league team in... Scranton, Pa! Amazed, he asks the old man how he knew, but the little guy just shrugs. Lamenting the fact that the only jacket he has is stained, the ex-pitcher is further astonished when the girl at the table comes up with her stain remover to help, and suddenly romance is in the air. Watching all this, our protagonist accosts the old man outside the bar, demanding to know what it is he needs, but the old guy seems reluctant, afraid of the guy. He's quite pushy, and rough, and a lot bigger than the old man. After some thought, the old man hands him a pair of scissors. The guy is not impressed, but takes them anyway, and when he goes back to his hotel has good need of them, as his scarf gets caught in the lift doors as he goes up, and he has to cut it off in order to save himself from being choked to death.

Deciding that the old man has something, Renard goes to his rooms and waits for him, telling him he now has a partner, and they're - read, he's - going to make lots of money out of this talent the old guy has. When the old man protests Renard will hear none of it, even the warning that the gift must not be squandered; he demands to know what he needs, and is given a pen, which leaks ink onto a newspaper, onto the name of a horse running in a race the next day. Initially angry at being given the leaky old pen, Renard is ecstatic, and goes off to place the bet.

He wins, but it's not enough for him, and when he tries to work the same trick again on tomorrow's paper, no dice. The pen no longer leaks. Furious, he goes to find the old man again, who warns him every gift can only be given once. He tells Renard he can't give him what the guy most needs - peace, serenity, a sense of humour, patience - and Renard demands more, so he gives him a pair of shoes, but these shoes cause him to slip in the wet street and be run over by a car. Should have listened!


Serling's closing monologue


Street scene, night. Traffic accident. Victim named Fred Renard, gentleman with a sour face to whom contentment came with difficulty. Fred Renard, who took all that was needed—in The Twilight Zone.


The Resolution

Fairly obvious something nasty was going to happen to the nasty Mr. Renard, though when he takes the shoes you're not too sure. Nevertheless, when he mentions the soles are leather and cause him to slip, it's easy to guess what's coming.

The Moral

If someone helps you, be happy and don't push for more. Some gifts were meant to be bestowed sparingly, and only to those who need them. Don't try to monetise Fate.

Personal notes

The barman is less than sympathetic to the ex-pitcher, laughing at his misfortune. It's hardly the accepted thing for barmen to do, is it? Keep the customer happy, commiserate with him if necessary, but don't mock him!

Interestingly, given that the story more or less concerns miracles, this episode was broadcast first on Christmas Day 1959. You would think, though, that they might have been able to come up with a more cheerful and uplifting episode for the festive season! This would also make it the final episode broadcast in 1959.


Questions, and sometimes, Answers

When Renard's scarf gets caught in the lift doors, why doesn't he just take it off? That would be the natural thing to do, but he just keeps pulling at it. It's not like there's no way to wind it off his neck.

If the little old guy knew Renard was going to kill him, why did he let things progress to the point where he got the shoes? Was it necessary for Renard to choose the manner of his own death? Or did the pedlar hope his tormentor would somehow realise and manage to change his own fate? Was he giving him a chance?

We assume the ex-pitcher and the girl hook up, but it's never shown. They don't leave together, or if they do, we don't see it. Guess we're just supposed to come to the obvious conclusion?

Themes

Greed and hubris stand large on this episode; not happy that his life has been saved (when he didn't even know it would be in danger) Renard sees the old man's ability as a moneymaking scheme, and if he can't persuade him to take him on as a partner, he'll threaten him to do so. His hubris becomes his undoing, as he puts on the slippery shoes and brings about his own end.

The theme of predicting the future is nothing new, but the series would use that again and again; the idea of concentrating such a potentially world-shattering power in one so small and inoffensive, and the power being used for the smallest, most personal things, shows perhaps that the old guy realises what damage could be done if his power was used for darker purposes.

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Title: "The Four of Us Are Dying"
Original transmission date: January 1 1960
Written by: Rod Serling, from the short story by George Clayton Johnson
Directed by: John Brahm
Starring: Harry Townes as Arch Hammer
Ross Martin as Johnny Foster
Phillip Pine as Virgil Sterig
Don Gordon as Andy Marshak
Peter Brocco as Mr. Marshak
Milton Frome as Detective
Beverly Garland as Maggie


Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Hubris, dishonesty, greed, crime
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: :3.5stars:


Serling's opening monologue

His name is Arch Hammer, he's 36 years old. He's been a salesman, a dispatcher, a truck driver, a con man, a bookie, and a part-time bartender. This is a cheap man, a nickel-and-dime man, with a cheapness that goes past the suit and the shirt; a cheapness of mind, a cheapness of taste, a tawdry little shine on the seat of his conscience, and a dark-room squint at a world whose sunlight has never gotten through to him. But Mr. Hammer has a talent, discovered at a very early age. This much he does have. He can make his face change. He can twitch a muscle, move a jaw, concentrate on the cast of his eyes, and he can change his face. He can change it into anything he wants. Mr. Archie Hammer, jack-of-all-trades, has just checked in at three-eighty a night, with two bags, some newspaper clippings, a most odd talent, and a master plan to destroy some lives.


A man able to change his appearance at will (see above) enters a hotel and scopes out a woman playing piano at the bar. He is wearing the face of a dead musician, Johnny Foster. The woman, Maggie, is shocked to see him, believing him dead. They were in love, and now he convinces her to run away with him, which she is all too happy to do. He tells her he staged his own death, to get away from the fame, and that with her he will start a new life. When one of his ex bandmembers recognises him though, he quickly changes his face so as not to have to answer any awkward questions.

Back at his hotel room, he changes his appearance again, this time taking on the face of a dead gangster. Armed with this new identity, he goes to see the partner who double-crossed him, who looks, not surprisingly, as if he has seen a ghost. Chased by the guy's henchmen after he has taken all the money, Hammer runs down a blind alley, and desperate to change his face again takes inspiration from a poster of a boxer on the wall. The goons, seeing they have the wrong guy, leave.

He then runs into an old man, who turns out to be the father of the man whose face he has just assumed, though of course he doesn't recognise him. Turns out this guy was a bad one, left his girl, broke his mother's heart, and the father is angry and bitter. Back at his hotel, and wearing his own face again, he is arrested by a cop, but as they go through the revolving doors he changes back into the boxer, smugly giving the cop the slip. However the father of this man is waiting for him, ready to extract revenge. He shoots him before he can concentrate his power to change, and that's the end of him.

Serling's closing monologue

He was Arch Hammer, a cheap little man who just checked in. He was Johnny Foster, who played a trumpet and was loved beyond words. He was Virgil Sterig, with money in his pocket. He was Andy Marshak, who got some of his agony back on a sidewalk in front of a cheap hotel. Hammer, Foster, Sterig, Marshak—and all four of them were dying.

The Resolution

Well handled. Everyone has their past, and Hammer was just unlucky enough to choose to use the identity of one who had used everyone around him - rather like himself - and paid the price.

The Moral

I guess, no matter who you are or where you try to hide, your sins will eventually find you out.

Questions, and sometimes, Answers

This whole story is fraught with one major error: while Hammer can take the appearance of anyone he chooses, how is it that he also gets their voice, along with any inside knowledge they may have had? Sure, he's read up on the musician Johnny Foster, but the gangster? He knows who his partner was, he knows what the deal was, he knows intimate details of the killing... these are things only the real hood would know, and yet he seems to have them in his mind. Does he, in addition to getting the face, get the memories and thoughts and mannerisms and voice too? Seems unlikely. And if it is the case, how did he not recognise "his" father? Shouldn't he have had the memories of the boxer too?

Why, when Hammer is shot, does the cop, who was arresting him and is only inside the lobby of the hotel, not come rushing out? He's surely heard the shot, and he's a cop after all.

Wasn't Hammer taking a major risk when impersonating Foster? What if Maggie had asked him to play - one more, you know, for the road?

Themes

You'd have to say cowardice and greed are the two main ones here. Hammer has the ability to change his face (like many Twilight Zone stories, this power is neither explained nor challenged, it simply is - if you want to watch this show, you're going to have to take some things on faith) but instead of using his talent for good he uses it to enrich himself. Witness the confrontation with the girl when he "is" Johnny Foster - he could have just run away with her - she was ready and willing to go. But no, he has to have money, so shakes down a gangster to ensure he can live the high life, and it's the escape from here that precipitates his meeting with a man he has never met, wearing the face of a man he has never been, and leads to his death.

He's a greedy man, somewhat in the same vein as our Mr. Bedeker in "Escape Clause", and indeed the one in the previous episode too, men who want to wring everything they can out of life, even if by so doing they wring all the joy and love and goodness out of it too. It's surely cowardice to - if you have the power - keep changing your face, your identity. Isn't this the purest form of insecurity there is? And what of the people who see him "wearing" this face, like Johnny Foster's bandmate, who believed the trumpeter dead? He doesn't care how the sudden reappearance of Foster affects this guy; he shakes him off angrily. He doesn't figure in his plans.

It's a dishonest way of behaving, abrogating any responsibility whatever. If things go wrong, if you can't face a situation, as Tom Waits once sarcastically wrote, "Change your face, change your life" - which is exactly what Hammer does. But in the end a life of (one must surely assume) petty crime and using other people catch up with him, and he dies because he just chose the wrong face, as Fate laughs in the shadows.

Note: So far, this is the first (I don't know if only but certainly the first) episode in which nowhere, not in the intro nor the outro, does Serling mention the Twilight Zone. It's also the very first episode of 1960, literally broadcast on January 1.

Three classics, one after the other...
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Title: "Third From the Sun"
Original transmission date: January 8 1960
Written by: Rod Serling, based on the story by Richard Matheson
Directed by: Richard L. Bare
Starring: Fritz Weaver as Will Sturka
Edward Andrews as Carling
Joe Maross as Jerry Riden
Denise Alexander as Jody Sturka
Lori March as Eve Sturka
Jeanne Evans as Ann Riden


Setting: Unknown
Timeframe: Unknown
Theme(s): War, survival, escape
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: :5stars:

Serling's opening monologue

Quitting time at the plant. Time for supper now. Time for families. Time for a cool drink on a porch. Time for the quiet rustle of leaf-laden trees that screen out the moon, and underneath it all, behind the eyes of the men, hanging invisible over the summer night, is a horror without words. For this is the stillness before storm. This is the eve of the end.


End of the world? Two fiercely opposed factions are preparing for war, the first - and most decisive and deadly - strikes being prepared for launch. Will Sturka, one of the factory workers, is increasingly worried about the imminent attack and he can see that his daughter is too, but he tries to make light of it. He has invited his friend Jerry Riden over for a card game, but unbeknownst to his family the two men have another task in mind: the theft of a top-secret craft Riden has been test-flying, with which they hope to escape the doomed planet. Riden and Sturka have to be very careful, as there are spies everywhere, and indeed one is watching his movements. Spurred by what he called "defeatist talk"  - simply a comment by Sturka that the coming war is pointless and will serve no end - from earlier outside the factory, another worker, Carling, has his suspicions and is watching the house.

As they make their plans over the card game everything is tense. Sturka has let his wife in on the secret, and Riden's wife already knows, but the daughter does not as she can't be trusted to keep it to herself. Riden is telling Sturka about their destination, a planet quite like their own with a similar language and technology, about eighteen million miles distant, when  Carling arrives and interrupts the game. Obsequious and smarmy, he looks like a fat little nondescript man, the kind you find out too late works for the Gestapo. Carling tries to find out what's going on - he knows something is afoot - but the two families keep their nerve. When Sturka gets a call saying he's needed at work he knows it's time to run, and so they do.

There's a scare when Carlin catches them, but they overpower him and make for the craft. Once they make it into space Riden points out the planet they're heading to, where there are people just like them, where they can be safe. Third planet from the sun. Earth.

Serling's closing monologue

Behind a tiny ship heading into space is a doomed planet on the verge of suicide. Ahead lies a place called Earth, the third planet from the Sun. And for William Sturka and the men and women with him, it's the eve of the beginning—in the Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

The first time you see it, knocked out. Because the people and indeed the planet mirror so closely our own we all assume it's Earth they're escaping from, and it's a real twist to find that it is in fact an alien planet, and they are fleeing to Earth.

The Moral

Several I guess. Sometimes the safest thing to do is run. Sometimes you can't stop the madness so don't try, just leave it behind. Maybe it's best to know when you're beaten and take the only alternative open to you. There's also a clever if slightly heavy-handed moral lesson for us in terms of the Cold War. This episode shows a planet which has tipped over that point into outright war, and will destroy itself. Will we do the same?

Oops!

Although this is from a science fiction story, and written by someone who surely knows his stuff, I wonder if Serling adapted it and used his own measurements, because the distance from the planet the Sturka and Riden families are fleeing from to Earth is said to be eighteen million miles. That would put it closer to Earth than Mars or Venus, and as we know there are no planets between those two and Earth, so where is the planet meant to be?

Iconic?

Not the story, which I don't recall being used again, but in the spaceship there's a sound used which would become famous, synonymous with Star Trek, which would air eight years later. Have a listen to it. I feel it may also have been used on the iconic science fiction movie of all iconic science fiction movies, Forbidden Planet.

Themes

Survival being the first, survival in the face of impending nuclear disaster. Also hope, hope that the families can find a new home on this strange planet called Earth. The futility of war - MAD - is addressed too, when Sturka tells a gleefully confident Carling that "they can get us too" or something like that, I'm not going back to check. Basically he's letting him know that though their side can wreak unimaginable havoc, the other side is capable of doing the same. Finally, there's a sort of space exploration theme, as for only the second episode we see man in space.

And isn't that...?


(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/35/Actor_Fritz_Weaver.jpg)


Fritz Weaver (1926 - 2016)

Known for among other things, Creepshow, The X Files, The Martian Chronicles, Law and Order, Star Trek Deep Space 9 and The Streets of San Francisco.



(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Denise_Alexander_as_Leslie.jpg)

Denise Alexander (1939 - )

Famed for her role as Lesley Webber on the American soap General Hospital.



Personal Notes

It's not important and it doesn't impact on the story, but I must note the names of the two families. Sturka sounds so much like the feared German divebomber used to such terrifying effect in World War II, the Stuka, and this is a war episode at its heart. Not to mention that Fritz Weaver is surely of German descent? And I could not resist: the other family is Riden. Riden with Biden? Sorry.  :D


Questions, and sometimes, Answers

Why is Jody, the daughter, the only one kept out of the secret? I understand that as a younger person she might be more likely to say something, or to possibly want a boyfriend to come, a boyfriend who might not be trustworthy and might sell them out, but it's clear that there is tension as the card game proceeds, and she must wonder what the problem is. Of course, she's already on edge, like everyone, over the imminent war, but it must feel to her like she's the only sober one at a drunken party. Would it not have been better to have told her and sworn her to secrecy?

Those clever little touches

Riden has been sketching out their flight plan on a piece of paper, and when Carling arrives he turns it over face down, and pretends he's using it to keep score how much his friend owes him. As Carling looks at the paper, we can see the reverse, showing the diagram, and it's quite clever: a tense moment when you think "if he just turns that over they're done for". But he doesn't, and returns it to the table, never realising he had held the evidence of what would be seen as their treachery in his hands.

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Title: "I Shot an Arrow Into the Air"
Original transmission date: January 15 1960
Written by: Rod Serling, from the story by Madelon Champion
Directed by: Stuart Rosenberg
Starring: Dewey Martin as Officer Corey
Edward Binns as Colonel Donlin
Ted Otis as Pierson
Harry Bartell as Langford
Leslie Barrett as Brandt


Setting: Earth (desert in Reno, Nevada) (sssh!)  ;)
Timeframe: The near future?
Theme(s): Survival, greed, selfishness, despair, being lost
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: :5stars:



Serling's opening monologue

Her name is the Arrow 1. She represents four and a half years of planning, preparation, and training, and a thousand years of science, mathematics, and the projected dreams and hopes of not only a nation, but a world. She is the first manned aircraft into space and this is the countdown. The last five seconds before man shot an arrow into the air.

The first spacecraft to leave Earth falls off the radar and control loses contact with it. On a deserted asteroid, the survivors decide to strike out from the remains of the crashed craft, to see where they are and if there is any chance of survival. Corey, one of the crew, resents the fact that his commanding officer is "wasting" water on a dying crewman, but the colonel will not leave him to die. He points out that there's no chance of rescue, as they had the only spacecraft ever made  by man, so there is no way anyone can come after them even if they knew where they were, which they don't. While Corey fights over the water, the crewman dies. That leaves only three of them.

Nerves are frayed; Corey is being belligerent and insubordinate, perhaps thinking why should he obey a man who represents an authority that is no longer in charge? They're on an asteroid, not Earth, and unlikely ever to be back under military command again. When Corey returns from patrol without Pearson, the third member of the crew still alive, the colonel forces him to admit that the other man is dead. Though the colonel can't prove Corey killed Pearson, he insists they go and bring his body back. Corey is reluctant, but his CO forces him. When they get to the spot where Corey says he was though, Pearson is nowhere to be found.

They follow a trail and find him, not dead after all, but he is dying. He points to the top of the mountain, indicating he found something up there, but has not the strength to speak. He sketches out a rough figure - two horizontal lines crossed by a vertical, like a cross. The colonel has no idea what it is, but Corey decides it's time for him to die and shoots him, continuing on alone up the mountain. When he gets to the top, he sees what it was that Pearson was trying to tell them, what he had found before losing his balance and falling back down the mountain, the icon he sketched.

A telegraph pole.

Turns out they aren't on an asteroid at all. They're on Earth. They fell back to Earth and crash-landed in the desert, only a handful of miles from Reno. Nevada.

Serling's closing monologue


Practical joke perpetrated by Mother Nature and a combination of improbable events. Practical joke wearing the trappings of nightmare, of terror, and desperation. Small, human drama played out in a desert 97 miles from Reno, Nevada, U.S.A., continent of North America, the Earth and, of course, the Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

Perhaps where The Twilight Zone began to come into its own. This is absolutely brilliant. There's no way you could figure it out, yet when you go backwards, it all makes sense. Why was there an atmosphere if this was supposed to be an asteroid? Why did the control centre lose contact with the ship? Just fantastic, and really puts the two murders (we more or less assume he fought with and left Pearson for dead) into dark, dismal perspective.

The Moral

Perhaps stick together, look after your friends?

Questions, and sometimes, Answers

We know at the end why, but you have to ask the question why the crew didn't wonder that there was an atmosphere, since asteroids are just big chunks of rock and have no atmosphere?

Themes

Survival again, greed and a determination to be the one left standing even if you have to kill everyone around you. Hubris, and despair in the end when it's all been for nothing.

Iconic?

No. I don't recall anyone ever using this idea again. It's kind of a one-shot deal isn't it? Once you know, the impact is gone. Still, Wiki maintains it came up again with Planet of the Apes. Meh, I don't see it myself. Basic idea, yes, but not this actual theme.

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Title: "The Hitch-Hiker"
Original transmission date: January 22 1960
Written by: Rod Serling, from the play by Lucille Fletcher
Directed by: Alvin Ganzer
Starring: Inger Stevens as Nan Adams
Leonard Strong as The Hitch-Hiker
Adam Williams as Sailor
Russ Bender as Counterman
Lew Gallo as Mechanic
George Mitchell as Gas Station Man
Eleanor Audley as Mrs. Whitney (voice)


Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Terror, death, pursuit
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: :5stars:

Serling's opening monologue

Her name is Nan Adams. She's twenty-seven years old. Her occupation: buyer at a New York department store. At present on vacation, driving cross-country to Los Angeles, California from Manhattan...Minor incident on Highway 11 in Pennsylvania. Perhaps, to be filed away under "accidents you walk away from." But from this moment on, Nan Adams' companion on a trip to California will be terror. Her route: fear. Her destination: quite unknown.

A mechanic fixes up a young girl's car after it has spun out, marvelling that she's alive at all. She follows him into town to get a spare tyre, but then gets shivers when she sees a hitch-hiker standing by the side of the road. When she points him out to the mechanic, he can't see him and when she looks again he is gone. She drives off, but keeps seeing him on the road. Somehow he always seems to be ahead of her. The guy in the cafe she stops at feels it would be unlikely anyone would be hitching on the turnpike.

When he actually approaches her, she drives off in terror, and when her car dies on a level crossing and she almost gets hit by a train, he is there again, thumbing, beckoning her, and she now is convinced he is trying to kill her. When her car runs out of gas in the night she tries to wake up the gas station owner but he's a prick and won't come down. Then she meets a sailor on the way back to his ship in San Diego. She asks him to accompany her, saying she will give him a ride back to San Diego (she's heading to LA anyway) but she has no gas. The sailor bangs on the door and he's not as easily put off as she was, so the old man has to give them the gas.

They set off, and it's not long before they come across the hitch-hiker. Nan tries to run him down, but the sailor says he saw nobody, and spooked by her reaction, decides to leave her and strike out on his own. She tries to persuade him to stay but he has had enough, and she is left alone. Reaching a diner she uses a payphone to call home, but is shattered when she is told her mother suffered a nervous breakdown when she heard of the death of her daughter in a road accident.

And now she knows.

The hitch-hiker is Death, and he wants to ride with her because she is dead too.

She never survived the accident, she was killed, and she's been running from the realisation of her death ever since.

Serling's closing monologue

Nan Adams, age twenty-seven. She was driving to California; to Los Angeles. She didn't make it. There was a detour... through the Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

Superb. The idea being created that the hitch-hiker is evil, deadly, menacing, is trying to get her to kill herself becomes nothing more than the inevitable realisation and acceptance that she has already died.

The Moral

You can't outrun death, and when it's time to go you have no choice.

Questions, and sometimes, Answers

Why was the gas station owner so ornery? Sure, he was annoyed at being woken up, but this is a young woman on her own in the dark in the night with no gas. Surely some form of male chivalry would beat in his heart, if not, the fact that she's pretty and he could be seen to do a good deed for her would be enough for most old men. Does he not worry that she might be attacked in the night? He can go back to bed and sleep soundly knowing that?

Picking up the sailor is surely a bad move, even in what I guess is the 1960s. The guy is young and strong, and she's very pretty. He kind of looms over her in the car, and the first time I watched this I thought, that guy is gonna attack her and then the hitch-hiker is going to come up and save her, showing that he wasn't evil after all. Didn't happen, but still: giving a ride to a randy sailor in the middle of nowhere, dead of night? Hardly smart, is it?

And if she is dead, how come everyone can see her? The mechanic, the old man at the gas station, the sailor, the guy in the cafe? How can she eat, and drink? How can she drive? How can she use the telephone?

The Times they are a-changin'

Yeah, like I say, wouldn't happen today. Single girl, very pretty, picking up a single male in the night on her own? Recipe for disaster.

Ten or Less Things I Hate About You

This is a new section in which I'll be detailing, if there are any, the aspects of the episode I didn't care for.

1. The irascibility of the old man, as mentioned in the Questions section - what's his deal? We'll see this later in another episode, proving I guess that for some dried-up old husks of men, even a pretty face can't melt a heart of stone.

2. The somewhat improbable circumstance of a young pretty girl giving a sailor a lift and not getting attacked. I feel this is a little too hard to swallow, keep your dirty thoughts to yourselves please

3. Her desperation to keep him there in the car with her, even going so far as to promise him a date. It's embarrassing.

4. The inconsistencies with her apparently being dead but still in the living world, able to interact with it.

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Title: "The Fever"
Original transmission date: January 29 1960
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Robert Florey
Starring: Everett Sloane as Franklin Gibbs
Vivi Janiss as Flora Gibbs


Setting: Earth (Las Vegas)
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Addiction, obsession, madness, gambling
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: :2.5stars:


Serling's opening monologue

Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Gibbs, three days and two nights all expenses paid at a Las Vegas hotel, won by virtue of Mrs. Gibbs's knack with a phrase. But unbeknownst to either Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs is the fact that there's a prize in their package, neither expected nor bargained for. In just a moment, one of them will succumb to an illness worse than any virus can produce. A most inoperative, deadly life-shattering affliction known as the Fever.


A man and woman who have won a competition to spend a few days in Las Vegas argue as the husband, a stuffy Puritan type, disapproves highly of gambling and refuses to lighten up. Suffering her to spend the holiday, he nevertheless refuses to let her gamble. However when a drunk who has lost his shirt on one of the machines forces a coin into his hand and leaves him to play the machine, Franklin wins. Surprised, he determines to take the money he has won back to the hotel room, rather than, as he says these "baboons" would do, shovel it back in and lose it all. As he leaves though, he seems to hear someone call his name...

The voice continues to call him, and soon he can't sleep. He keeps watching the pile of coins, and eventually decides he can't keep them, must go back down to the casino and put them all back into the machine, lose them all, get rid of them. He's soon hooked though of course, and once the coins are gone he starts cashing cheques, trying to win back all the money he has lost. He becomes irritable, irrational, obsessive, standing at the machine till morning, convinced it will eventually pay out. Of course it doesn't, and when the arm jams as he puts in his last dollar, he loses it and accuses the machine of taunting him, of being alive, of deliberately breaking down so it wouldn't have to pay out. He pushes the machine over, and is escorted from the casino.

Back at the hotel, he keeps hearing the sound of the machine's voice calling his name, and when he opens the door it's there, advancing towards him, taunting him, laughing at him. He backs away, away - his wife tries to convince him there is nothing there - but he keeps retreating towards the window until he falls out of it and is killed. As a final insult, or joke, the last dollar he lost, the one that got caught in the machine, rolls out to land beside him.

Serling's closing monologue

Mr. Franklin Gibbs, visitor to Las Vegas, who lost his money, his reason, and finally his life to an inanimate, metal machine, variously described as a "one-armed bandit", a "slot machine", or, in Mr. Franklin Gibbs' words, a "monster with a will all of its own." For our purposes, we'll stick with the latter definition because we're in the Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

Poetic justice really. The man who rails against gambling becomes so addicted that he loses his reason and ends up falling out of his window to his death. Or, if you prefer, is haunted by a slot machine and forced out the window. Either way, gambling ends up being the death of him.

The Moral

Clearly, gambling is for mugs. Gamblers only play to lose, not to win. Quit while you're ahead.

Themes

Obsession and addiction play the largest parts in this episode. Once hooked, Franklin cannot stop playing the machine. He tells his wife this is because he has to win back the money he's so far lost, and as far as it goes, this is true. However, in reality he just can't stop playing. He's become a slave to the one-armed bandit, and could not more walk away than he could stop breathing.

Obsession and gambling usually go hand in hand, of course. Gambling is an obsession, an obsession with winning, or trying to win. While Franklin initially puts all the money he has won back into the machine, he can't leave it at that, and has to keep playing. He's now hooked, and the family fortune is being fed to what Homer Simpson once called Gamblor.

Madness features too, of course: did Franklin go crazy, thinking the machine was coming for him? Well of course he did... didn't he? His wife neither heard nor saw the machine, and you have to wonder how an inanimate machine with no power of propulsion could have somehow made it up to their room, and not only that, then been down on the ground beside the lifeless body of Franklin, to deliver the final insult.

Questions, and sometimes, Answers

On their arrival, the manager of the casino tells the couple they have "unlimited credit" (absolutely would never happen - casino would quickly go broke but that's what he says). If this is the case, why then does Franklin have to use his own money to gamble? Why, when he goes up to cash his first cheque, does the teller not advise him he has unlimited credit?

Considering how much he hates/hated gambling, why did Franklin go to Las Vegas, the Mecca of the gambler? Why didn't he let someone else go with his wife? And even if he had to go, did he realistically not expect his wife to want to gamble?

Iconic?

No, this is a one-off episode and I don't recall anyone else doing it.

Those clever little touches

When the gambling machine is coming for Franklin, seeming to call his name, a slot in its base is curved upwards, and looks like a mouth smiling or grinning. Also, when it "speaks", you can hear the sound of coins rolling in the sound, a little like in Pink Floyd's "Money".

Ten or less things I hate about you

1. The irascibility of Franklin, how he's determined not only to not enjoy himself, but to ensure his wife does not, either.

2. The plot hole where he has to use his own money. As I said above, he's supposed to have limitless credit. I suppose you could stretch a point and say that since the wife won the contest, she might have to be with him in order for that credit to be extended, but this is America in the 1960s: a man having to ask a woman for money? Ridiculous.

3. The unnecessary death. Franklin falls out the window, when he could just as easily died of a heart attack in the room. Although it's clearly obvious he's imagining the machine pursuing him, if somehow it was, then there's no way it could be down on the ground floor when he falls.

Personal Notes

This was the first of the "funny" Twilight Zone episodes, and while it's patently ridiculous it is good fun. It's nice to see Serling could preach on the evils of gambling without getting all high-handed about it, inject a lot of humour into what is essentially a very dark subject for a lot of people.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/Twilight_Zone_The_Last_Flight.jpg/440px-Twilight_Zone_The_Last_Flight.jpg)
Title: "The Last Flight"
Original transmission date: February 5 1960
Written by: Richard Matheson
Directed by: William F. Claxton
Starring: Kenneth Haigh as Flight Lt. Decker
Simon Scott as Major Wilson
Alexander Scourby as General Harper
Robert Warwick as Air Vice Marshal Alexander Mackaye
Harry Raybould as Corporal
Jerry Catron as Guard
Jack Perkins as Mechanic
Paul Baxley as Jeep driver


Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Cowardice, bravery, second chance, time travel
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: :3stars:

Serling's opening monologue

Witness Flight Lieutenant William Terrance Decker, Royal Flying Corps, returning from a patrol somewhere over France. The year is 1917. The problem is that the lieutenant is hopelessly lost. Lieutenant Decker will soon discover that a man can be lost not only in terms of maps and miles, but also in time - and time in this case can be measured in eternities.

A British pilot from World War I lands at an American airfield in the present, and when taken to the commanding officer is told he is in 1959. Finding this hard to believe - duh - he mentions his friend "Mac", Alexander McKay, and is told with extreme scepticism for his story by the base commander that Air Vice Marshall McKay is in fact due there to inspect the facility. The pilot believes this impossible, as he tells them McKay is dead. He tells them that when he last saw McKay he was encircled by seven German aircraft, and later confesses that he himself is a coward, afraid to engage the enemy. He says he has to put on a face, because to be a coward is bad enough, but admitting to, or even worse, being proven one is a fate worse than death.

He's placed under "protective custody" while the base awaits the arrival of the Air Vice Marshall, though Decker is reluctant to meet his old friend, believing he will be recognised for what he is. Unable to understand how McKay can still be alive, when, as he tells the major, he left him to die, ran off, Decker suddenly gets it. The only reason Mac is alive has to be that he, Decker, changed his mind and went back to help him. He had to come 42 years into the future to learn the truth, that he could save him, but if he stays where he is then the chances are, the two men will never meet in 1959 because McKay will have died in 1917.

Desperate, he slugs the major and breaks out, racing to his aircraft. The major tries to detain him but he gets away, back up into the sky. A short while later, the major is being upbraided by the general for having let him escape when Air Vice Marshall McKay arrives. The major asks him about Decker, and McKay tells them the man saved his life back in World War I. Says he looked as if he was running out on him but then came back, took out three of the German fighters before they got him. In amazement, the general shows McKay the personal effects he had confiscated from Decker, and McKay, dumbfounded, confirms they belong to his old friend.

Serling's closing monologue

Dialog from a play, Hamlet to Horatio: There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Dialog from a play written long before men took to the sky: There are more things in heaven and earth and in the sky than perhaps can be dreamt of. And somewhere in between heaven, the sky, and the earth, lies the Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

A good one. A man who needs the courage to do what needs to be done finds it in the future, finding that his friend, who would otherwise be long dead, has distinguished himself in the next world war and risen in the ranks, and realises he has to go back to help him survive, facing his own cowardice and giving his life bravely.

The Moral

Everyone gets a second chance, it's up to them how they use it?

Themes

Cowardice, bravery, being given a second chance. Time lines, which should, of course, have shifted when Decker came to the future, meaning McKay should have been dead. And maybe he was; until that helicopter bringing him to the air force base landed, who knew who would have stepped out of it, depending on what Decker did? It's good to to see Matheson - this being entirely written by him - tackling the thorny idea of cowardice in the armed forces. It can't be that every young man who went to war did so with no fear, and while cowardice would be liable to get you killed as much by your own side as that of the enemy, it was surely a constant threat to those who fought for liberty.

I believe this is also the first time travel story, if you don't count "Walking Distance".

The Times they are a Changin'

Decker mentions that he has often thought of allowing himself to be captured by the Germans, remarking that pilots get the best treatment. Yes, back in WW I they did, seen as some sort of knights of the sky, gentlemen flyers, worthy adversaries. By the time World War II came around though it was a very different matter!

Personal Notes

This is the very first Twilight Zone episode in which Serling basically has no input, the story having been written by Richard Matheson (whose stories had been adapted for two previous ones) from his own work, "Flight".

(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSTnZYRxWEeDzzQKWes-dao-26Zut2VYTyB9g&s)
Title: "The Purple Testament"
Original transmission date: February 12 1960
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Richard L. Bare
Starring: William Reynolds
Dick York
Barney Phillips
Warren Oates
Paul Mazursky
Ron Masak
William Phipps
S. John Launer
Marc Cavell


Setting: Earth (Philippines)
Timeframe: Second World War, 1945
Theme(s): War, prediction of the future, death, isolation, paranoia
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: :3.5stars:

Serling's opening monologue

Infantry platoon, U.S. Army, Philippine Islands, 1945. These are the faces of the young men who fight, as if some omniscient painter had mixed a tube of oils that were at one time earth brown, dust gray, blood red, beard black, and fear—yellow white, and these men were the models. For this is the province of combat, and these are the faces of war.

An officer in the US Army serving in the Philippine Islands in World War II seems to have developed the strange - and unwanted - power to divine when men are going to die. He sees a purple light in their faces, and knows they're marked for death. He confides this to his CO but of course is not believed. While visiting one of the wounded in the hospital, the officer, "Fitz" Fitzgerald sees the light in the kid's face, faints and sure enough when he regains consciousness he finds that the soldier has passed away in the bed. When he sees the light in the face of his commanding officer he is shocked, and tries to get the captain not to go on the raid, but the captain thinks he's just overworked and seeing things.

The captain is of course killed, and when Fitz is recalled to headquarters for observation, he sees in his shaving mirror the light in his own face, and knows he will never make it back alive. He is to be evacuated back home for medical evaluation, but soon after his jeep has disappeared into the jungle there's a loud explosion.

Serling's closing monologue


From William Shakespeare, Richard the Third, a small excerpt. The line reads, 'He has come to open the purple testament of bleeding war.' And for Lieutenant William Fitzgerald, A Company, First Platoon, the testament is closed. Lieutenant Fitzgerald has found the Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

Not bad. No explanation of course, but then you seldom if ever get one in The Twilight Zone.

The Moral

Other than war is hell? I guess when your number's up, there's not a lot you can do about it.

Themes

The horror of war is the main one here, allied to the pain of being able to predict which men will come back from a mission, and which won't. So it involves combat and also a sense of precognition. Fear, too, which is of course endemic to war, but a different kind of fear. Fear from his own men, that he can see if they are going to die (and so, in some twisted way, they probably blame him for this) and fear, too, from the lieutenant, who feels he has become an albatross hanging around the neck of the squad, and refuses to tell the men whom he sees are marked for death that they're not coming back, but the relationship has changed, become strained, fraught with tension, and he must feel very isolated.

Iconic?

Not sure if it's the first to feature a sort of presentiment of death, probably not, but this would become a recurring theme in science fiction over the years. Wasn't there a movie called The Medusa Touch, or am I misremembering? What about Knowing? What about fucking off - well, how rude!


Personal Notes

Just one comment to make: the captain in this is called Riker, spelled that way, and I just wonder if Roddenberry had seen this episode and if it influenced his naming of Captain Picard's famous "Number One"?

Well, two actually. Isn't it interesting that Serling's closing quotes on both this and the last episode reference Shakespeare? No? Sod ya then.

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Title: "Elegy"
Original transmission date: February 19 1960
Written by: Charles Beaumont, from his story
Directed by: Douglas Heynes
Starring: Cecil Kellaway
Jeff Morrow
Kevin Hagen
Don Dubbins


Setting: An asteroid
Timeframe: 2085
Theme(s): Death, Commercialism, social status
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: :5stars:



Serling's opening monologue

The time is the day after tomorrow. The place: a far corner of the universe. A cast of characters: three men lost amongst the stars. Three men sharing the common urgency of all men lost. They're looking for home. And in a moment, they'll find home; not a home that is a place to be seen, but a strange unexplainable experience to be felt.

Off-course and drifting in space, the crew of a spaceship locate an Earthlike planet and land. More than Earthlike - it's identical, except everything seems to be frozen in place. They're soon disabused of the notion that this could in fact be Earth by the older technology - it appears to be about 200 years in the past - and, more importantly and conclusively, two suns in the sky. When they encounter people, they too all seem to be frozen, and one falls over when one of the spacemen pushes him lightly. Hearing music, they rush to the bandstand but the music seems to be piped in, though there's a full band, standing like models.

They consider the possibility that time might be moving at a different speed for them. They decide to split up, to see if there is anyone living they can contact, but though they come across a party where a man is dancing with his wife, a beauty contest and a card game in session, nobody moves or talks, or responds. Then, unseen by the spaceman, one of the figures at the beauty contest does move, and smiles knowingly to himself. Meeting back up, the men go to check out houses, and are astonished to come across the old man who moved back at the beauty contest. He introduces himself as Jeremy Wickwire, and he explains that the asteroid they are on is a giant purpose-built cemetery.

Here, anyone who can afford it may have their body preserved in whatever fantasy or ambition they like, and because the company, Happy Glades ("The Biggest Mortuary Company in the World") promises eternal peace, forever, to its, ah, clients, the place had to be built out in space. And so it was, says Wickwire, in 1973. He reveals that he is not human, merely the perception of a computerised image, a caretaker that looks after the place and ensures its denizens are not disturbed.

But they have been disturbed, and as he serves the space pilots drinks, he asks them what their fondest wish would be. As they lose consciousness, he ensures that it comes to pass, arranging their dead bodies in their ship, so that they can feel as if they are heading for home.

Serling's closing monologue

Kirby, Webber, and Meyers, three men lost. They shared a common wish—a simple one, really. They wanted to be aboard their ship headed for home. And fate—a laughing fate—a practical jokester with a smile stretched across the stars, saw to it that they got their wish with just one reservation: the wish came true, but only in the Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

Clever. Although you have to question the likelihood that bodies, even embalmed ones, would stay in pristine condition - and in place - for two centuries, the idea of a huge, exclusive and expensive graveyard in space is an interesting one, and once you know that this is the case, there can never be allowed any sort of disruption, least of all from humans. Or at least, live ones.

The Moral

Man will never achieve peace, for he can never bring it about.

Themes

Death, nuclear war, commercial entrepreneurism, and social strata all figure in here. Happy Glades is only available to those who can afford its, no doubt exorbitant rates, and so, as ever, even the cemetery maintains the human societal hierarchy. There's mention of an "atomic war", supposed to have taken place in 1985, which is interesting on two levels. Given that this was written in 1953, that means that Beaumont foresaw this apocalyptic disaster occurring a mere thirty years in the future, and considering what almost happened in a mere ten years - the Cuban missile crisis - he could have been right. Also, he puts the date of the war at one year after that predicted by George Orwell in his famous novel.

The idea of creating the cemetery on the asteroid is not fully explained: who built it? He says it was built in 1973, but that kind of technology would have been unlikely to be achieved in twenty years, so did some alien race build it?

Oops!

Again, we're told the spacecraft is 65 million miles from Earth. That's not even halfway out of the solar system, so where are they supposed to be?

And isn't that...?

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Jeff_Morrow_in_The_Giant_Claw_trailer.jpg)

Jeff Morrow (1907 - 1993)

Famous as Exeter in the classic science fiction movie This Island Earth and also as Paulus in the Biblical epic The Robe.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/63/Kevin-Hagen-01.jpg)

Kevin Hagen (1928 - 2005)

Without question, the role he's remembered for is the likeable Doc Baker in the series Little House on the Prairie.

Questions, and sometimes, Answers

I know these are supposed to be fine, moral, upstanding specimens of humanity, but still, when one of them comes across a card game where all the players seem frozen (like everyone and everything else) and there is literally money everywhere on the table, thousands, surely, of dollars, he doesn't experience even the momentary temptation to take some, or all of it? Seems a little unlikely.

Who pays for the cemetery, for its upkeep and maintenance, now that the Earth has been mostly destroyed? The spacers say that it took nearly 200 years to get the planet back on its feet after the war, but if such an enterprise existed wouldn't everyone on Earth know about it? And these guys certainly never seem to have heard about it. How can it be such a well-kept secret? Don't they advertise?

Can you kill someone by pumping embalming fluid into them? I mean, I guess it would kill them, but wouldn't it be horribly painful? And Wickwire assures the men it will not hurt. Surely there could have been some other way to get rid of them? I know this is two centuries in the future, and they may have some more humane process for death that involves embalming fluid, but still...

Iconic?

Very much so. The idea of a purpose-built planet has been used many times since, in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, for one, and this very story is closely mirrored later in a Star Trek episode called "Shore Leave". Different aim, same basic idea though. Similar attendant too. Also, to some slightly different extent, an early Star Trek: The Next Generation episode ("The Royale", I believe) in which aliens purpose-build a new home for a NASA astronaut who has been stranded far from his planet. I guess you could even attribute the last scenes in 2001 to it too, as Bowman is cared for by the aliens to whom the monoliths belong.

This also features a rocket-shaped exploration craft of the type which would become very popular in sixties science fiction movies and serials.

Those clever little touches

That Star Trek sound effect used on "Third From the Sun" is again in evidence in the opening scenes inside the spacecraft.

The Times they are a Changin'

Who would have thought that science fiction writers could have envisioned a basic space station being built in the 1970s, or that Earth would undergo a cataclysmic nuclear war in 1985? And yet, here we still are, bothering the galaxy with our presence over forty years later...

Personal Notes

So far as I can see, given that this was only 1960, I don't think any special camera tricks are used in the "suspension" effect, which means all the actors are standing or sitting still of their own accord, and if so, it's a testament to their acting that, while there are the odd almost imperceptible movements, as will happen when anyone tries to remain entirely still, they achieve the illusion really well.

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMGZjMTdiMDMtZDBjYS00OTNmLWE3YzUtZjk3MmZhMjZlOTU1XkEyXkFqcGc@._V1_.jpg)
Title: "Mirror Image"
Original transmission date: February 26 1960
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: John Brahm
Starring: Vera Miles as Millicent Barnes
Martin Milner as Paul Grinstead
Joe Hamilton as Ticket Attendant
Naomi Stevens as Cleaning Lady


Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Alienation, paranoia, madness, loneliness, parallel worlds, doppelganger
Parodied? Probably
Rating: :4.5stars:

Serling's opening monologue

Millicent Barnes, age twenty-five, young woman waiting for a bus on a rainy November night. Not a very imaginative type is Miss Barnes: not given to undue anxiety, or fears, or for that matter even the most temporal flights of fantasy. Like most young career women, she has a generic classification as a, quote, girl with a head on her shoulders, end of quote. All of which is mentioned now because, in just a moment, the head on Miss Barnes' shoulders will be put to a test. Circumstances will assault her sense of reality and a chain of nightmares will put her sanity on a block. Millicent Barnes, who, in one minute, will wonder if she's going mad.


It's a dark and stormy night (well, it is!) and a woman is waiting inside a bus depot but the bus is half an hour late. Worried, she checks with the ticket attendant, who snappily tells her that he has the same answer for her as he did the last time she asked: it'll be here when it gets here. She's surprised - as well as a little taken aback by his bluff rudeness - because this is the first time she's spoken to the man, but he is making the case that she has asked several times already, perhaps explaining why he's so irascible. Then she spots a bag at the check-in that looks suspiciously like hers. She puts the coincidence from her mind, or tries to, not wishing to incur the further wrath of the old guy behind the desk, but the idea won't leave her, and she has to have a closer look at the bag a few minutes later. Now she sees it is identical to hers ("Even down to the broken handle") and the guy says it is hers, and that she checked it fifteen minutes ago! She says no, it's like hers but - and as she turns to indicate her bag, which she had left beside her on the seat, it's no longer there.

She goes into the ladies to wash her face and meets a cleaner in there, who also swears she was in there just a few minutes before. Now she wonders if she's going mad. Why are two people both telling her she has done things she has not, that they've seen her before when she knows they have not? And how has her bag magically got itself checked in, when it never left her side? As she leaves the ladies in a huff though, she catches sight of herself in the mirror. Twice. She is standing in the restroom and also still sitting outside! When she goes outside, there is of course nobody sitting in her seat, however her case is back where she originally left it, and no longer checked in. As she begins to think she's losing her mind, another traveller arrives and she starts talking to him, glad to have someone to share her anxieties with, probably eager to be told she's worrying about nothing.

She introduces herself as Millicent Barnes, a secretary who has quit her job and is leaving town to start a new one, and he as Paul Grinstead. He listens to her story but can't figure out if she's crazy or not. He advances several weak theories for what might be happening, and then the bus arrives. As they go to get on it though, Millicent looks up and sees... herself, sitting there, already on the bus! She runs away in fright back into the depot and Paul pursues her, asking the bus driver to wait. However as she's in no condition to travel he decides to stay with her, telling the bus driver to carry on without them. When Millicent regains consciousness she is gratified to see she is not alone, and begins to relate a strange tale she once heard about parallel universes and how they can sometimes intrude into ours, with the version of us in that universe having to replace the original in order to survive. Paul listens, and says he's going to phone a friend (hah) who can drive them to their destination rather than wait for the next bus.

In reality, he's phoning the police, believing she's sick and needs help. While he's on the phone though, she goes into the ladies again, intending to hunt down the other version of her. Concerned when he hears her, from outside, seemingly talking to herself, he convinces her to walk outside with him and has the cops pick her up. As they drive away with her, he shakes his head. Then, as he prepares to spend the night in the bus depot, he looks up from taking a drink at the water fountain to see his bag has disappeared, and a man is running out of the door. A man who looks very much like him...

Serling's closing monologue

Obscure and metaphysical explanation to cover a phenomenon. Reasons dredged out of the shadows to explain away that which cannot be explained. Call it 'parallel planes' or just 'insanity'. Whatever it is, you'll find it in the Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

Weirdly poetic justice. After deciding that Millicent is mad, Paul falls under the same spell as her, realising that against all odds, she was right, and that whatever parallel world her double came from, there's one of him there too, and it wants his life. He's left to rue losing his one ally, the one person who not only would have believed his now fantastical explanation of events, but might have had some knowledge as to what to do to stop them. Nobody will believe him now.

The Moral

As in many of these episodes, the words of Hamlet come back to haunt us: There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamed of...

Themes

The main one here is mostly paranoia, and the fear of going slowly mad, as everything Millicent has believed to be true, taken at face value, relied on, shatters and crumbles before her disbelieving eyes. The comfortable, safe world of reality and common sense has broken down into a nightmare existence of uncertainty, doubt and approaching madness. She can no longer trust her own eyes, and when she has made up her mind that she can, she can't get anyone to believe her. For the first time, the idea of parallel worlds is here also explored, the idea that we all exist in infinite and perhaps very slightly different (or even identical, as in this instance) planes of existence, and, too, the idea, not original to this series and long held in folklore, of the doppelganger, a twin (often said to be evil) that everyone has somewhere in the world.

And isn't that...?
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/VERAMiles.jpg/440px-VERAMiles.jpg)

Vera Miles (1929 - )

Another link to Psycho, as she played Lila Crane in both the original and the later sequel. She also, rather interestingly, featured in an episode of later "rival" anthology series The Outer Limits, and went on to have roles in some of the biggest shows of the day, including Mannix, Ironside, Marcus Welby, Bonanza, The Man From U.N.C.L.E, Gunsmoke, Hawaii Five-0, Alias Smith and Jones, Cannon, Columbo, The Streets of San Francisco and Fantasy Island, to name but a few.

Iconic?

I would say a cautious yes. I'm sure this is not the first time an "evil double" story was written (I suppose in some ways you can even liken that idea to Dumas' The Man in the Iron Mask) but it surely echoes elements of Jack Finney's 1954 novel Invasion of the Body Snatchers  and its later adaptation to the screen in 1956, in the building fear and paranoia that nothing is as it seems, that there is evil afoot and that people are changing, but nobody believes it's happening. Of course, this idea would be carried on throughout science fiction, with such series as Star Trek using it to varying degrees of effect. It would, in time, become almost a cliche, the "evil twin" story, and turn into a lazy plot device for lazy authors.

Questions, and sometimes, Answers

Just exactly what legal right has Paul to call the cops and have Millicent (presumably) committed? Firstly, doesn't there have to be some sort of familial or relationship by marriage for that to work? Surely someone off the street can't just decide someone they've only met is mad, and needs to be incarcerated? And as well as that, should not the police be calling a doctor, rather than taking her off in their squad car? Seems a little precipitious to me. What do the guardians of the law know about the mental condition of people? And if they are taking Paul's word for it, why is he not required to accompany them and make a statement, sign something? Who's going to vouch for her lack of compus mentus in order to get her taken into an asylum, or even hospital? The cops?

If Millicent looked up and saw her doppelganger on the bus, and the bus departed, who was she talking to in the ladies afterwards? Another one? If the double had got off the bus, is it not likely the driver would have come in, asking if she was coming with them? And why would it get off anyway?

Personal Notes

He's an old guy, but I personally have a problem with the attitude of the ticket attendant towards Millicent. Yes, he's fed up with her constantly asking, as he sees it, the same questions, but even when she faints and is clearly in trouble, he seems unsympathetic, and when Grinstead tells him he's calling the cops, he becomes positively eager in a very disturbing way, as if he can't wait to see her locked up. So much for the older generation protecting the flower of the sex!

Parallels

This is a new section I'm starting today. As I mentioned in the intro, themes and situations and causes and morals are reused throughout the series, and when one episode can be linked or compared with a previous one, when the overall theme or idea fits or builds on something that has already been explored, I'll note that here.

"Perchance to Dream"

Although not the same thing, the idea of the double and of something or someone crossing over from another dimension  is reflected earlier in the episode "Perchance to Dream". Of course, in that case it's the world of dreams that becomes real when Edward Hall sees what he believes to be Maya from his nightmare in the shape of the receptionist. Still, the idea of something being here that should not be, something that belongs in another place entirely, links these two episodes I believe.

Title: "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street"
Original transmission date: March 4 1960
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Ronald Winston
Starring: Claude Akins
Barry Atwater
Jack Weston
Burt Metcalfe

Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Alienation, paranoia, mob mentality, distrust
Parodied? Yes, frequently.
Rating: A++


Serling's opening monologue

Maple Street, U.S.A., late summer. A tree-lined little world of front porch gliders, barbecues, the laughter of children, and the bell of an ice cream vendor. At the sound of the roar and the flash of light, it will be precisely 6:43 P.M. on Maple Street...This is Maple Street on a late Saturday afternoon. Maple Street in the last calm and reflective moment—before the monsters came.

There is a glow in the sky and a flash over quiet suburban Maple Street, and suddenly nothing electrical works any more. The phones are out, power tools are mute, clocks stop. Even the cars refuse to start up. As Steve Brand, one of the neighbourhood men, sets out to walk with his friend Charlie to the police station in town to check things out, Tommy, one of the local kids who has an interest in science fiction, tells him that he believes "whoever was in that thing that went overhead" doesn't want them to leave, and that's why they've shut off all the power. He says this is what happens in every book he reads about aliens. He further warns him that there may be aliens here now, infiltrating humanity and looking just like them. His story is greeted with derision - he's only an impressionable kid, after all - but in a very few moments eyes are beginning to narrow, heads are inclined and you can see the cogs whirring inside the minds as Tommy tells them these aliens look just like them and really could be anyone.

Suspicion is further reinforced when another neighbour, Les, trying to start his car has it fire up into life all on its own. The cold hard (and illogical but irrepressible) finger of accusation begins to point at him, the more so when the car mysteriously stops, again by itself. Questions begin to be asked: who is this family anyway? Why didn't Les come out when the "meteor", as they believe(d) it was, flew overhead? What do they know about this guy and his family? Real oddballs, according to Charlie. The mood gets dark and they go over to confront him, but Les insists he knows nothing. Steve tries to keep the peace, ensure everyone maintains a level head, but it's clear his calming, matter-of-fact influence will not last long. The seed has been planted, now it must grow and put forth its ugly and terrifying harvest.

Further accusations come forth. Why is Les always looking up at the sky at night, as if he's waiting for something? He tells them it's insomnia, but they move away from him as if frightened, as if they don't know him anymore, if they ever did. As if he's no longer one of them. As if he's the enemy. He warns them they're starting something terrible here, something that can't end well, but they begin to keep watch on him and his house as darkness falls. When Steve again tries to inject some common sense into proceedings, he's accused by Charlie of siding with the enemy, Charlie is then told by another neighbour that he isn't exactly cleared of suspicion either, and things begin to spiral out of control.

Accusations fly, Steve tries to show everyone - especially Charlie, whom he seems to have taken a dislike to, seeing how his neighbour is now reacting, leading the protests - that they are in danger of doing something stupid. Note: when a lot of stupid people get together with a stupid aim, that's usually the definition of a mob. Suddenly the sound of someone walking, and seized by fear and anger, and a definite idea that this is one of the aliens, come to kill them, Charlie shoots and kills the intruder, who happens to be another neighbour, Pete Van Horn, who had earlier gone off to check if the power was gone in the neighbouring street. As Pete lies dead at his feet, Charlie's house suddenly lights up, and suspicion swings to him. Why did he kill Pete? Was he afraid he was going to be exposed as the invader? Why have the lights come on just now on only his house? From being the leader, the rabble-rouser, Charlie has just become suspect zero, public enemy number one, and abruptly feels what it's like to be on the receiving end of unfounded suspicion.

As he runs to his house, people picking up rocks at throwing them at him, breaking his windows, Charlie swears he's not the alien, and points the finger at Tommy. It actually makes sense: nobody even thought of aliens till the kid came up with his crazy story, and he was the one standing behind Charlie as Pete walked up the road, urging him to do something, that here was the alien, come to kill them all. They chase him, but just then lights come on in this house, and then that house, and then another. Suspicions go from one to the other, people pick up rocks, grab guns, chaos descends as the inhabitants of Maple Street run this way and that, convinced this guy or that guy is the alien, the stranger among them, the one who does not belong. Steve's efforts to maintain order are useless and all goes to hell.

From a hill overlooking the street, two aliens nod, the one gratified that his demonstration has convinced the other that they do not need to expend manpower defeating the humans, that all they have to do is sow the seeds of discord and suspicion, and the earth people will destroy themselves. "They pick the most dangerous enemy they can find," one notes, "and it is themselves."

Serling's closing monologue

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices...to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill...and suspicion can destroy...and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own—for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone.


The Resolution

Excellent, though you can see it coming. All it needs to turn people against each other is for an idea to be floated that someone is different, someone is responsible, someone is dangerous. Then just sit back and watch the carnage.

The Moral

Sometimes the monsters that are within each one of us are more terrifying and powerful than any we can dream up, or any that may exist.

Themes

There are definite parallels with the previous episode, in that alienation figures quite prominently here, as it did there, although here it's a mass thing, whereas in "Mirror Image" it was just one person, then another, having the experience, but both solitarily. There are of course very obvious nods to the paranoia that spread through Nazi Germany in the 1930s, when anyone deemed "undesirable" was suspected, arrested, often never seen again, where people were blamed for things they could not possibly have been responsible for, where the overwhelming fear and hatred of the "other" took over and drove a whole country mad. Also, naturally, the panic labelled "Reds under the bed" which took hold of America in the 1950s, as fear about Communist infiltrators was fanned to fever pitch. Anyone displaying the least hint of support for or tolerance of "reds" was labelled as one, or a sympathiser, with McCarthy ready to act as the Nazi judges had.

Themes of alien invasion, which also link back to the previous one, although that's seen as a "quiet" invasion rather than one announced by a sonic boom and a flash in the sky which knocks all the power out. Still, the idea that there are people or things out there is floated for maybe only the third or fourth time. Another theme would be intolerance; when someone is suspected - without good reason - the cry goes up "he's not like us!" and this is enough to damn him in the eyes of the neighbourhood. Trust, too, or the lack of it, or the very erosion of it, features, as everyone looks at everyone else and wonders just how far they can trust their neighbour, how well they know them, what they might be hiding, what they might really be like.

And isn't that...?


(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Claude_Aikins.jpg)
Claude Akins (1926 - 1994)

Sheriff Lobo himself!


Questions, and sometimes, Answers

How come Pete Van Horn took so long to come back? He only went into the next street, and the sun was shining when he did, so we assume early to late afternoon, yet it's dark before he returns. What the hell was he doing all that time?

What kind of science fiction comic books did Tommy read? Even in the 1960s, most would have been more concentrated on stories set in space. Some would undoubtedly have themes of alien invasion, but in EVERY ONE he read, the aliens impersonated humans? Surely not.

Iconic?

Not really, but the theme of often unfounded paranoia leading to mass panic and even murder has been used since, most notably to my knowledge in Philip K. Dick's story "Kill All Others."

Those clever little touches

I'm not at all sure it's meant, but both as Pete leaves and as he returns, the camera focuses on the hammer he carries strapped to his leg. Hammer being one half of the Russian flag, are they telling us something here? Given that the theme can very easily dovetail in with the fear of Communism taking over the USA, I feel it might be a subtle hint.

Title: "A World of Difference"
Original transmission date: March 11 1960
Written by: Richard Matheson
Directed by:  Ted Post
Starring: Howard Duff as Arthur Curtis/Gerald "Gerry" Raigan
Eileen Ryan as Nora Raigan
David White as Brinkley
Gail Kobe as Sally
Peter Walker as Sam
Susan Dorn as Marian Curtis
Frank Maxwell as Marty Fisher
Bill Idelson as Stagehand
Thomas Martin as Technician
Robert McCord as Camera Crew


Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Madness, despair, obsession, hope, parallel universes
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: A+

Serling's opening monologue

You're looking at a tableau of reality, things of substance, of physical material: a desk, a window, a light. These things exist and have dimension. Now this is Arthur Curtis, age thirty-six, who also is real. He has flesh and blood, muscle and mind. But in just a moment we will see how thin a line separates that which we assume to be real with that manufactured inside of a mind.


Arthur Curtis is looking forward to his first holiday in years, and the birthday of his daughter. As he makes a call though, or tries to, the phone in his office is dead. As he walks outside to ask his secretary to call the phone company someone growls "Cut!" Suddenly one wall of his office has disappeared, to reveal a camera crew, director, a whole film studio all watching him. One of the men, presumably the director, irritably asks him how hard can it be to make a phone call, using the name Gerry, not Arthur. He introduces himself as Marty, and he is the director, and it seems Arthur, or rather Gerry, is in a movie. Gerry is playing the part of Arthur, except Gerry thinks he is Arthur, and has no memory of any film, does not know the director, does not realise or believe this is a movie. Up until a few moments ago, this was his life, his real life, not some role being played by an actor.

A man purporting to be his agent, Sam, tells him he's on his last chance and not to blow it. Marty tells one of the crew to phone for an ambulance, while Gerry - or Arthur, or whoever he is - goes to make his call. Suddenly though he can no longer remember his own number, and when he rings directory assistance they tell him there is no telephone registered at the address he has just given. Confused, scared, he leaves the studio - which moments before had been an office block, he remembers it; his own office, where he has worked for years - and is almost run over by a woman in a car, a woman who snarls that she is his wife. Ex-wife, actually, and he had better make sure she gets her alimony payments. Gerry/Arthur doesn't recognise her at all, and while Marty tells "Mrs. Raigan" that her "husband" is having a nervous breakdown and they are awaiting the arrival of an ambulance, Gerry/Arthur jumps into the car and drives off with his "ex-wife".

On the way he tries to convince her that he is not who she says or thinks he is, but she thinks he's just trying to get out of his divorce commitments, and when they drive to where his home should be, and even the road isn't there, she remains unconvinced. After all, he is an actor. Well, to her anyway he is. When he tries to ring his office and is told, again, no such place exists, he breaks down and passes out. When he comes to, his agent shows him the script for the movie he has been acting in, in which his character is called Arthur Curtis, and his wife, and his child, and the address he thinks he lives at, all match up. However that movie, he is told, has been cancelled due to the unacceptable behaviour of the lead actor - him - and they are at the moment tearing down the set.

Frantic to get back there, knowing somehow that if he can get back into that office, onto that set, things might be all right again, Arthur/Gerry drives at speed back to the studio where he sits in the empty chair at a desk which now contains two blank frames which used to house pictures of his wife and daughter. "Don't leave me here" he begs, hiding his face in his hands, and when he looks up he sees the photo frames have been again filled with the pictures of his family. Jumping up, he sees his wife - his real wife, not the divorced, money-grasping harpy he left behind at an unfamiliar place he was told was his home - and grabbing her, taking the airline tickets from his secretary, he hurries her out of the office, as a ghostly voice calls "All right! Let's get these tables and chairs broken down!"

Some short time later the agent appears, asking if anyone has seen Gerry, but nobody has.

And nobody ever will again.

Gerry Raigan is dead. Long live Arthur Curtis.


Serling's closing monologue

The modus operandi for the departure from life is usually a pine box of such and such dimensions, and this is the ultimate in reality. But there are other ways for a man to exit from life. Take the case of Arthur Curtis, age thirty-six. His departure was along a highway with an exit sign that reads, "This Way To Escape". Arthur Curtis, en route to the Twilight Zone.


The Resolution

In many ways, this is very like "The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine", where Barbara, the fading actress, longed for a life on screen, while here Arthur Curtis, who is in fact (apparently) Gerry Raigan, wishes for his screen persona to be his real one. Both get their wish, in slightly different ways.

The Moral

I'm not entirely sure here. Maybe there's always a way out, or a way back?

Themes

Madness and obsession are here, large as life. Everyone thinks "Gerry" has gone mad, insisting he is the character he is playing in the movie, and he is obsessed with getting "home", though when he does reach the street where his house is supposed to be, there's nothing there. A sense of loss too, as "Gerry" fears he has lost his wife, his child, his job, his very existence, and sees it replaced with that of a drunken actor on his last chance, shackled to a harridan who only cares about getting her pound of flesh out of him. And then hope rises. He hopes, prays that if he can just get back to his "office" everything will be all right, everything will go back to how it was. And it does.

Tentatively, the idea of parallel universes is probably touched on here too. Perhaps in another dimension, the movie is about Gerald Raigan and he is rushing around telling everyone he is not Arthur Curtis...

And isn't that...?

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1d/Howard_Duff_1969.JPG/440px-Howard_Duff_1969.JPG)

Howard Duff (1913 - 1990)

Famed for his role as the attorney in the Dustin Hoffman movie Kramer vs Kramer, with Kevin Costner in No Way Out, he also appeared in Dallas, Charlie's Angels, Flamingo Road, East of Eden, Knot's Landing and Magnum, PI


(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/Howard_Duff_Eileen_Ryan_Twilight_Zone.JPG/440px-Howard_Duff_Eileen_Ryan_Twilight_Zone.JPG)


Eileen Ryan (1927 - )

Appeared in many series of the 70s, 80s and 90s including Cannon, Matlock, CSI, Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, ER, Grey's Anatomy and Prime Suspect, but arguably her greatest claim to fame is being the mother of the Penn brothers, Sean, Chris and Michael.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/24/DavidWhite1.jpg)
David White (1916 - 1990)

Best known for the series Bewitched, in which he played Darrin's boss. Also appeared in the 1960 Jack Lemmon classic The Apartment as well as the later Richard Pryor vehicle Brewster's Millions.

Iconic?

Marginally. Again, I doubt this was the first time this idea was used, but in the future the theme of someone living a life that turns out to be, or seem to be, false would be used a lot. You could probably link the likes of The Truman Show to this idea.

Parallels

As mentioned above, this episode is very close to the idea in "The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine", with both characters seeking, and finding (in Raigan/Curtis's case, re-finding) sanctuary in a better life in what is a fantasy world. No explanation is given for either, but that has become and will continue to be par for the course with this series.

Personal Notes

This is only the fourth (check) episode so far not written by Serling, and the third I think written by Matheson.

Title: "Long Live Walter Jameson"
Original transmission date: March 18 1960
Written by: Charles Beaumont
Directed by:  Anton Leader
Starring: Kevin McCarthy as Walter Jameson/ Tom Bowen/ Maj. Hugh Skelton
Edgar Stehli as Prof. Samuel Kittridge
Estelle Winwood as Laurette Bowen
Dody Heath as Susanna Kittridge


Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Immortality, Subterfuge, Time travel (of a sort), Callousness
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: A

Serling's opening monologue

You're looking at Act One, Scene One, of a nightmare, one not restricted to witching hours of dark, rainswept nights. Professor Walter Jameson, popular beyond words, who talks of the past as if it were the present, who conjures up the dead as if they were alive...In the view of this man, Professor Samuel Kittridge, Walter Jameson has access to knowledge that couldn't come out of a volume of history, but rather from a book on black magic, which is to say that this nightmare begins at noon.


Walter Jameson is a history teacher who holds his subjects enraptured by his delivery, making it seem as if he was there in the times of which he speaks. His professor, Sam Ketteridge, invites him to dinner; as he leaves, a strange old woman watches him from behind a tree. At Ketteridge's house, it appears Jameson is engaged to his daughter, who is studying for her PhD. While she hits the books after dinner, Sam takes Walter aside and quizzes him on his age. He's forty-four, Jameson tells him, but Sam is unconvinced, saying in twelve years he hasn't seen Walter age at all. Now he brings out a book of photographs taken during the American Civil War, and shows Walter one which looks very like him. Pushed by Sam, he admits  it is him. When Sam asks him how old he is, he says he is old enough to have known Plato personally.

Now that his suspicions have been confirmed, Sam wants Walter to impart to him his secret, the secret of long life, perhaps immortality. But he is to be disappointed, as Walter tells him he doesn't know why he has never died, why he goes on, why he doesn't age like other men: he just does. He tells Sam that he too sought the secret of eternal life, and found it when he met an alchemist who wanted to experiment on him, for a price. Jameson paid the price, and lost consciousness. When he awoke the alchemist was gone, but the experiment had worked. He no longer aged, he could no longer die. He just went on living, but he laments that he did not become any wiser, any braver, any more honourable. More than anything, he wants to die, but he is too frightened to. He tells Sam he was a coward then, and he is a coward now.

This is illustrated in lurid detail when, knowing that it will only last a few decades for him, but unwilling to be lonely, he sticks to his plan of marrying Suzanne, even though Sam has now forbidden it. He looks triumphantly at the professor, knowing there is nothing her father can  say to her to change her mind, without seeming as if he has lost his reason. Back in his own house he is accosted by the woman who was hiding behind the tree, who says she is his wife from a previous marriage. Grown very old now, she can't explain why he has not, but she knows it is him, the man she knew as Tommy Bowen. She shoots him, and when Sam goes over to check out the noise, he finds Walter dying, and ageing. Ageing rapidly. Ageing till he's nothing more than dust.


Serling's closing monologue

Last stop on a long journey, as yet another human being returns to the vast nothingness that is the beginning and into the dust that is always the end.


The Resolution

Quite Dorian Grey-like, but a little simplistic and rushed in my opinion. I suppose he was eternal but not invulnerable, and in the end was as easy prey to a simple bullet as any of us. His sins caught him out in the end.

The Moral

Nobody lives forever, nor should they.

Themes

Eternal/long life is the main one here, something that would be revisited in films, books and series in the future, and which had previously been dealt with by writers as diverse as Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker. Selfishness, too, is here: Jameson knows he can only have a short time with Suzanne, but is prepared to marry her anyway to assuage his loneliness, if only for a comparatively brief moment in his long life. One might postulate that, were he to have children from the marriage, he could carry on the same with any daughters, though that is not mentioned nor even hinted at, and might not be in his makeup. I might have had a little more sympathy with him had he stayed with any wife until she had died, but his selfishness is shown in the fact that he clearly only stayed until each had grown old enough to no longer interest him, not till they died, as he is tracked down by one such, well, discarded wife as he went in search of a younger, fresher model.

Loneliness will almost always go hand in hand with immortality or very long life; if you're the only one who can live beyond the span  of a normal human existence, you're going to be on your own for a lot of your time.

And isn't that...?

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/Kevin_McCarthy_1.jpg/440px-Kevin_McCarthy_1.jpg)

Kevin McCarthy (1914 - 2010)

No, not that one! Interestingly, given my reference to the movie with regard to the previous episode, McCarthy starred in the original 1956 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and a clever cameo in the remake of 1978. He also resurfaced to play a role when Twilight Zone was made into a movie, in 1983. In between, he had the usual roles in the usual shows, like The High Chapparal, Columbo, starred in the remake of Fantastic Voyage, 1987's Innerspace and as Grampa Addams in Addams Family Reunion.

Iconic?

Nah. Stories about immortals or near-immortals have been around since the Bible - Cain, Noah, Methusaleh - and probably before, and have been absorbed into the likes of vampire stories and things like Highlander.


The Times they are a Changin'

Sam grins to Walter that his daughter is going to pass her exams, even if he has to spank her. You wouldn't get away with even saying that today, not even as her parent. Probably.

I'd also like to pass on my compliments to the makeup department. While the transformation scene as Jameson ages and then dies would be far better today of course, for 1960 they did a very  good job, and considering that Star Trek wouldn't start in earnest till eight years later, and even then had some, shall we say, questionable effects, this is kind of state of the art for the time.

Parallels

Though not the same stories at all, there is a link here with earlier episode "Escape Clause", as both men lament the brevity of human life, and while Bedeker did not consciously seek immortality, he was quick to grab it when it presented itself. Both men also found out that living forever (or in Bedeker's case, being impervious to harm, as his immortality didn't last very long) is not all it's cracked up to be.

Personal Notes

I feel the writer missed a trick here. When Walter shows Sam the diary of the Civil War soldier, Major Hugh Skelton, who turns out to be him, Sam should have noted that the writing was Walter's. After all, people's handwriting doesn't change over time, and Walter would have no reason to disguise his, especially in the middle of a war. Then Sam could have used this as incontrovertible proof that Walter was Skelton.

I also have a problem with how easily, in the end, Walter dies. For a man who, he says, has been around since ancient times, when even stubbing your toe could end in death possibly, when medical expertise was virtually nil, and then in addition, living through and serving in the Civil War, are we supposed to believe he never got hit, shot, wounded? Really? This is the very first time someone has shot him or threatened his life?

Title: "People Are Alike All Over"
Original transmission date: March 25 1960
Written by: Rod Serling, based on a story by Paul Fairman
Directed by: Mitchell Leising
Starring: Roddy McDowall as Sam Conrad
Susan Oliver as Teenya
Paul Comi as Warren Marcusson
Byron Morrow as First Martian
Vic Perrin as Second Martian
Vernon Gray as Third Martian


Setting: Earth and Mars
Timeframe: Some time in the future (not specified)
Theme(s): Fear, loneliness, animal cruelty, imprisonment, isolation, betrayal
Parodied? Many times. By Futurama, for one
Rating:  A++

Serling's opening monologue

You're looking at a species of flimsy little two-legged animal with extremely small heads, whose name is Man. Warren Marcusson, age thirty-five. Samuel A. Conrad, age thirty-one. They're taking a highway into space, Man unshackling himself and sending his tiny, groping fingers up into the unknown. Their destination is Mars, and in just a moment we'll land there with them.


Two men stand looking at a rocket ship, on which they will both soon be blasting off on a (sorry) mission to Mars. One of the man, Sam Conrad, a scientist, is apprehensive about the mission, scared even, while the other, Warren Marcusson, has a firmly-held belief that, should they encounter Martians, they will be just like them. Conrad foresees disaster, but they are three hours from take off now and there is no way to back out. Turns out he's right to worry, as they don't land so much as crash on Mars, and Marcusson is badly injured. Conrad revives him but he's still quite weak, and when he tries to open the hatch it seems to be stuck. Conrad tells him the hydraulics are out but Marcusson says that's all right - the auxiliary power will allow it to open.

Conrad, though, for some reason, does not want to open the hatch. He seems very scared.

Marcusson seems to realise he's more badly wounded that he thought, that he is in fact dying, but he says he wants to see what he's dying for, and pleads with Conrad to open the hatch, saying that if there is life out there the aliens will surely help them. God made everything, after all, and if they have hearts they have souls, so why wouldn't they help them? Conrad though is still reluctant, still terrified. As Marcusson collapses back into unconsciousness, Conrad retreats into his own private world of fear and dread and panic. Suddenly, the hatch begins to open. Conrad grabs a weapon and waits.

Outside is a large assemblage of... people. Humans. Men and women, dressed in a vaguely Roman/Greek style, togas and the like. They don't say anything but they seem friendly and Conrad is relieved, putting away his gun. One of them goes to check on Marcusson, but he has passed away. Now they do speak, and in English, or, as they explain to Conrad, he is in fact speaking in and understanding their language, through a sort of - well they call it hypnosis or unconscious transfer - I guess we'd say telepathy. They offer to bury Marcusson and also repair Conrad's ship. He is amazed to see that the late Marcusson was right: these are people, just like them.

They take him to a special house they say they have constructed overnight, using images from his mind, and ask him to remain there for a while. He's happy enough - it's a perfect replica of a 1950s suburban house, but the woman he has been talking to - and seems to have become attracted to - seems sad, preoccupied, ashamed even, though she says nothing.

Okay, for we sophisticated veterans of science fiction, it's clear where this is going, but it's still a shock when Conrad realises he is locked in, that the curtains that have been hung do not cover windows but bare walls, and as his euphoria dissolves into panic. Then the walls seem to move aside, showing a barred window through which people stare and point, as we learn that the house is really a cage, and that Conrad is now on display in the Martian zoo, a sign above his house reading EARTH CREATURE IN HIS NATIVE HABITAT.

Serling's closing monologue

Species of animal brought back alive. Interesting similarity in physical characteristics to human beings in head, trunk, arms, legs, hands, feet. Very tiny undeveloped brain. Comes from primitive planet named Earth. Calls himself Samuel Conrad. And he will remain here in his cage with the running water and the electricity and the central heat as long as he lives. Samuel Conrad has found The Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

First time I'm sure it's shocking, but the signs are there. Not to the actual truth perhaps, but it's pretty clear the Martians are not what they seem. A nice eco-comment on the way we treat our animals and our zoos, and quite striking for its time.

The Moral

The more intelligent (presumably these are) creatures will always try to cage and tame the less so, and there's always a buck to be made.

Themes

From the beginning the overriding atmosphere is one of fear, dread, worry, the terror of the unknown, the speculation about what may await them out there in space, on Mars. This fear only increases when the worst happens and they crash, and paranoia takes hold. Then this gives way to relief, joy, disbelief as Conrad sees the Martians are just like us, and are friendly. Emotions go from contented to worried again and finally to full-blown panic as he realises what has happened, and finally a fatalistic sense of acceptance.

The treatment of animals, or at least lower life forms, is dealt with here too. Not surely for the first time - Tarzan and other series had been helping man get back to nature and seeing animals in a new light for years before this - but cleverly putting humanity in the place of the lions and tigers and bears, and showing us that, to a higher civilisation, we are but animals, and they would treat us as such.

Man's fear of confinement, of imprisonment comes up here too, and surely also loneliness and the need for a companion, as Conrad, though furnished with everything he needs to live his life, is left without the one thing he cannot survive without, human company.  A sense of callousness, too, on the part of the Martians, who probably don't know any better you could say, but have been able to ascertain that this creature is a sentient, intelligent species, as they have talked to it. Would we imprison a bear or a gorilla or a snake if we knew we could converse with it?

If there was a buck in it, you can be damn sure we would!

Oops!

Conrad steps out onto the Martian surface without any sort of space suit, and has no trouble breathing. Nor do the inhabitants, yet we know Mars' atmosphere is poisonous to at least we humans. There's also no sign of the red dust that we now know covers the planet.

And isn't that...?
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/RoddyMcDowall.jpg)

Roddy McDowall (1928 - 1998)

Who doesn't know the star of the Planet of the Apes movies and series, who also appeared in the movie Fright Night (the original) and its later sequel as well as The Longest Day, Cleopatra, The Greatest Story Ever Told, and series like Columbo, Barnaby Jones, Ellery Queen, Wonder Woman, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Fantasy Island etc etc etc.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Susan_Oliver.jpg/440px-Susan_Oliver.jpg)

Susan Oliver (1932 - 1990)

Perhaps best known for her role as Vima, the girl on Talos IV in the original Star Trek pilot "The Cage", (how apt!) she appeared in the usual run of series - Mannix, Cannon, Streets of San Francisco, Bonanza, Wagon Train, The Man From U.N.C.L.E, and was also a pilot, having originally had such a fear of flying that she refused to travel in any aircraft, overcoming this to become Pilot of the Year for 1970 and being only the fourth woman to fly a single-engined plane over the Atlantic when she made the trip in 1967.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Paul-comi.jpg)

Paul Comi (1932 - 2016)

Comi would show up later in Star Trek, in the episode "Balance of Power", and also feature in future Twilight Zone episodes, as well as starring in the original Cape Fear, The Towering Inferno, Death Wish II and featuring in series like Fame and LA Law, and soaps such as Falcon Crest, Dallas and Knot's Landing.

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BOTEwY2Q5NzktZDVmMC00MGRmLWE1ZmItZGM4MzMyNTNhMWQ0XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzI2MDEwNA@@._V1_.jpg)

Vic Perrin (1916 - 1989)

Another who would make the transition from Twilight Zone to Star Trek, Perrin would guest in three episodes - "Arena", "Mirror Mirror" and in "The Changeling", in the last of which he would gain fame as the voice of the loopy probe Nomad. He also would be known for his stentorian tones announcing "Do not adjust your set! We are in control!" as The Outer Limits began.

Questions, and sometimes, Answers

If this is a Martian zoo, where did the rest of the exhibits come from? We can assume, surely, that Conrad is not the only one caged here, so do the Martians have space flight technology? Given their power both to read minds and, apparently, construct a dwelling overnight, surely the answer there has to be yes. If not, how do they gather the rest of their specimens? Do they just wait in hope someone will crash on the planet? Seems unlikely.

And if they do have spaceflight, why have they not visited their nearest neighbour before, and taken samples of its life away with them? Have they done so? Are there other humans in the zoo, and can Conrad at some point hope to be reunited with them? A rather good extra twist would have been had the Martians consoled Conrad by telling him they had a female of his species, leading him to meet maybe a gorilla or something, Hey, they're all Earth creatures, right?

Iconic?

Absolutely. The idea of an alien zoo exhibiting humans has become a favourite theme in science fiction, though whether or not this, or at least Fairman's story, was the first example of it I don't know.

Personal Notes

Interesting that Tennya, the girl who assures Conrad, despite her own obvious misgivings and conflicted feelings, that everything will be all right is the same Susan Oliver who will a few years later play Vina, the girl on Talos IV who fulfils more or less the same role in "The Cage". You can also see links here between this episode and McDowell's later cult series, Planet of the Apes.

It's also good to see that on this occasion they get the distance right: Mars is approximately 35 million miles from Earth.

Title: "Execution"
Original transmission date: April 1 1960
Written by: Rod Serling, from the story by George Clayton Johnson
Directed by:  David Orrick McDearmon
Starring: Albert Salmi as Joe Caswell
Russell Johnson as Professor Manion
Than Wyenn as Paul Johnson
Jon Lormer as Reverend
George Mitchell as Elderly Man
Fay Roope as Judge
Richard Karlan as Bartender
Joe Haworth as TV Cowboy


Setting: Earth
Timeframe: 1880/Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Time travel, murder, revenge, justice
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: A+

Serling's opening monologue

Commonplace—if somewhat grim—unsocial event known as a necktie party, the guest of dishonor a cowboy named Joe Caswell, just a moment away from a rope, a short dance several feet off the ground, and then the dark eternity of all evil men. Mr. Joe Caswell, who, when the good Lord passed out a conscience, a heart, a feeling for fellow men, must have been out for a beer and missed out. Mr. Joe Caswell, in the last, quiet moment of a violent life.

A cowboy is preparing to be hanged, having been found guilty of murder. He seems to have no remorse, despite having shot the young man, according to the deceased's father, in the back. But as the horse is urged away and the rope goes taut, there is no sign of Joe Caswell, ne'er-do-well and killer - the noose is swinging there, empty! Caswell, to his intense surprise, wakes up in New York, 80 years in the future, a man leaning over him explains that he has a time machine, and has brought him from the past. He's a scientist, an inventor named Manion, and he is unaware that he has brought back a criminal and a murderer, though as he says himself, he doesn't like the look of him.

When Caswell is shown the new world he had been thrust into, he experiences severe future shock, as 2000 AD coined the term - the inability to assimilate all the experiences, sounds, sights and wonders of the time in which he finds himself, but when Manion realises what he has done, and declares his intention of sending Caswell back to face justice, the cowboy smashes a lamp over his head, grabs the gun the professor was reaching for, and leaves. Out in the new and unfamiliar world though, Caswell is lost, disoriented, helpless. He staggers along, neon signs flashing at him, traffic honking, people bumping into him - New York at its finest.

He blunders into a telephone kiosk, but spooked by the sound of the operator coming out of the receiver he locks himself in, and only manages to escape by smashing the glass and falling out. He next finds himself in a bar, where, having trashed the jukebox he has a drink, complaining of the noise - it's too loud, there are too many lights, and all the "horseless carriages" are terrifying him, and when he sees a cowboy on the TV over the bar he shoots at him, thinking he's being challenged. As the barman yells for the police he legs it back out into the street, where he shoots at a taxi.

Making his way back to the laboratory, he sees Manion is still unconscious (or dead) and realises too late in despair that he has no way to get back to his own time, no way to get home. Just then a robber appears, holding a gun on him. An opportunist, this guy had been watching Manion and knew he went to bed early, so had assumed he would have free rein to plunder the place, but finding Caswell there he trains the gun on him. They struggle, and as Caswell is punched over towards the window it breaks, and the robber uses the cord to strangle him. Searching around the room, he finds nothing of value until he sees the time machine. On entering it, the door closes and he is transported back to 1880 - right back into the noose intended for Caswell. Poetic justice.

Serling's closing monologue

This is November 1880, the aftermath of a necktie party. The victim's name—Paul Johnson, a minor-league criminal and the taker of another human life. No comment on his death save this: justice can span years. Retribution is not subject to a calendar. Tonight's case in point in The Twilight Zone.


The Resolution

Masterful. Not only does a) Caswell kill the only person who could get him back and b) die by hanging, eighty years in the future, but the man who hangs him ends up deservedly taking his place at the end of the rope intended for him back in 1880. Superb.

The Moral

Justice can only be delayed, not avoided or outrun, and your sins eventually catch up with you.

Themes

The main one is of course justice, or indeed revenge, as a man who should have hanged in 1880 ends up meeting the same fate in 1960, and a man who surely would have fried in 1960 had he been caught, ends up dangling at the end of a rope eighty years in the past. Another time travel story, the first I think in the series to use an actual time machine (though there is absolutely zero attempt to even fudge an explanation of how it works), and probably the first, perhaps not only Twilight Zone but maybe even story to use a time travel episode as a tool of justice. Perhaps not, but I certainly think so here anyway. Murder, another theme that tends to crop up in this series is also explored here, in three ways: the alleged murder Caswell committed, for which is to be hanged, the slightly panicked murder of Manion by Caswell and the very cold-blooded and deliberate murder of Caswell by the thief.

And isn't that...?

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/Russell_Johnson_Black_Saddle_1960.JPG/440px-Russell_Johnson_Black_Saddle_1960.JPG)
Russell Johnson (1924 - 2014)

You Americans will know him best as the Professor from Gilligan's Island (means nothing to me; that show was never broadcast on this side of the water) though he also appeared in the classic science fiction movie This Island Earth.



Jon Lormer (1906 - 1986)

Apart from appearing in other Twilight Zone episodes, he would go on to feature in three episodes of Star Trek, also starring in Perry Mason, Lassie the Series and Peyton Place, as well as in the Stephen King anthology Creepshow. Of mild interest too is that he and the actor who played the robber, whom I have not featured here, both played parts in the 1958 movie I Want To Live! and both were uncredited. He also hooked up with Kevin McCarthy, whom we met in "Long Live Walter Jameson" on the set of If He Hollers, Let Him Go! in 1968.

A quick mention for George Mitchell, whom we met earlier as the gas station attendant in the opening scenes of "The Hitch-Hiker".

Questions, and sometimes, Answers

Caswell stumbles out onto the street, having smashed up a jukebox and also discharged a firearm in a bar, in the heart of New York City. The barman has called the cops (though, rather breaking with tradition and not using the phone, simply yelling POLICE!) and THEN Caswell shoots at a taxi in the street. We hear sirens and whistles, yet he is able to make it back to Manion's lab unimpeded, to meet his doom at the hands of the thief. Why was he not arrested? It's not as if he could blend in, and he had the gun in his hand. Everyone saw him, so why did the cops not arrive? Gunfire on the streets of New York? And no cops?

How did the dictaphone start up by itself after Caswell had smashed it up? From what I know of those machines, you have to press play. It shouldn't be able to just start playing of its own accord. And the full final recording is there, too? Unlikely at best.

Can you really hang or strangle a full-grown man with the cord from curtains? Would the string not snap if you pulled at it? Would the curtains not come down before your neck broke? I know children have been caught in those and died before, but a big, bull-headed, heavy, muscular man fighting for his life? Fair enough; he was probably weak from having already had the noose around his neck, but still - the robber is a weedy little guy, and yet Caswell can't push him off while the guy is strangling him? It's not as if he gave the cord a tug and Caswell went up, like with roller blinds or something. His feet remained on the ground. I think it would have taken longer, and a whole lot more brute strength, to manage to kill him with what is in essence a flimsy little piece of cord, not exactly anchored to anything.

Once Manion saw the rope burns, why did he not a) send Caswell back while he was out or b) send him back without saying anything once he woke up and the professor could confirm what kind of man he had rescued? Telegraphing his intention, essentially advising the man - a self-confessed cold-blooded killer - that he was sending him back to be hanged does not seem to me to have been a smart move on the professor's part.

Iconic?

Ah yes, but time travel stories have been with us forever. A lot of the time (sorry) the Old West is a fertile breeding ground for setting such stories, perhaps because it's just different enough for the future/past to be scary, but still recognisable.

That sound that would become famous through Star Trek is back again; listen to it when the robber switches on the time machine.

Personal Notes

This time machine is different from most in science fiction, which usually act as a sort of vehicle for the time traveller and are controlled by him. This one seems to operate as a kind of net, or homing beacon, something that can be sent into the past - or future - and come back autonomously, bringing with it whatever or whoever it has picked up.

Title: "The Big Tall Wish"
Original transmission date: April 8 1960
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Ron Winston
Starring: Ivan Dixon as Bolie Jackson
Stephen Perry as Henry Temple
Kim Hamilton as Frances Temple
Walter Burke as Joe Mizell
Charles Horvath as Joey Consiglio
Carl McIntire as Announcer


Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Desperation, magic, hope, despair, last chance
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: A

Serling's opening monologue

In this corner of the universe, a prizefighter named Bolie Jackson, 183 pounds and an hour and a half away from a comeback at St. Nick's Arena. Mr. Bolie Jackson, who, by the standards of his profession is an aging, over-the-hill relic of what was, and who now sees a reflection of a man who has left too many pieces of his youth in too many stadiums for too many years before too many screaming people. Mr. Bolie Jackson, who might do well to look for some gentle magic in the hard-surfaced glass that stares back at him.

No, no, fucking NO! WHY does EVERY show, no matter how little it has to do with the sport, have to have a boxing episode? I can tell you right away that I hated this, but just ignore me: anything that has to do with boxing bores and annoys the hell out of me. Let's get to it then.

(Note: Trollheart has gone for a cup of tea and a lie down. Normal service will resume shortly...)

A washed-up boxer prepares for the fight that will be his comeback, knowing full well he has no chance, but his friend, a little boy called Henry, says he's going to make a "big tall wish" that Bolie, the boxer, will win. His mother tells him that her son made a wish last week that she could find the fifteen dollars she needed for the rent, and she got a cheque in the mail. Bolie smiles sadly, asking her when do kids find out there is no magic? At the fight, as he gets ready he talks disparagingly to his manager, who seems to think he's wasting his time, but when Bolie finds out he has bet on his opponent he goes mad and punches at him, misses, hits the wall and damages his fist. Disaster!

As expected, he's pummelled and it's not long before he's hitting the canvas. As he's counted out, Henry presses his face up against the TV and calls Bolie's name. On the count of nine, time stops, and when it starts again the positions are reversed: it's his opponent who's on the ground, counted out, and Bolie who is victorious, with no idea how it happened. Back in the dressing room, he marvels that his fist is not broken after all, like his trainer said it was, but the trainer denies having said that, and further, when Bolie wonders how he got up off the canvas the trainer says he never went down! He was in control all the way.

When he gets home in triumph, even though everyone remembers it the way his trainer does, Henry knows. He says he made the big wish, that it was magic, otherwise Bolie would have lost. But Bolie is too old and experienced in the disappointments of reality to believe in magic, and they quarrel. Henry tells him he has to believe, otherwise the wish won't come true, but Bolie can't make himself believe, and suddenly he's back in the ring, on his back, being counted out.

Back home, he is still Henry's hero, but the boy agrees that there is no such thing as magic, no such thing as wishes. Bolie sighs that maybe there is magic, but just not enough people to believe in it.

Serling's closing monologue

Mr. Bolie Jackson, 183 pounds, who left a second chance lying in a heap on a rosin-spattered canvas at St. Nick's Arena. Mr. Bolie Jackson, who shares the most common ailment of all men, the strange and perverse disinclination to believe in a miracle, the kind of miracle to come from the mind of a little boy, perhaps only to be found in the Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

You know, not half bad at all. The obvious expectation is that the kid's wish changes the outcome of the fight, but the twist is that because Bolie can't believe, can't bring himself to credit the existence of such a power, the magic can't work and things go back to the way they actually are. It's quite sobering, and brave as an ending when it could have been sickly sweet. Kind of a death of childhood and a realisation of reality, for both of them.

The Moral

As the great sage Homer of Springfield once put it, "well, wishing won't make it so." You can't wish for things to be other than they are, just because you don't like the way they are now.

Themes

They're familiar ones, and in many ways this episode could take place on any other show. Hope, however ill-advised, as a black boxer who has taken too many hits to the head tries to make it big one last time. Desperation as Bolie tries to recapture his past glories and make the hood proud, regain his standing, despair as he realises he has lost so much to this sport, and as he says to Henry, the story of his life can be read in the cuts, bruises and scars on his face. An episode with magic at its heart, but magic that rigidly obeys the cardinal rule, that in order for it to work you must believe in it, making it sort of pragmatic magic I guess. As the unicorn said to Alice, "Now that you've seen me, if you believe in me I'll believe in you." Or to quote the beautiful Miss Estefan, it cuts both ways.

Oops!

Bolie says he has had his nose broken twice in the one fight. I don't think that can happen, can it? Once your nose is broken it stays broken, which is why I believe most boxers do have broken noses.

Questions, and sometimes, Answers

Not so much a question as a comment. Considering how supportive all his "hood" were before the fight, and given that they must have known he had little to no chance, why are they all so cold when he comes back defeated, as if he lost on purpose?

Iconic?

Not really. There are stories in everything from Little House on the Prairie to The Naked City, probably, about washed-up boxers (usually black) trying to get one last big fight under their belt before retiring, and they seldom if ever work out well. This is a pretty hackneyed story, in other words, with admittedly a decent Twilight Zone twist.

The Times they are a Changin'

And this time, for the better. This has to be the first almost all-black episode of a series at this time. The hero is black, the kid is black, the mother, all the extras. In fact, the whites are conspicuous and stand out. Yes, it's a stereotype - black boxer - but for 1960, this has to have been a bold and courageous move, and I bet Serling got some pushback from the studio, who would not have wanted to see black actors on their screens, much less heroic, human ones.

Actually, I'm right, as Serling himself said at the time: "Television, like its big sister, the motion picture, has been guilty of the sin of omission... Hungry for talent, desperate for the so-called 'new face,' constantly searching for a transfusion of new blood, it has overlooked a source of wondrous talent that resides under its nose. This is the Negro actor." As a result of this, and the inclusion of black actors in later episodes, The Twilight Zone was awarded the Unity Award for Outstanding Contributions to Better Race Relations in 1961.

Personal Notes

I don't know whether it was due to broadcast restrictions or the fact that the producers knew kids could and probably were watching, but the actual fight is directed well. Mostly you see the audience in close up - perhaps making a comment on the need for people to watch other people be battered to bits for entertainment, a kind of "Gladiators" thing - with initially only views of the boxers' legs. Eventually you see blows falling, but it's relatively tame compared to, say, Rocky or Raging Bull. Quite tasteful.

I would also question to some degree the story used here. It's almost - probably quite unintentionally - a case of "stupid backward savages still believe in magic". Then again, Bolie is shown to be "less savage", if you will, by refusing to give the wish any sort of credence, and we're left with basically a little boy believing in magic.

Title: "A Nice Place to Visit"
Original transmission date: April 15 1960
Written by: Charles Beaumont
Directed by: John Brahm
Starring: Larry Blyden as Henry Francis "Rocky" Valentine
Sebastian Cabot as Mr. Pip

 
Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Retribution, gambling, overindulgence, despair, the afterlife
Parodied? Frequently
Rating:  A+

Serling's opening monologue

Portrait of a man at work, the only work he's ever done, the only work he knows. His name is Henry Francis Valentine, but he calls himself "Rocky", because that's the way his life has been – rocky and perilous and uphill at a dead run all the way. He's tired now, tired of running or wanting, of waiting for the breaks that come to others but never to him, never to Rocky Valentine. A scared, angry little man. He thinks it's all over now but he's wrong. For Rocky Valentine, it's just the beginning.

A thief is at work, when he hears the police coming and legs it but is shot as he tries to make his escape. Waking up, he beholds a man in white who tells him he is his guide, and conducts him to a sumptuous apartment, which he tells him is his. Not only that, but clothes, food, music, money - everything he wants, and later women too. It seems everything is his for the asking, all his needs have been provided for. Suspicious, he demands to know what he has to do for all this, and is told by his guide, Pip, nothing: nothing at all. When he loses his rag and shoots Pip, and the bullet has no effect, he begins to realise something is wrong.

Pip tells him he is dead, and Valentine concludes he is in Heaven, suddenly much more disposed to believe everything that's happening to him. But as he goes gambling, and wins every time, the shine begins to wear off this paradise he's found himself in. The fact that he can't have any company - can't meet any of his old gang, as he's told this place has been created specifically for him -  further removes the gloss. And then he starts wondering how could someone like him get into Heaven? He reckons there must be some good deed he performed that somehow made up for all the bad things his life has consisted of, but for the life of him he can't think what that could be. When was he ever kind or patient or considerate? When was he tolerant or gentle or loving? When did he ever do one good thing in his whole miserable, misbegotten life?

As he says himself, if there's no thrill, no chance of losing, where's the point? Pip tries to convince him - perhaps if he sets it up so he can lose occasionally? No, says Valentine, that's no good. He would know. Well, how about going back to what he was best at in life? How about knocking off a bank? Yeah, that would be great, except... there's no chance he could get caught, so again where's the thrill, he moans? How could he have got here? What kind of mistake did those in power make to have sent him to Heaven?

Ah, but...

Pip begins to laugh maliciously. What ever gave Valentine the idea that this was Heaven?



Serling's closing monologue

A scared, angry little man who never got a break. Now he has everything he's ever wanted – and he's going to have to live with it for eternity – in The Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

Very clever. I don't recall if I sussed it the first time, but your suspicions do tend to kick in when Valentine keeps winning. What worse kind of Hell could there be, where boredom is your constant companion, where a gambler always wins, a singer always goes to the top of the charts, an actress always lands the star role? To quote Kirk, man must claw and struggle for every inch, and if there's no struggle, if everything is handed to you, well, that could be Hell.

The Moral

Be careful what you wish for; Hell ain't always what it seems

Themes

Gambling plays a big role here. Rocky Valentine's pathetic life has been one gamble after another, if not at the gaming tables (one would assume, while he was alive, those of a seedier, less salubrious order than the ones he now frequents) then every time he did a job, risking being taken, arrested, shot. When he goes to "Heaven" gambling is one of his only loves, and he revels in it, though quickly finds out that a gamble with no risk is no gamble at all. The thrill comes from the possibility, even the probability, that you might lose. Someone once told me gamblers don't play to win, they play to lose. But what if you can't lose?

Retribution of course is here too. A fitting punishment for a life badly led, a mean, miserable existence spent preying on others, living off the labour and efforts of others, and caring for nobody but himself. Retribution is meted out at the barrel of a police revolver, but continues in the afterlife, where Valentine learns a hard lesson about the dangers of not doing good in your life. There's also indulgence, as Valentine sticks his nose in the trough and snorts and gulps his fill, and disillusionment, as he begins to weary of the place.


Iconic?

This storyline would be repeated, but perhaps not this exact outcome. One of the best examples of it I remember was in the series Angel, where the title character was to be taken to Hell via a lift, and when the lift doors opened, he was back on Earth. The symbolism as clear as could be. Hell=Earth.

The Times they are a Changin'

Even for the time it was recorded, I feel Valentine's language, syntax and slang are from a previous era. He uses words like "broad" and "dame", which to me seem more to belong in the late forties and early fifties, and he calls Pip "Fats", which, while used as a sort of not-too-demeaning descriptor, was I think pretty phased out by the sixties. But I'm no expert: he comes across to me as drawing more on the likes of gangsters like Capone and Siegal, and actors like Cagney and Bogart, about a decade or so behind.

Title: "Nightmare as a Child"
Original transmission date: April 29 1960
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Alvin Ganzer
Starring: Janice Rule
Terry Burnham
Shepperd Strudwick
Michael Fox
Morgan Brittany
Joseph V. Perry

 
Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s):
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: A-

Serling's opening monologue

Month of November, hot chocolate, and a small cameo of a child's face, imperfect only in its solemnity. And these are the improbable ingredients to a human emotion, an emotion, say, like—fear. But in a moment this woman, Helen Foley, will realize fear. She will understand what are the properties of terror. A little girl will lead her by the hand and walk with her into a nightmare.

Returning home, a schoolteacher meets what appears to be the child of a newly-arrived family, and since she is alone sitting on the step and quiet, invites her in to her apartment for a cup of hot chocolate. The child seems to know about her though, mentioning her aversion to marshmallows. Then she alludes to a scar the teacher, Helen Foley, has on her arm, where she got burned, but Helen says she doesnt' remember how she got the scar. The child seems very serious and a little scary as she goes on, reminding Helen of a man she saw earlier, whom she thought she recognised, and who frightened her. The child says her name is Marky, or rather, her nickname, what people call her. Helen is getting very on edge, but then there's a movement outside and the little girl runs out, saying she doesn't want to meet whoever it is.

It turns out to be the man Helen had seen and thought looked familiar earlier, and he is an old friend of the family. He introduces himself as Peter Seldon, who used to work for her mother. He reminds her she had some sort of accident or episode which blocked her memory of the details, but says to her she was in the room when it happened. She doesn't know what "it" refers to, and he seems loath to elaborate. Hints come out though that Helen's mother was murdered and the man responsible never found or caught.

When Helen mentions the  little girl, and what her nickname is, Seldon is surprised, telling her that was her nickname when she was a child. From somewhere she hears a girl singing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" though she seems to be the only one who can hear her. When he shows her a picture of her as a girl, it's her: the little girl who came in and drank chocolate and seemed to know all about her, is her. When she goes back out and the little girl, Marky, is sitting on the step again, singing, she finds that she too has the burn mark in exactly the same place. Memories are beginning to come back about her mother's murder, and when she looks up Seldon is there. He confesses that he is the murderer, and that the only reason she is alive is that she could not remember anything about the incident, but now that she has begun to regain her memory, he's going to have to take care of her too.

As they struggle out in the hallway, Seldon loses his balance and falls down the stairs, breaking his neck. Now that she has recovered her memory, and the murder is solved, the child is seen no more.

Serling's closing monologue

Miss Helen Foley, who has lived in night and who will wake up to morning. Miss Helen Foley, who took a dark spot from the tapestry of her life and rubbed it clean—then stepped back a few paces and got a good look at the Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

Decent enough. We're left to decide whether her younger self travelled forward in time somehow to jog her memory, or whether the child was buried deep in her mind, but if the latter, then why did she suddenly start remembering now?

The Moral

Really not sure what this one is trying to tell us, if anything. Might be one of those without morals. Or maybe it's that your sins eventually catch you up.

Themes

The overriding theme here is one of lost or suppressed memory; we're not sure whether the trauma of seeing her mother murdered has been too much for Helen and she blocked it out, or whether she suffered a form of amnesia and really doesn't remember. or didn't anyway, until Selden showed up. There's a sense of something just... not right about the little girl. How does she know so much about Helen? And that in itself leads to fear, fear that is irrational because she can't say why she's afraid, but this does not make the fear any less real. Murder again rears its head, after coming up against it in "The Execution" recently, and a sense perhaps of justice too, in that the killer finally gets his comeuppance.

To some degree maybe there is time travel here too, but that's never confirmed, nor is the appearance of Marky ever explained, so it's left up to the viewer to decide, if they wish to, the circumstances that lead to Helen seeing herself as a child. My own feeling is that Marky exists only in her mind - Serling is careful to show her interacting with nobody else - and has been buried there since she witnessed the murder. That however does not explain why it's only now, after so long, that the memories surface

And isn't that...?

Well, weirdly the only semi-famous face here is of the little girl, unnamed, seen right at the end.
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTI2MDI0Mzg0NF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTc2NzcyMQ@@._V1_.jpg)
Morgan Brittany (1951 - )
Played Katherine in Dallas, also ran her own line of clothing for children, was spokesperson for the Gayle Hayman Cosmetic Company and sold Victorian porcelain dolls on the shopping network. She is now a conservative political commentator.

Okay, not the only one, but another bit-player only seen again at the end.
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMDdmNWZkYTYtMzYyZC00NjEyLTgwZDYtZjhhYzYxODM0NTA5XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjUxMjc1OTM@._V1_UY317_CR146,0,214,317_AL_.jpg)
Joseph V. Perry (1931 - 2000)
Best known for his role as Nemo in Everybody Loves Raymond.


Questions, and sometimes, Answers

As they struggle out on the hallway, Helen bangs on two different doors. Does nobody hear her?

Iconic?

Nah

Personal Notes

Kudos to the actress playing Markie. It's not too hard, probably, for a child to play a child (like yer wan in "One For the Angels" for instance, or the kid that wails "That's him mommy!" as Arthur Curtis/Gerry Raigan speeds away in "A World of Difference") but it's a whole other thing to play an almost adult role. To keep her face so serious, almost sneering, and impart an air of menace to a small child: quite a feat, and Terry Burnham does a great job.

I wonder if it's coincidence that the murderer is called Seldon, the same name given to the convict prowling the moors in Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Hound of the Baskervilles"?

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/James_Daly_Twilight_Zone_1960.JPG/440px-James_Daly_Twilight_Zone_1960.JPG)
Title: "A Stop at Willoughby"
Original transmission date: May 6 1960
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Robert Parrish
Starring: James Daly as Gart Williams
Howard Smith as Oliver Misrell
Patricia Donahue as Jane Williams
Jason Wingreen as Train conductor
Mavis Neal Palmer as Helen
James Maloney as 1888 Conductor
Billy Booth as Short Boy
Ryan Hayes as Engineer
Butch Hengen as Tall Boy
Max Slaten as Man on Wagon

 
Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time) and 1888 (possibly)
Theme(s): Pressure, modern life, desperation, time travel, suicide
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: A++

Serling's opening monologue

This is Gart Williams, age thirty-eight, a man protected by a suit of armor all held together by one bolt. Just a moment ago, someone removed the bolt, and Mr. Williams' protection fell away from him, and left him a naked target. He's been cannonaded this afternoon by all the enemies of his life. His insecurity has shelled him, his sensitivity has straddled him with humiliation, his deep-rooted disquiet about his own worth has zeroed in on him, landed on target, and blown him apart. Mr. Gart Williams, ad agency exec, who in just a moment, will move into the Twilight Zone—in a desperate search for survival.

(A curiously-worded intro, strewn with adjectives pertaining to war and destruction. Since this is not a wartime story, I'm not too sure why Serling uses such imagery. There is a war, of sorts, going on as a man tries to make a decision between slowly dying by inches and giving in to what may be an illusion in his mind, but I still don't see the connection).

Driven to distraction when his protege absconds with an important account, Gart Williams tells his boss to shove it and seems on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Heading home, he is tormented by the sound of his boss's voice haranguing him, and falling asleep he wakes up to see the train stopped at a town called Willoughby, a town he has never heard of before and knows is not on this line. More than that, it seems to be summer out there and when he left the office it was November and snowing. Everyone looks so peaceful and friendly though, and the conductor assures him this is a place where a man can slow down and take it easy, take a break from the pressures of modern life. He also mentions that it's 1888, a detail which seems to elude Williams: maybe he thinks he didn't hear properly. How could he have?

Before he can leave the train however there is a jerking shunt, and he wakes up. The conductor on his train - not the same, old and white-haired one who had spoken to him about Willoughby - does not recognise the name of the town, and it's snowing again, and dark outside. At home, his wife is a harsh, grasping drunk, who obvously has nothing but contempt for her husband and does not mind showing it. She makes it very clear she believes she hitched her star to the wrong wagon, and regrets it very much. She tells him he was born too late, into the wrong century. He's the kind of man who would be happy with the simple things, and he agrees, but knows there is no such chance.

Though the conductor confirms he has checked through all the old timetables and there never was a stop called Willoughby, he falls asleep again and ends up outside the town. Again, thinking he is dreaming again, he stays on the train, though he does make a move, but too late and Willoughby vanishes again. "Next time," he tells himself. "Next time I'm going to get off." Back at the office, things are not going well, and he decides that's it: he's walking out. He phones his wife to let her know but she hangs up on him. On the train, he waits, waits in hope, in anticipation, in desperation to hear the words.

"The stop is Willoughby." Finally! This time he gets off, and everyone seems to know him, everyone is friendly. He can breathe again. Next scene shows his dead body in the snow, and the younger conductor claiming he just said something about Willoughby and jumped out. As the hearse moves off, we see inscribed on the doors WILLOUGHBY AND SON, FUNERAL DIRECTORS.



Serling's closing monologue

Willoughby? Maybe it's wishful thinking nestled in a hidden part of a man's mind, or maybe it's the last stop in the vast design of things—or perhaps, for a man like Mr. Gart Williams, who climbed on a world that went by too fast, it's a place around the bend where he could jump off. Willoughby? Whatever it is, it comes with sunlight and serenity, and is a part of The Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

Absolutely first class. At first it's a little so-so; you know how it's going to end. Life slows down at Willoughby, and maybe it exists and maybe it doesn't. But the final scene, where Williams is dead and the hearse - pure genius.

The Moral

Modern life can be challenging, and sometimes you need to escape, leave it all behind, take a chance. Also, possibly, don't try to get off a moving train.

Themes

The pressures of modern life is the main theme here. Williams works in the high-flying, high-intensity world of advertising, for a boss who is a slavedriver and who does not like him, as he has lost the company a major contract, but fears to fire him in case Williams takes business with him. So the ad man is forced to work at a job he is getting increasingly less fond of, and which is slowly killing him. The nineteenth-century Willoughby, with its much slower pace of life and friendlier atmosphere is just what he needs. In many of the Twilight Zone episodes, the perils of working at a high pressure job would be addressed, as from the early 1950s on is when the rise of the business executive really began to take place, with people not just working for a wage but for a career, and competition for jobs fierce.

Desperation figures here too. Williams feels that if he doesn't get out of his job he will be seriously ill, and at one point contemplates (though jokingly, we assume) suicide. He is, however, shown to be suffering bouts of pain in his stomach, no doubt an emerging ulcer.


And isn't that...?
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/James_Daly_Medical_Center_1975.jpg/440px-James_Daly_Medical_Center_1975.jpg)
James Daly (1918 - 1978)
Most famous, apparently, for his role in the TV drama Medical Center, Daly also played Flint in Star Trek's "Requiem for Methuselah", and guested in shows like The Invaders, Mission: Impossible, Ironside and The Fugitive.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9b/Howard-Smith.jpg)
Howard Irving Smith (1893 - 1968)
Starred in, among others, series such as Green Acres, Hazel and Bewitched, and was part of the famous radio broadcast by Orson Welles of The War of the Worlds.
(https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/1/14/Jason_Wingreen.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100824160252)
Jason Wingreen (1920 -2015)
Claims to fame include his role in All In the Family and its spin-off Archie Bunker's Place, as Dr. Brody in Airplane! Another doctor in the Star Trek banned-for-years episode "The Empath", but we'll know him best as the voice of Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back.


Parallels

There are so many similarities between the two episodes that this seems basically a rewrite of "Walking Distance", but handled far better. This is also the second story - not in a row, but close - which features a wife who is a gold-digger and contemptuous of her husband, whom she sees as a failure. Given that, in "A World of Difference", Arthur Curtis'/Gerry Raigan's wife was part of what may have been an alternate reality, and that here, Gart Williams ends up, possibly, in one, it's hard to discount the connection.

Title: "The Chaser"
Original transmission date: April 13 1960
Written by: John Henry Collier (teleplay by Robert Presnell Jr.)
Directed by: Douglas Heyes
Starring: George Grizzard as Roger Shackleforth
John McIntire as Professor A. Daemon
Patricia Barry as Leila
J. Pat O'Malley as Homburg
Marjorie Bennett as Old Woman
Barbara Perry as Blonde Woman
Rusty Wescoatt as Tall Man
Duane Grey as Bartender

 
Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Love, desperation, magic, be careful what you wish for
Parodied? I would imagine so, though no examples spring to mind.
Rating: A

Serling's opening monologue

Mr. Roger Shackelforth. Age: youthful twenties. Occupation: being in love. Not just in love, but madly, passionately, illogically, miserably, all-consumingly in love - with a young woman named Leila, who has a vague recollection of his face and even less than a passing interest. In a moment, you'll see a switch, because Mr. Roger Shackelforth, the young gentleman so much in love, will take a short, but very meaningful journey into the Twilight Zone.

A man who is madly in love with a woman who has not the faintest interest in him is given a card, told to go see a man who will sort out all his problems. Dubious, but desperate, he goes to see the man, and finds himself in what appears to be a library, where he is told the man can give him a bottle which will make the woman, Leela, fall helplessly in love with him. He warns Roger that if anyone gets hurt it will be him, and seems to have gone through this plenty of times before, knowing the outcome. He asks if Roger would like to purchase some "glove cleaner", a euphemism, it would appear, for poison, but Roger is blissfully unaware what he means.

The potion works, all too well. Leela falls so totally in love with him that she becomes cloying, clinging, driving him mad. She won't leave him alone, she wants to do everything for him; she is virtually his willing slave. Eventually he goes back to the shop and after some farting around he buys the glove cleaner. The professor tells him it is odourless, tasteless, painless and undetectable, but he must use it immediately, and he must use it all, as if he falters just once he will never have the courage to use it again. It costs a thousand dollars (whereas he took only a single dollar for the love potion), but at this point Roger is desperate in a whole new way, a way he had never expected to be. He used to be desperate to have Leela's love, now he's desperate to get out from under its strangling, suffocating influence.

At home, he's all ready to do the deed when Leela drops her bombshell - she's pregnant. In shock, he drops both glasses, and his chance is gone forever.

Serling's closing monologue

Mr. Roger Shackelforth, who has discovered at this late date that love can be as sticky as a vat of molasses, as unpalatable as a hunk of spoiled yeast, and as all-consuming as a six-alarm fire in a bamboo and canvas tent. Case history of a lover boy, who should never have entered the Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

Clever. It could have gone plenty of ways - Roger getting the glasses mixed up and drinking from the wrong one, she having visited the professor herself and having her own potion, something as simple as him being seized by a sneezing fit and spilling the champagne. But at the end, after he has dropped the glasses he admits he could never have done it; he truly is in love with Leela, even this kind of all-consuming, exhausting love.

The Moral

Love doesn't necessarily make the world go round, or as Brian May sang, too much love will kill you.

Themes

Well there could only be one major one, couldn't there, and love frames the theme of many a Twilight Zone episode. Here, it's originally unrequited, then achieved by nefarious means, then no longer wanted, and finally something the guy is stuck with. Shows how too much of any good thing is never wise, and how easily love can turn to hate (although in fairness Roger just gets really stressed out and annoyed at Leela's devotion, he never says he hates her). Obsession would be another, at least at the start; the desperate mission, the seemingly unattainable goal, to win Leela, and then remorse, when everything works out, but not as he had expected.

And magic. Magic is here too. This episode could not work without magic - or maybe it's science, though if someone ever came up with the proper equation to distill love into a bottle he'd be a millionaire, and not hanging out in some dingy, dusty bookstore.


And isn't that...?
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/George_Grizzard_Patricia_Barry_The_Twilight_Zone_1960.JPG/440px-George_Grizzard_Patricia_Barry_The_Twilight_Zone_1960.JPG)
George Cooper Grizzard Jr (1928 - 2007)
Had roles in Hawaii 5-0, The Golden Girls, 3rd Rock From the Sun, Spenser: For Hire, The Cosby Show and Law and Order, among others.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/John_McIntire_as_Chris_Hale_Wagon_Train_1961.JPG/440px-John_McIntire_as_Chris_Hale_Wagon_Train_1961.JPG)
John Herrick McIntire (1907 - 1991)
In addition to being in films like Herbie Rides Again, Rooster Cogburn, Psycho and The Incredible Hulk, he was in Diff'rent Stokes and also the lead in The Virginian and Wagon Train. Hmm. Both roles came to him on the sudden deaths of the previous two leads. Just sayin'...


Questions, and sometimes, Answers

Okay, this is New York. When the guy in the telephone kiosk is constantly making calls and there's an impatient queue behind him, you don't think someone is going to haul him out? They all just stand there, waiting, as he makes call after call, with no intention of ever leaving the booth? I repeat: this is New York.

Iconic?

No. Stories about love potions - and, to some smaller extent but related to this, genii - are as old as time itself. You'll find them in the writings of Arabic storytellers in the 1001 Nights, or Arabian Nights. This is an interesting little twist on the theme, but I don't think it led to a slew of copies and could not claim to be the wellspring of this idea.

Those clever little touches

A little on the nose, perhaps, but the nameplate on the door says Professor A. Daemon. Hey, at least the number over the door isn't 666!

Personal Notes

I have to be honest, I bloody hate both main characters here. Leela is horrible as the stuck-up, haughty, thoughtless and heartless woman as Roger pursues her, treating him like a puppy she can kick, and when she falls under his spell she's twice as annoying. Roger is an idiot, let's be honest. He doesn't get the hint about the glove cleaner, he looks sappily at the next guy into the booth as he claims he has to keep calling his "girl", he doesn't offer an apology. He's just fresh-faced and very very annoying.

Title: "A Passage for Trumpet"
Original transmission date: April 20 1960
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Don Medford
Starring: Jack Klugman as Joey Crown
Frank Wolff as Baron
John Anderson as Gabe
Mary Webster as Nan
Ned Glass as Nate (Pawnshop Owner)
James Flavin as Truck Driver

 
Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Desperation, suicide, loss, music, afterlife, second chances, love, redemption
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: A -

Serling's opening monologue

Joey Crown, musician with an odd, intense face, whose life is a quest for impossible things like flowers in concrete or like trying to pluck a note of music out of the air and put it under glass to treasure...Joey Crown, musician with an odd, intense face, who, in a moment, will try to leave the Earth and discover the middle ground - the place we call The Twilight Zone.

A washed-up trumpet player is trying to get a chance to play again, but the bottle is in his way. He used to be great, a real star, but then he hit the booze and he's been sliding down the ramp ever since, almost at the bottom now. He decides to hell with it, and sells his trumpet, drinking the proceeds, and then, even more in the dumps, throws himself in front of a truck. When he wakes up it seems nobody can see him, and finally he realises he didn't survive the encounter with the truck. He is dead. He drifts back to the jazz club in which he was trying to get a gig, and meets a guy playing a trumpet, who seems to be able to see and hear him, to his surprise.

Turns out he's not dead; all the people who couldn't see or hear him, they're dead, but he's not. He's in Limbo, and needs to make a choice as to whether he wants to live or die. He decides to give it another try, and as he gets back to the land of the living he sees himself being hit by the truck, but hardly even injured, just shaken up. The driver presses money into his hand, asking him not to claim against him. This gives Joey the means to redeem his trumpet from the pawn shop, and then meets a woman who has only just moved to New York, and things begin to look up.

Serling's closing monologue

Joey Crown, who makes music, and who discovered something about life; that it can be rich and rewarding and full of beauty, just like the music he played, if a person would only pause to look and to listen. Joey Crown, who got his clue in the Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

Meh, it's a bit ham-fisted isn't it? Kind of a cross between It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol, but not anywhere near as good as either. He goes to Limbo, but is allowed return to Earth? I thought the only choice in  Limbo was whether you go Up or Down (if you believe that stuff) and that the decision is not yours? Meh, again I say. Poor.

The Moral

Sometimes life may not suck bad enough to kill yourself? Meh.

Themes

Desperation once again rears its ugly head, as Joey Crown tries to get back into the groove, but is held by back Mr. B-O-O-Z-E. His desperation drives him to suicide, another recurring theme in some of these episodes, and then there's a choice and finally redemption, a determination to try again. Oh, and love blossoms at the end. Bah.

And isn't that...?
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Jack_Klugman_Twilight_Zone_1963.jpg/440px-Jack_Klugman_Twilight_Zone_1963.jpg)
Jack Klugman (1922 - 2012)
An instantly recognisable face, Klugman became known as Walter Matthau's character Oscar Madison in the series spin-off of the movie The Odd Couple, and also as the eponymous pathologist Quincy ME, as well as starring opposite the great Jack Lemmon himself in the movie Days of Wine and Roses. He won three primetime Emmys and a Golden Globe during his career, almost all for The Odd Couple.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/John_Anderson_The_Virginian.JPG/440px-John_Anderson_The_Virginian.JPG)
John Anderson (1922 - 1992)
Best known to us as Kevin, the alien in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Survivors", he also played the governor in the movie Smokie and the Bandit II, and had parts in, among others, Little House on the Prairie, Voyagers! And M.A.S.H.
Mary Webster (1935 - 2017)
Notable only for being so far the only actor who not only reappeared in the series but was paired with the same actor, when she and Klugman starred in the season four episode "Death Ship".


Iconic?

No, it's as hackneyed a story as they come. And too much jazz. Ugh.

Ten or Less Things I Hate About You

1. Why is it that in a very large percentage of the episodes, when something happens that a character either doesn't like or understand, or can believe, they always seem to use the phrase "someone's having a gag"? I guess it was common parlance in the fifties and sixties, but man is it annoying.

2. Jazz. Why did it have to be jazz? Like the one with the boxer, this immediately set me up to dislike this episode, but unlike that one, where I warmed to it (kind of) this one just leaves me cold, as jazz always does. Klugman's performance is the only bright light in it for me.

3. The naming of the "angel" is a ham-fist move too far. Even if he had said something like "Oh just think of me as ... someone who looks after people." And Klugman had said "Like... like a guardian angel you mean?" and then Gabriel had shrugged and vanished. This is too damn obvious, despite the usage of Gabe, which he then ruins by saying "short for Gabriel", as if nobody knew that or could work it out for themselves.

4. I don't like the way the final resolution is worked. What are you supposed to think? You see him looking at himself stepping out in front of the truck. Is he supposed to be looking at the past? And if so, does he then vanish, his time line null and invalid now, when the "past" Joey goes to buy his trumpet back? And how has he made this transformation? Shouldn't it be him, and not the other Joey who... ah, ferget it. I would have had the whole scene freeze as he walks out, run backwards to where he's handing over his trumpet, have him think it over, change his mind, and move on. But that's just me.

Title: "Mr. Bevis"
Original transmission date: June 3 1960
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: William Asher
Starring: Orson Bean
Henry Jones
Charles Lane
Florence MacMichael
William Schallert
Vito Scotti
Horace McMahon


Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Second chances, time travel (?), angels
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: A-

Serling's opening monologue

In the parlance of the twentieth century, this is an oddball. His name is James B. W. Bevis, and his tastes lean toward stuffed animals, zither music, professional football, Charles Dickens, moose heads, carnivals, dogs, children, and young ladies. Mr. Bevis is accident prone, a little vague, a little discombobulated, with a life that possesses all the security of a floating crap game. But this can be said of our Mr. Bevis: without him, without his warmth, without his kindness, the world would be a considerably poorer place, albeit perhaps a little saner...Should it not be obvious by now, James B. W. Bevis is a fixture in his own private, optimistic, hopeful little world, a world which has long ceased being surprised by him. James B. W. Bevis, on whom Dame Fortune will shortly turn her back, but not before she gives him a paste in the mouth. Mr. James B. W. Bevis, just one block away from The Twilight Zone.

James Bevis, a local eccentric and somewhat of the breed of the good-hearted innocent, is fired from his job and then his day really starts to turn sour. His car moves off by itself from where he had parked it and crashes, overturning in the street, then when he gets home his landlady is in the process of evicting him. As he drowns his sorrows that night he sees a man in the mirror over the bar waving to him, but when he turns to acknowledge him, nobody is there. The bartender can't see him either, but then the man speaks to him and Bevis goes to sit at the table at which he appears to be. A moment later he literally appears out of thin air. He tells Bevis he is his guardian angel, that centuries ago one of his ancestors earned the right to have one of his kind assigned to the family, and this angel, J. Hartley Hampstead is his. He says he can re-run this day, and change the outcome to a much happier one.

And proceeds to do so.

However, much changes, as it has to. First of all, Bevis has to wear a more respectable suit ("I look like an undertaker!") and the kids don't want to play hand-egg, sorry football - sod it: AMERICAN football with him, as they did when he had exited the building that morning originally. He's also resisted the temptation to do what he did earlier, pick up a little dog on the stairs and slide down the banister. That, Hampstead tells him, is the old Bevis, and he is the new one. His landlady however is delighted, having been paid, apparently, three months in advance, so at least he won't be getting evicted any time soon. People who were friendly to him when he was the old Bevis though, have no interest in him and some are openly hostile to him. He has a new car, a sports number, his old rickety jalopy having been deemed by the angel not suitable for his new image.

At the office, his desk is neat and tidy, where before it was covered with knick-knacks, stuffed animals (not cuddly ones; real, taxidermy stuff) and clocks, and far from firing him, his boss gives him a raise. But in order to get all these things, Bevis realises he has had to literally become a new man: he has had to leave behind all the things he loved, all the things he enjoyed, all the things that made him what he was. His ancient car. His relationship with the kids, with his co-workers. His easy camaraderie with the street sellers. He decides his new life is not what he wants, and asks for the old one back. He gets it, and things go back to the way they were, but he's much happier now.

Serling's closing monologue

Mr. James B. W. Bevis, who believes in a magic all his own. The magic of a child's smile, the magic of liking and being liked, the strange and wondrous mysticism that is the simple act of living. Mr. James B. W. Bevis, species of twentieth-century male, who has his own private and special Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

Pretty poor really. Everything goes back to how it was and he realises his life isn't so bad. As if.

The Moral

Appreciate what you have? Don't try to change?

Themes

Bad luck would seem to dog Mr. Bevis's footsteps, and runs through the episode like a bad smell. Losing his car, his job, his flat, all in the one day. Then we have the theme of guardian angels. Again. The idea of giving up something, sacrificing something for what might seem to be better, but then turns out not to be.

And isn't that...?
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/Orson_Bean_1965.JPG/440px-Orson_Bean_1965.JPG)
Orson Bean (1928 - 2020)
Well known  on game shows, Bean was known for appearing on the panel of I've Got a Secret, What's My Line, To Tell the Truth, Super Password and Match Game. He played Loren Bray on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman for six years and also guested on many other shows, including Modern Family, Two and a Half Men, How I Met Your Mother and The Closer. He was a regular on Desperate Housewives and was also a stand-up comedian and magician.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/eb/Charles_Lane_actor.jpg)
Charles Lane (1905 - 2007)
This man has done so much film and TV work Wiki has to sort it into decades! His biggest claim to fame though seems to have been as Judge Petrillo in the American spoof soap, um, Soap. he also appeared in - among so many other programmes - Little House on the Prairie, The Odd Couple (series), The Winds of War, War and Remembrance, Dark Shadows and was the voice of Georges in Disney's The Aristocats.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Florence_MacMichael_in_Mister_Ed_1964.jpg)
Florence MacMichael (1919 - 1999)
Best known for her TV appearances on the show Mister Ed.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/William_Schallert_The_Twilight_Zone_%28cropped%29.jpg)
William Schallert (1922 - 2016)
Another man with a stack of credits behind him, including both the original Star Trek and later Deep Space 9, also The Waltons, Desperate Housewives, Bewitched, Land of the Giants, Get Smart, The Partridge Family, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Little House on the Prairie, Lou Grant, Highway to Heaven, Matlock, My Name is Earl, How I Met Your Mother and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. Also appeared in the Twilight Zone movie and Innerspace, among others.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/52/Carmen_Zapata_and_Vito_Scotti.JPG/440px-Carmen_Zapata_and_Vito_Scotti.JPG)
Vito Scotti (1918 - 1996)
Character actor who appeared in both The Addams Family and its rival The Munsters, as well as Lassie, Dr . Kildare, My Favourite Martian, Bewitched, Gilligan's Island, Happy Days, Charlie's Angels, Who's the Boss?, The Golden Girls, Columbo and tons more. Also in two Herbie movies and, interestingly, provided the voice for one of the Italian cats in, you guessed it, The Aristocats.


Questions, and sometimes, Answers

A few. When in his new persona, and having just got a raise, Bevis declares his intention to go play with the kids in the street. He's just arrived in work; where does he think he is? Does he believe that now he can do as he likes?

If Hampstead was watching over Bevis, why did he allow all the bad luck? Why not just subtly change things - at least organise the payment of his rent and ensure his car didn't get towed away? Why wait until he appeared to his protectee, as it were?


Ten or less things I hate about you

1. The title. Come on! Couldn't he come up with something more inspired than the guy's fucking name??

Personal Notes

It may not be the same, but it's close - James Bevis's name is just one letter removed from Henry Bemis, who was the main character in "Time Enough at Last". I know that was from an already-written story, but did Serling have to mirror the name so closely?

Title: "The After Hours"
Original transmission date: June 10 1960
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Douglas Heyes
Starring: Anne Francis as Marsha White
Elizabeth Allen as Saleswoman
James Millhollin as Mr. Armbruster
John Conwell as Elevator Man
Patrick Whyte as Mr. Sloan
Nancy Rennick as Ms. Keevers

 
Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Fear, alienation, confusion, consumerism, selfishness, amnesia, paranoia
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: A++

Serling's opening monologue

Express elevator to the ninth floor of a department store, carrying Miss Marsha White on a most prosaic, ordinary, run-of-the-mill errand. Miss Marsha White on the ninth floor, specialties department, looking for a gold thimble. The odds are that she'll find it—but there are even better odds that she'll find something else, because this isn't just a department store. This happens to be The Twilight Zone.

A woman takes a lift to the ninth floor in a department store, looking for a gold thimble, but ends up in a pretty deserted shopfloor. An assistant appears and seems to have the very thing she's looking for - and only that. There is no other merchandise at all. She also calls the woman by name - Marcia - but the buyer does not know the seller, and believes the reverse to be true. A strange sense of disquiet has taken hold of her since she first set foot on this floor, and now it intensifies. As she leaves, the saleswoman asks her if she is happy, but she snaps back that it's none of her business. The lift arrives and she goes back down, but as she does she realises the thimble is defective. So the lift attendant takes her to the floor for complaints.

Next we see the manager's officer, where one of the floor managers is explaining to his manager, a Mr. Sloan, that the woman returning the thimble claims she got it on the ninth floor. Sloan looks at him as if he's an idiot: didn't he explain that the building only has eight floors? Yes he did, the floor manager insists, but she won't be put off. She is sticking to her story. Sloan agrees to see her himself. While she is re-explaining herself to him, and getting quite agitated that nobody believes her, she sees the shop assistant who served her and calls to her, but just then someone picks her up, and she sees to her horror that the "assistant" is a mannequin!

She faints, and is taken into a room to recover, but things being busy as they are she is forgotten about when the shop closes, and she wakes to find herself locked in alone. As she runs through the store looking for help, she knocks over a dummy, and sees that the face is that of the lift attendant who ferried her up and down earlier. Suddenly voices begin to call her name, many voices, telling her to remember who she is, to climb up, doesn't she remember? She thinks one of them moves. She runs, terrified, into the lift, which automatically takes her to the ninth floor, where she again meets the "woman" who served her here.

As she brings her onto the ninth floor from the lift, all the other dummies come to life and follow her as she helps the crying Marcia walk, as she begins to remember. She remembers she is a mannequin herself, that each of them gets a chance to live, for a month, as a human, but that she was due back yesterday and has overstayed her time. The saleswoman, whose turn it is, heads off and this next morning Marcia is again a mannequin.

Serling's closing monologue

Marsha White, in her normal and natural state, a wooden lady with a painted face who, one month out of the year, takes on the characteristics of someone as normal and as flesh and blood as you and I. But it makes you wonder, doesn't it, just how normal are we? Just who are the people we nod our hellos to as we pass on the street? A rather good question to ask . . . particularly in the Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

Absolutely superb. When I saw this first I think it was the eighties remake, and even then it floored me (no pun intended). What a clever story, one of the best yet.

The Moral

I don't know: to thine own self be true? All good things come to an end?

Themes

Fear is the main one here, and a nagging sense that something just is not right. A sort of creeping dread that there is some fundamental truth which is just out of your grasp, but that if you can uncover it, will make sense of everything. Consumerism too, I guess, being based in a department store, and the inevitability of things being as they are. Selfishness too, supposedly, if we imagine Marsha deliberately overstayed her time, or maybe a touch of amnesia?

And isn't that...?
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/56/Anne_Francis-publicity.JPG/440px-Anne_Francis-publicity.JPG)
Anne Francis (1930 - 2011)
Famed for her role in the classic science fiction movie Forbidden Planet, she also starred in the first ever TV series about a female detective, Honey West, for which she won a Golden Globe. She was also in Funny Girl, starring opposite such greats as Omar Sharif and Barbara Streisand, and later with Burt Reynolds in Impasse. She also appeared in, among others, Murder She Wrote, Matlock, The Love Boat, Dallas and the Golden Girls.

Questions, and sometimes, Answers

How is it that the saleswoman had the thing Marsha was looking for, the gold thimble? How did she know she would be coming up to the ninth floor (although that was where the mannequins were stored) looking for exactly this item? Did she fail to give her a receipt as she knew the purchase was not being made by a living person? Ans why was the thimble defective? To force her back to the ninth floor? But she only ended up back there after hours.

If the saleslady had already "metamorphosed" into a living being that day, and could serve Marsha on the ninth floor, how was it she was a mannequin down on the main floor?

Really now, how did Marsha get forgotten about? Surely women faint all the time in shops, and have to be moved to rooms to rest. Does nobody check these things? Are they not afraid of being sued for, I don't know, mental stress, unlawful imprisonment, whatever?

If Marsha is not real, how did she have a mother, for whom she was buying the thimble? Or had she just made that up? Are we looking at a Norman Bates sort of thing here?

Why is the lift attendant so brusque and unhelpful, almost hostile to Marsha? Is it because he knows she has forgotten who she is, or is it that he is romantically involved with her, as seems to be the case when she "remembers"?

Iconic?

Not really, but I was reminded of this story when the new Dr. Who began, and all the mannequins came to life. Different thing altogether, but brought this to mind.

The Times they are a Changin'

Marsha buys a 14-carat gold thimble for the princely sum of 25 dollars (including tax). Also, the lift is attended, someone employed to do nothing more than stand there and press buttons to take people where they want to go. That ended a long time ago.

Personal Notes

A great story, very innovative, but on the face of it very cruel too. The idea of someone experiencing real life for a month, and then having to go back to being a dummy seems harsh. I would imagine there have been, or will be, other rebel dummies who will refuse to go back when their time is up.

Useless factoid: The music here is the same music that was used in the opening episode, "Where is Everybody?" Given that this is almost the last episode, that there were mannequins in that one too, and that, in the end, the world the character inhabited turned out to be more than met the eye, I find that interesting.

Title: "The Mighty Casey"
Original transmission date: June 17 1960
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Robert Parrish and Alvin Ganzer
Starring: Jack Warden as McGarry[2]
Robert Sorrells as Casey[2]
Abraham Sofaer as Dr. Stillman[2

 
Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Robotics, sports, gambling, cheating, doing Trollheart's head in!
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: C

Serling's opening monologue

What you're looking at is a ghost, once alive but now deceased. Once upon a time, it was a baseball stadium that housed a major league ball club known as the Hoboken Zephyrs. Now it houses nothing but memories and a wind that stirs in the high grass of what was once an outfield, a wind that sometimes bears a faint, ghostly resemblance to the roar of a crowd that once sat here. We're back in time now, when the Hoboken Zephyrs were still a part of the National League, and this mausoleum of memories was an honest-to-Pete stadium. But since this is strictly a story of make believe, it has to start this way: once upon a time, in Hoboken, New Jersey, it was tryout day. And though he's not yet on the field, you're about to meet a most unusual fella, a left-handed pitcher named Casey.

Oh crap no! Not baseball! Even worse than boxing, worse than jazz, worse than most things I can think of. Sigh. All right then, personal prejudices to one side. Let's get this thing started.

A crappy baseball team (no I don't mean that; they really are useless, worst in the wor - ah, country) are looking for a new catcher, and find one in a strange tall man who seems to have a grip of iron. He's brought to the field by a Doctor Stillman, and seems to almost have to be directed what to do by the doctor. Of course he's a robot, which the doctor confides to the coach, and which the kid, the robot, Casey, amply demonstrates by his prowess at baseball. Of course the team suddenly start winning all their games, but then Casey gets "beaned" (takes a ball to the head? Don't ask me, ask Wiki - it doesn't hate baseball like I do. No, it doesn't know either, or perhaps care. Let's assume that's right) and has to be taken to hospital.

While there, obviously, his true nature comes out and the doctor examining him says he'll have to report this to the baseball commission, who, not surprisingly, take a dim view of any team employing a robot. Well,. It's hardly fair, is it, and surely against the rules. Then Doctor Stillman says, if a lack of a heart is the problem, as the baseball commissioner says it is, then he can give Casey a heart. With his new heart, Casey returns but now he can't endanger the other team; he feels compassion and so is no longer any use as a pitcher.

Trollheart's note: Jesus Christ on gluten free toast with marmalade! Get me OUT of here!


Serling's closing monologue

Once upon a time, there was a major league baseball team called the Hoboken Zephyrs, who, during the last year of their existence, wound up in last place and shortly thererafter wound up in oblivion. There's a rumor, unsubstantiated, of course, that a manager named McGarry took them to the West Coast and wound up with several pennants and a couple of world championships. This team had a pitching staff that made history. Of course, none of them smiled very much, but it happens to be a fact that they pitched like nothing human. And if you're interested as to where these gentlemen came from, you might check under 'B' for Baseball - in The Twilight Zone


The Resolution

I'm too depressed to even comment here. Jesus - well, you know the rest.

The Moral

Don't give a robot a heart.

Themes

Robotics - only I think the second time we've heard of robots, since the female robot in "The Lonely", and again some sort of moralising about how emotions kill them. Very interestingly, the coach here - Jack Warden - is the same actor that played the man marooned on the asteroid in that episode, Corry. So he's been involved with both the robots in the series so far. Sport of course is the other theme, bloody baseball - making this again the second sport-themed one, following on from "The Big Tall Wish", and I guess cheating (for make no mistake, that's what it is) can also be considered a theme here.


And isn't that...?
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d7/Jack_Warden.jpg/440px-Jack_Warden.jpg)
Jack Warden (1920 - 2006)
An impressive list of film credits, including iconic movies such as From Here to Eternity, 12 Angry Men, Heaven Can Wait, All the President's Men and Shampoo, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, as he was for Heaven Can Wait. On television he starred in the series NYPD (but not Blue), Crazy Like a Fox, Jigsaw John and The Bad News Bears.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/RobertSorrells_WonderfulWorldOfDisney_c1968.jpg)
Robert Sorrels (1930 - 2019)
This is a new one. Guy was convicted of a double murder and jailed in 2005, died in prison. Interestingly, some of the movies he appeared in included All Fall Down, Ride to Hangman's Tree, Death of a Gunfighter and his final movie, Nowhere to Run.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/99/Sofaer.jpg)
Abraham Sofaer (1986 - 1988)
Played Joseph of Arimathea in The Greatest Story Ever Told, was in Quo Vadis? and also guested on episodes of Star Trek, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel and The Outer Limits.


Questions, and sometimes, Answers

Oh so many. How did a man in the 1960s manage to build a perfectly humanoid robot, and then give it - not an approximation of a heart, we're told, but a real human one - when we can't even begin to come close to that sort of technology in the twenty-first century? Maybe the guy was an alien. Who knows? Or cares?

Useless factoid:

This is the only time (so far) I've seen two different directors work on an episode.

Personal Notes

My own hatred for and antipathy towards baseball aside, this has to be one of my least favourite episodes. It's just so stupid. Look, I'm all for suspending my disbelief, but this is asking too much.

On a more sombre note, it seems the role of the manager was originally to have been played by another actor, Paul Douglas, but on the day shooting ended he passed away, had been sick all the time he had been filming. Serling decided apparently this cast a cloud over what was meant to be a frivolous little happy episode, and recast the role. Now, I'm not saying that was the wrong thing to do, but I feel it was a little unfair to take the man's final performance and consign it to the cutting-room floor. I wonder what he would have wanted? This is why there are two directors, as mentioned above - the original one, Ganzer, was not available for the reshoot. I don't know if this is unique to The Twilight Zone, but I haven't heard of two directors before.

Title: "A World of His Own"
Original transmission date: July 1 1960
Written by: Richard Matheson
Directed by: Ralph Nelson
Starring: Keenan Wynn as Gregory West
Phyllis Kirk as Victoria West
Mary LaRoche as Mary
 
Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Magic, omnipotence, hubris, love
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: A-

Serling's opening monologue

The home of Mr. Gregory West, one of America's most noted playwrights. The office of Mr. Gregory West. Mr. Gregory West—shy, quiet, and at the moment, very happy. Mary—warm, affectionate...And the final ingredient: Mrs. Gregory West.

A man seems idyllically, even nauseatingly in love with his wife, until we suddenly discover the woman making a martini for him and sitting on his lap is not his wife; she is outside, about to barge in and tear apart the little love nest. However, when Mrs. West enters the house and looks triumphantly around of there rival, there is nobody to be seen. Where is the young woman who only a moment ago she saw sitting beside her husband? She couldn't have got out; there's only one door and Mrs. West just came in by it! She's at a loss, and Gregory of course offers no explanation, as she has not accused him of anything. Yet.

Now she tells him about the woman she saw, but he just laughs, and she can't prove anything as she can't find any trace of the girl. When she catches him out though, he has to explain and tells her that, unbelievable as it may seem, the characters from his plays have begun to come to life, and that is what she saw. She of course does not believe him (who would?) and goes to call to have him committed, but he stops her and shows her how he does it, while she tries to get away. Describing the character into his tape recorder, he brings her literally to life, and she walks into the room.

Of course, the wife thinks it's some set-up (at least she doesn't call it a gag!) so Greg has to show her it's real by cutting off the piece of tape on which the character, Mary, is described, balling it up and throwing it in the fire, whereupon Mary vanishes. Before she does, though, she begs Greg not to: she seems distressed, as if being erased from existence is painful and traumatic for her, but he has to prove he's telling the truth. Besides, she's not real is she? She's only a character in one of his plays, right?

Oddly enough, even after seeing this with her own eyes his wife does not believe it, and goes to leave. Gregory has to convince her further, so we have to talk about the elephant in the room, when he literally creates one in the hall. Now she surely can't fail to understand. But she stubbornly sticks to her idea that he is crazy, even after the elephant disappears. I mean, where did she think it came from? Finally he has no choice, and reveals to her that she too is a character, and if she's determined to leave him, why then he has no alternative but to throw her tape into the fire and erase her. True to her scepticism, she refuses to take heed, to believe that she could be a character created by the playwright, and when Gregory goes to put the tape back in the safe from which he took it, she contemptuously grabs it and flings it on the fire.

And that's the end of her.

Lamenting that he made her too strong, too cold, too perfect, Gregory is about to recreate her when he has second thoughts, and brings Mary back again to be his wife.

A nice aside at the end, when Serling appears and begins narrating the end, then Gregory waves a finger at him warningly, takes out his tape and throws it on the fire, whereupon Serling vanishes.



Serling's closing monologue

Leaving Mr. Gregory West—Still shy, quiet, very happy... and apparently in complete control of The Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

Perhaps predictable, but still quite enjoyable. Everyone in Gregory West's circle, it seems, it a character created by him. Which has to make you wonder about his own character as a person. Does he have to be surrounded by perfect people all the time?

The Moral

There really isn't one here that I can see, unless it's "And God created Woman". Sigh.

Themes

Omnipotence would appear to be the main one: whatever Gregory West wants he can have, just by describing it with the powers of a talented playwright. But there's a small amount of hubris too, though it does not backfire on him but on his "wife", who realises too late that she is also created by him. Love, too, as in the end that's all West is looking for, though if this is the case why he put up for so long with a sharp, snippy wife like he has is anybody's guess. I suppose he does or did love her, as he didn't put her tape on the fire, she did that and he even tried to get it back. Nevertheless, he learns his lesson and does not recreate her, instead going with the more compliant (and younger and prettier) Mary.

Magic of a sort here too. An unexplainable process creates these characters, and there's no other way to describe it than magic, taking the power of the imagination and making it real. I suppose you could also throw in the legend of Doubting Thomas, or in this case Victoria. She's seen with her own eyes how this works and still persists in refusing to believe it, and pays the ultimate price in the end.


And isn't that...?
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Keenan_Wynn_-_publicity.JPG/440px-Keenan_Wynn_-_publicity.JPG)
Keenan Wynn (1916 - 1986)
A huge career in movies, including some pretty big ones - Dr. Strangelove, Stagecoach, Finian's Rainbow, Once Upon a Time in the West - as well as work on Kolchak the Night-stalker and Dallas, Fantasy Island, Taxi, The Bionic Woman, Alias Smith and Jones, Hawaii Five-0, Quincy and so on. He was also the son of Ed Wynn, who played the role of Lew Bookman  in "One for the Angels", the second episode we looked at here.

Questions, and sometimes, Answers

The wife asks the husband if he has a secret door installed. If he had, would he be likely to tell her? It would be secret, after all. That's the whole point of a secret, so that nobody knows. Especially the wife!

I read how he came about it, but surely Stephen King, an avid horror and science fiction fan, must have seen this episode, and therefore it had to have been, even subconsciously, an influence on his short story "Word Processor of the Gods"?

Iconic?

Is it possible that a young John Cleese watched this and saw the wife patting the walls, and included it in the episode of Fawlty Towers where Basil pretends to do the same while trying to find out if a guest has a girl in his bedroom? It's so similar, the intention even the same, the excuse literally being "I'm checking the walls"...

Ten things or less I hate about you

1. Gregory West's smiling face is annoying; that sort of self-satisfied, knowing look that says I could destroy you now if I wished.

2. As I note below, this is very demeaning to women, though of course it is 1960. But I wonder if they ever rewrote this, putting the woman in Gregory's place?

3. Victoria's stubborn refusal to believe is, well, hard to believe. Even after she's seen Mary vanish before her eyes, seen an elephant appear in the hall, she still thinks it's some sort of trick. Is she stupid?


Personal Notes

It's a light-hearted story, not meant to be taken seriously, and perhaps, in my opinion, not the best way to end the season, but I find its chauvinistic, not to say misogynistic tone disturbing. The man can have any woman he wants, and if they don't suit he can, essentially, kill them, and then if he wants bring them back to life, killing and resurrecting them as many times as he wishes. There's no evidence this hurts the characters, but Mary alludes to it, saying it frightens her. And he is burning the tape, after all.

(https://media4.giphy.com/media/3orieT6xnanhwwFFN6/source.gif)
Trollheart's note: this (gasp) took a whole lot (wheeze) more out of... me... than I... expected...! Call  (gasp) 999. No, not (urgh)  911! I... live... in... Irelaaaaagghhhhh!!


Between Light and Shadow: An Overview of Season One

So we've reviewed all of the first season of a show that would go on to become not only one of the most successful and popular science fiction/speculative fiction shows on television, but which would be copied, cited, parodied and used by so many other shows, both science fiction and not, and whose title and theme would enter the human experience in such a way that anything odd or unexplainable would have people humming the title tune. We've dissected all the thirty-five episodes, and what have we learned? Let's see.

Things are rarely what they seem

This appears to be a constant factor running through most of the series. We first encounter the weird, untrustworthy nature of reality in the opening episode, where everything the spaceman sees has been manufactured in his own mind, then Barbara's closed world of fading glory on the screen turns out to be a portal to another life in "The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine", while in "Perchance to Dream" a man is driven to suicide, though only in his dreams. Apparently, he suffers a heart attack and dies in the doctor's office. A more horrifying and true nightmare grips the space pilots in "And When the Sky Was Opened", as each begins to forget the other as they cease to exist, till none of them are left, even the memory of them wiped out, and in "Third From the Sun" we discover that, though Earth-like, the planet the people are escaping a nuclear holocaust from is an alien one.

Decidedly un-alien, in fact, Earth, is the landscape the stranded astronauts wander in "I Shot An Arrow Into the Air", until the survivor, having killed the others to, as he sees it, survive, realises he was home all along, and the girl who thinks a sinister hitch-hiker is stalking her finds out too late that he is Death, and she has passed on. It is an alien planet - or rather, an asteroid - that the travellers encounter in "Elegy", but they're unaware that it also is a massive cemetery, and they have disturbed its peace and must pay the ultimate price, a woman realises her evil double is trying to claim her existence in "Mirror Image" and then there is perhaps the ultimate  example this first season of things not being what they seem, when the residents of Maple Street realise they have become the very monsters they fear.

In "A World of Difference", Arthur Curtis's world vanishes to be replaced by one he hates, and can't bear to live in, while Conrad is forced to live in the one he finds himself on, a prisoner in a zoo on Mars in "People Are Alike All Over". Reality itself shifts in "The Big Tall Wish" and even the afterlife can provide nasty surprises in "A Nice Place to Visit", though "Nightmare as a Child" shows too that dreams can be very real, and frightening. A secret world lives in "The After Hours" as mannequins take turns coming to life, and finally even the wife is a construct in "A World of His Own".

You can't cheat death/fate/the devil

This is amply proven many times. Walter Bedecker, intending to live forever in "Escape Clause", backs himself into a corner from which there is only one way out, nothing can be changed in "Walking Distance", and fate has the last laugh in "Time Enough at Last", as well as in "Elegy". No matter how many faces he puts on, Arch Hammer can't avoid death, no more than can Nan Adams  in "The Hitch-Hiker", as death calmly and patiently pursues her. Fate gives Lt. Terry Decker a second chance to redeem himself and save an old friend in "The Last Flight", but to do so he has to sacrifice his own life, and "The Purple Testament" marks Fitz, taking him as one of its victims after he has seen the presentiment of many men dying.

Walter Jameson, having cheated death for thousands of years, finally ends up being undone by his own callousness and cruelty, succumbing to the most cliched death possible, at the hands of his angry wife, while the noose waits for Caswell, in 1880 or 1960, in "Execution." Henry finds you can't cheat fate if the person you want to cheat it for doesn't believe in "The Big Tall Wish" (or, to Disneyfy it slightly, "if your heart is not in your dreams, some requests are too extreme") and when Valentine thinks he has cheated fate and ended up in Heaven despite a life of crime, he finds out this is very much not the case, and fate has, as always, balanced the books. Trying to make the object of his affection fall in love with him proves hazardous in "The Chaser", committing suicide doesn't solve Joey's problems in "A Passage for Trumpet" and Mr. Bevis finds that, on the whole, he prefers his life as it is, warts and all.

Or can you?

Like most things in The Twilight Zone, nothing is really set in stone, and while there are many tales of people trying to change their luck, and failing, occasionally it does work. Look at, for instance, Barbara in "The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine". She manages to escape to a better world, as does Arthur in "A World of Difference", and Gart Williams (technically) in "A Stop at Willoughby". Technically, too, I guess you could say Bookman cheats, literally, death (or, if you prefer (sigh) Mister Death) in "One For the Angels", when he manages to divert him from his secondary purpose, or, perhaps it might be more accurate to say, re-aligns him back on the road he was travelling originally, the taking of Bookman's life.

Denton is a harder prospect, in "Mr. Denton on Doomsday". Does he cheat fate, or does (Henry J.) Fate cheat him, or does Fate in fact save him? He could, theoretically, go in either column, while in "Time Enough at Last", Bemis seems to have cheated fate, outlived all those who disparaged his reading, yet fate in the end has the final laugh at his expense. The Sturka and Riden families certainly cheat their own fate, and escape death, in "Third From the Sun", and even Decker in "The Last Flight" does indeed get a chance to cheat fate by giving himself to death and changing the outcome of the future.

Love doesn't conquer all

While it's true that love is a strong force in almost any story, The Twilight Zone often shows us that love by itself is not always enough. Take Corry in "The Lonely", who falls in love with the robot Alicia but in the end accepts its loss in order to escape his prison, or Shackleforth in "The Chaser", who learns all too late that total love and devotion can drive you crazy, and not in a good way. Not quite love as such, but the bonds of friendship and trust snap as easily as three-hundred-year-old chains in "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" once paranoia takes hold, and Marsha's - possible - love for the lift attendant in "The After Hours" is not enough to stop her wanting to remain human, until she's more or less forced back.

A World of Pure Imagination

I expect this show was one of the first in which audiences were asked to just accept a lot of stuff on face value, willing the old suspension of belief to the nth degree. If someone got murdered in a cop show, the characters - and by extension, the audience - wanted to know why and how. If a family broke up in a romantic drama, the reasons had to be stated. Apart from cartoons though, science fiction - certainly early science fiction anyway - as well as "creature-feature" style horror movies were allowed to just be; nobody asked how The Blob got here or questioned how it survived in space or where it came from, it just was. And so with The Twilight Zone. Despite my desperate nit-picking, worrying at the fabric of the stories and demanding explanations, sometimes there just weren't any, or at least, none were advanced. You just had to believe.

How and why does Death (oh this is the last time I'll say it, I swear! Mister Death then!) find his way to a nondescript New York street to pick up a similarly nondescript street seller and take him to the afterlife? Doesn't he have better things to do? Where does the gun come from that gives Denton back his courage, and in the end, his life, too? How does Barbara escape into a world of old movies? How does Martin Sloan end up going back in time to his childhood? How can the devil live in Walter Bedeker's bedroom? Why was Edward Hall being pursued by a maniacal woman in his dreams, and how does Kapitan Lanser end up on the ship he sunk, returning there again and again?

None of these questions will be answered, nor should they. We can ask them, but we know in reality there will be no explanation afforded. There can't be. If everything was explained two things would happen: the world would be very much a duller place and it would quickly become evident that the things we have seen happen could not in reality have happened, and the illusion would be destroyed. So we allow ourselves this conceit, to accept that some things happen because they happen, because the reason behind them, if any, is well beyond our ken. Or, as an obscure writer from the sixteenth century put it, because there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. Which is just as it should be.

So questions like what made the space pilots disappear one by one after their supposedly successful voyage into space, what power motivates Pedott in "What You Need", how Arch Hammer can change his face and a dead woman be pursued by the personification of that death in the guise of a hitch-hiker, or how a one-armed bandit can push a man to fall to his death, are never to be answered. Nor will enquiries on the subject of a World War I fighter pilot arriving in 1960, a soldier in World War II gaining the power to foresee death, or why and how doppelgangers sudden break through into our world. Dealt with similarly will be the questions how can a man be a character in a movie but then actually live that life, how can a man live as long as Walter Jameson has, and how can a kid have the power to change the outcome of the future? Ask in vain, too, why overworked Gart Williams see a nineteenth-century village on a train line and ends up dying for the vision of a better, more simpler world, or where Professor A. Daemon came from. Question not the existence of guardian angels, animated mannequins or even a man who can make people come to life simply by describing them. There are no answers to these questions, or perhaps there is one, one which covers all eventualities and makes a certain kind of sense.

All these things happen, all these things are possible, because it is The Twilight Zone.

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Statistics

I thought it might be interesting to look at some numbers, so here they are.

Quality of episodes

Based on my own rating system, here's how they break down in season one:
A++  6
A+  6
A    13
A-  5
B+ or below  5

Admittedly, those are only based on my personal ratings, but overall this is still impressive reading. What we can see is that of the thirty-five episodes of season one, thirty of them all rated at the very least an A, and 12 rated A+ or higher. On the other end of the scale, a mere five fell below the high watermark I've come to expect of this series, and even though it doesn't differentiate, I can tell you that only two of them were miserable C ratings. That's pretty much unheard of for a show starting off, especially one tackling a premise that had been, pretty much untouched up to then. Try this with even the original Star Trek and I guarantee you'll get a lower figure of top quality or even very good episodes. Hell, try it  with The Next Generation, twenty years on! It's often hard for a show to find its feet, and its audience, in its first season, but from the outset The Twilight Zone seems to have captured the imagination of its viewers, and would only go - mostly - from strength to strength as it was renewed for future seasons.

Themes

This is just a general thing. As each episode can be said to have, as shown in the reviews, several themes, I'm just choosing the main, overarching one (time travel, justice, crime etc) on which to base these.

Alienation: 26
Of course I'm going to explain and detail this figure.
Note: since i have a pain in my, um, face writing episode titles, I'm just going to use the abbreviations here. I'm sure it'll be clear enough.
So...

WIE? The astronaut feels alienated here because he appears to be alone, cannot contact anyone and everyone around him seems frozen in time. From the beginning, a dark, scary, unsettling atmosphere is laid down which, while it will not be prevalent in every episode, will permeate the larger majority of them. Sometimes, as here, the alienation will be shown for what it is, something not necessarily to be frightened of, and sometimes, it will not.
MDOD: Surely the main character here feels alienated? Laughed at, abused, drunk most of the time and trying to get drunk the rest of the time, he has a memory of the man he used to be, but nobody cares and it seems unlikely to him that he will ever be that man again.
TSMS: Barbara feels cut off from the world (truth is, she has cut herself off from it) and unable to face a cruel and changed outside, where nothing is how it used to be. She longs for the old days, and feels a stranger in this time.
WD: Our man here feels a stranger, too, in his own past, unable to make anyone understand or accept who he is, unable to change that past, longing for it yet knowing it to be long gone. He's like a ghost, flitting through the memories of his own childhood.
EC: Bedeker I guess feels a kind of alienation too, possibly twice: the first time when he thinks he is dying of everything under the sun, then when he makes his deal and finds nothing can kill him, but more to the point, nothing can excite him any more. Hard to feel any sympathy for the selfish old bastard though.
TL: A man who certainly feels alienated, in every sense of the word, is Corry, imprisoned on his own personal asteroid without another human being to keep him company.
TEAL: Hard to say whether Henry Bevis feels alienated, but given that nobody wants to hear about his books, I guess you'd have to say yes. He certainly feels that way after the world is destroyed and he's the only person (apparently) left alive.
PTD: Edward Hall feels very alienated, as nobody will believe he is being hunted in his dreams by a psychopathic murderer.
JN: Although he doesn't initially know why, Lanser feels he should not be where he is, and knows something terrible is about to happen. He can't explain this to anyone or get them to understand, so in his fear he is alone.
AWTSWO: Forbes feels a growing sense of alienation and fear, as his memories don't tally with anyone else's, and events seem to be changing at a rapid rate.
ISAAITA: The crew all feel alienated, having crashed and believing themselves lost on some asteroid millions of miles from home.
THH: Unable to convince anyone of the sinister intentions of the hitch-hiker, Nan Adams feels increasingly alienated and alone.
TLF: Thrown forward in time, Lt. Decker feels very alienated and out of place in 1960.
TPT: Able, through no fault of his, to see which of the men are to die, Fitz becomes alienated from his comrades, a pariah among them.
MI: Millicnet Barnes feels scared and isolated as weird things continue to happen around her, and even her new companion will not believe her.
TMADOMS: One by one, each suspect becomes alienated - literally - from his fellows as suspicion falls upon them.
AWOD: Trapped in a world which seems to be a movie set, Arthur Curtis feels a growing sense of alienation.
PAAAO: By the end of the episode, Conrad certainly feels alienated - again, literally - when he realises he is an exhibit in a Martian zoo!
EX: Like Decker in TLF, Caswell feels out of place and out of time when he is snatched from 1880 and brought into 1960.
TBTW: Bolie must feel alienated in a world in which he can no longer compete, in which he is washed up and forgotten about.
ANPTV: On his arrival in "Heaven", Valentine feels very alienated, wondering what's going on and how he is somehow in this great place? By the end, his alienation has taken on an entirely different complexion!
NAAC: As she begins to be disturbed by the presence of Marky, Helen feels alienated too.
ASAW: Gart Williams feels very alienated, both by his high-pressure job and by his cold, unsympathetic wife.
APFT: Like Bolie in TBTW, Joey Crown feels cut off from his erstwhile passion, alienated in a world that no longer seems to want him.
MB: After his guardian angel resets the day, Bevis begins to feel progressively more isolated from the people who had been his friends.
TAH: Unaware she is a dummy, Marsha feels alienated as things seem to get weirder for her in the shop.

Locations other than Earth: 6 (with caveats, see below)

Surprisingly, not that many. Or maybe not that surprisingly. The Twilight Zone was not, after all, billed or sold as a space or science fiction show, and while, as time went on and its popularity - and presumably its working budget - increased, there would be more forays out into space and onto distant planets, here we wait a long time, relatively speaking, before we even see a story set off our homeworld, and there aren't too many following it. I suppose as well it might have been that Serling, or the network, wished to avoid driving away those who were not "into" sci-fi, and who assumed they'd be watching a show where spacemen in unconvincing silver suits battled equally unconvincing monsters and flew unconvincing rocket ships into unconvincing starfields. The Twilight Zone was always - and continues to be - first and foremost, about the story and the characters, and most times these can be handled on Earth, even in the present, as well as out on some godforsaken rock in space.

TL: This is of course the first, set on a desolate asteroid being used as a prison for one man. It also features, unsurprisingly, the first appearance of space ships, and again unsurprisingly, they're pretty standard as to what film sci-fi was visualising them as. This is also one of the only stories concerning robotics, but more of that later.

TFTS: Although we're made believe this is Earth, we find out at the very end, indeed in the last words of the episode, that it is some unidentified alien planet from which the people are fleeing, heading towards our homeworld.

EL: Strictly speaking, an asteroid, but still not the Earth, though it's made look just like it, for the benefit of the rich, um, inhabitants.

PAAAO: Following the trend of the times, this is set on Mars, the first Twilight Zone episode to be  based there.

ANPTV: Technically speaking, I suppose, you could include this one, though whether Hell is Earth depends I guess on your own personal beliefs and experiences!

APFT: And similarly, given that most of it takes place in Limbo, maybe this could be considered too.

Revenge and/or Justice: 11

Sort of interchangeable in a way, revenge and justice tend to be fairly recurrent motifs in the show, since, as Serling likes to moralise, most if not all of the characters either end up getting revenge or revenge being enacted upon them, or finding justice or being brought to justice, one way or another. The clear message here is: crime does not pay and your sins will eventually find you out, sometimes in surprising, even terrifying ways.

EC: Probably the first in terms of the latter, where a selfish narcissist gets what's coming to him.

TEAL: You could say I guess that Bemis gets his revenge in this one, though it's a two-edged sword for him.

PTD: Certainly seems to involve revenge, though for what I don't know.

JN: Justice and revenge in this one, if you consider God - assuming you believe Him to exist - to be a vengeful one. Or maybe it's just karma. Or the Great Pixie. Whatever.

WYN: Certainly a sense of justice here - not quite revenge, as who can  imagine such an inoffensive, friendly little man wishing ill on anyone? - but the bad guy gets his comeuppance in the end.

TFOUAD: Definitely justice here, for a man who has used and abused both people and personalities for his own ends.

ISAAITA: Justice for the remaining astronaut, when he sees he has killed his friends for nothing, and perhaps revenge for them from the grave.

LLWJ: Revenge here takes the shape of a gun held by a spurned wife, ending a life that has spanned more than two thousand years.

EX: Revenge and justice both loom large here, for both victims.

ANPTV: As they do here, with the ultimate revenge and the ultimate justice meted out after death.

NAAC: Revenge is had by Helen on her mother's murderer and justice is finally seen to be done, the most final justice of all.

Fear: 22

It's not at all surprising that in a show like The Twilight Zone, though not marketed as scary really, fear plays a large part; whether it's fear due to not knowing what's going on (or indeed, knowing exactly what's gong on!), fear of discovery, fear of consequences, fear of being stalked, fear of realising something you suspect and do not want to be true, the shadow of fear stalks through at least this season, and surely subsequent ones, like a giant stalking thing. Sometimes those fears are realised, sometimes shown to be nothing to worry about, and sometimes left slightly ambiguous.

WIE? Again, fear plays a large part here, escalating to paranoia and eventual mental breakdown, the result of enforced and prolonged isolation.

MDOD: Again, fear is a factor here. Initially not so much, as Denton is too drunk to care what's done to him or what's said about him, but when he finds the gun and begins to regain his self-respect, the fear that his old reputation will come looking for him, forcing him to kill again (or be killed) surfaces.

TSMS: Barbara fears that her best days are gone, and they're not coming back, and wonders how she is supposed to survive in this strange new world, while her agent fears for her sanity as she closets herself away with her memories. There's fear, too, when he finds her gone and can't understand where she has disappeared to, until he sees her on the screen.

EC: Fear only plays a short part in this one, when Bedeker has himself convinced that he, a perfectly healthy man, is dying. Later there is no fear as he is invulnerable and immortal, though right at the end he does fear being incarcerated for "life", nobody realising how long his life is going to be.

TL: Corry fears he will never get off the asteroid, and then at the end he fears that he will not be able to take Alicia with him.

TEAL: For a relatively short moment, Bemis fears being alone on the  Earth, and contemplates suicide. He probably also quite rightly fears his martinet wife.

PTD: Hall fears he will be killed if he falls back asleep, but also fears remaining awake, knowing he cannot do so forever.

JN: Fear runs through this like water rushing into a sinking vessel, as Lanser's fear grows, the hour of retribution once again at hand, though he cannot remember what it is he fears.

AWTSWO: Forbes fears as things he knows to be true change and warp, and people seem to be getting written out of time. He fears when he can no longer see his reflection in the mirror, and when Harrington vanishes from the phone box.

WYN: Peddot fears the influence of Renard, whom he knows is going to end up killing him.

TFOUAD: There's fear - finally - when Hammer faces "his father" and realises he is going to die if he can't again change his face.

TFTS: The two families fear both the approaching holocaust and also the chance that they will be caught and stopped in their escape.

ISAAITA: All the crew fear dying on this "lonely deserted asteroid", little realising they are home in the desert and only miles from salvation.

THH: The fear is almost palpable as Nan Adams tries desperately to avoid the odd hitch-hiker who won't leave her alone.

TLF: Decker fears what will happen if he does not go back in time and make things right.

TPT: Fitz fears looking into the eyes of his men, knowing he will see which of them is going to die.

MI: Millicent is terrified by the strange happenings, and the fact that a doppelganger is pursuing her.

TMADOMS: Fear rules the roost here, propelling the residents of Maple Street into a witch-hunt and turning them against their own. There are two types of fear in this episode: fear of the alien invasion and fear that one of the townspeople may be in league with them, or indeed alien themselves.

AWOD: Arthur fears he is in the wrong world, and will never get back to his own.

PAAAO: Conrad fears what they will encounter on Mars, fears when the hatch won't open, has his fears assuaged only to have them come right back at the end when he realises he is trapped.

NAAC: Helen fears the strange girl, and then her mother's murderer as she struggles against him.

TAH: Marsha fears that the shop seems very strange and the assistant is acting oddly. Deep down, she probably also fears that she has to go back to being a mannequin.

Loneliness: 12

Even if few of the episodes are set off-world, The Twilight Zone is mostly a lonely place, with one character struggling against the odds, or trying to make sense of a senseless situation, and you can be just as lonely on a deserted rock in space as you can be in a crowd of people at home.

WIE? Again we're back to the pilot, where loneliness features heavily, though it's mostly overshadowed by fear and panic.

TSMS: You would have to assume Barbara feels lonely, living in her own private world of past glories and old achievements.

TL: Not as lonely as Corry, of course, on his personal asteroid prison.

TEAL: Or indeed Henry Bemis, after the holocaust as he wanders the ruins of Earth. He must feel very lonely indeed; for a moment, he was about to have all the company fiction and other books can provide, and then in an instant it's all snatched away, and he's left alone, in every sense of the word.

THH: I'm torn as to whether or not to assume Nan suffers from loneliness. It's a lonely business, certainly, driving across the states unaccompanied, but given the company that's trying to join her, maybe she's better off being on her own? Then again, given that the sailor won't believe her story, maybe there's a sense of being lonely there.

TPT: When you can tell who's going to die and who's going to live, it stands to reason people are going to want to steer clear of you, just in case.

MI: And when nobody believes you that something very weird and inexplicable is going on, that's going to make you lonely too.

TMADOMS: Nothing like feeling lonely in a crowd, though, especially a crowd of people who just recently were your friends and neighbours.

AWOD: Arthur finds himself a lonely figure whom nobody will believe, somewhat like Millicent in MI.

LLWJ: It's a lonely life when everyone around you keeps dying and you live on.

PAAAO: Space is a lonely place, but it's lonelier yet when you're stuck in a cage on your own on a strange planet.

APFT: And it's lonely too when you're thrown on the scrap heap and nobody wants your talents any more.

Robotics: 2

I hardly need to detail them, but given that the idea of robotics is approached from extremely opposite ends of the scale in each, maybe I will.

TL: A robot female is delivered to the prisoner to keep him company. He falls in love with it and in the end sees it as a real person when he is released, however in the end he accepts it is just a machine and must be left behind.

TMC: A robot baseball player is used by a crooked baseball coach to win games, but has to be fitted with a human heart and in so doing gains, for some reason, human emotions, making it useless as it no longer wishes to play baseball and hurt opposition players.

Spaceflight: 8

Not necessarily referring to off-world adventures, but any episode in which spaceflight is used, alluded to or even envisioned goes here. So we have

WIE? In which the astronaut is training for an imminent mission to the moon.

TL: Where supply ships land to deliver the goods needed to keep the prisoner alive (and presumably one brought him there originally too, and one takes him away at the end).

AWTSWO: Not technically spaceflight I guess, but close enough. The ship exits Earth's atmosphere, and is said in the episode to be the first craft ever to do so.

TFTS: The two families steal an experimental craft capable of going into space, in order to escape the coming holocaust on their homeworld.

ISAAITA: Although we never see the spacecraft, we're told the astronauts stuck in what they don't know is the Nevada Desert have crashlanded after their spacecraft crashed.

EL: The spacemen arrive on the cemetery asteroid on their way back from a mission and land their ship there; they also end up being positioned, diorama-like, there in death.

TMADOMS: At the very end we see the aliens get into their spacecraft, having incited the residents of the street into a panicked, paranoid frenzy.

PAAAO: A rocket ship takes off for, and crashlands on, Mars.

Aliens: 4

Not terribly surprisingly, given a) the pretty low budget for the show, b) the embryonic nature of prosthetics and c) the fact that the show is not really about aliens, we don't see too many, at least in the first season. The term aliens here does not include the likes of guardian angels, djinn or devils. Nor does it include Death, Fate, or men who can shapeshift or doppelgangers from a parallel universe.

TFTS: For the purposes of this category I'm including the Riden and Sturka family, who are, technically, at least to us, aliens.

EL: I'm unsure whether I should include Wickwire, as it was never explained just what he was, but I think on balance we can assume he was some sort of alien. I think he may have been a computer program. Um.

TMADOMS: Although we only see them at the end, the aliens invading are the impetus for all the hoo-hah that takes over Maple Street.

PAAAO: Our first Martians, even if they look like refugees from The Greatest Story Ever Told!

Insanity: 14

For our purposes here, insanity refers to either someone coming to the brink of, or actually going insane or thinking they are, or being driven to that point by another party.

WIE? At the end, the astronaut's mind snaps due to the overwhelming pressure of loneliness and he goes mad. It is however only temporary.

TSMS: It's never actually said out loud, but Barbara is slowly going insane as she sits in the dark and watches her old movies, wishing for the past.

TL: No surprise that Corry is pushed to the edge of insanity, living on his own for most of the year.

TEAL: It can reasonably be assumed that Bemis goes mad at the end, when his precious books are snatched away from him by a cruel twist of fate.

PTD: Did Hall go mad or did his heart just give out? I guess we'll never know, but he was certainly approaching the precipice of madness.

AWTSWO: Forbes certainly feels he's going mad, as nobody will believe him that there were three of them and now only he is left. Although not for long.

ISAAITA: Corey must go mad at the end when he realises they've been on Earth all along, and he didn't need to murder anyone to survive.

THH: Nan wonders if she is going insane as the hitch-hiker closes in on her.

TF: You'd have to imagine that Franklin goes mad, as he believes he sees the one-armed bandit coming for him and ends up falling out of the window to his death.

MI: Millicent believes she is going mad, though by the time she has (somehow) figured out what's going on she is, ironically, taken in as a madwoman by the cops.

TMADOMS: Paranoia is a kind of madness, and it infects almost everyone on Maple Street.

AWOD: Arthur thinks he is going mad, as everyone tries to convince him he is a drunken actor and not the man he thinks he is.

NAAC: Until her memories come back, Helen must think she's going mad as the strange child seems to know so much about her.

ASAW: The jury's out as to whether Williams went mad, just jumping out of the train, thinking he was entering Willoughby, or whether he really did somehow transfer his consciousness/soul there.

TAH: Marsha thinks she's going mad, little realising she is not even human.

Redemption: 9

Although many of the episodes, even here in the first season, are dark and somewhat unremitting and unforgiving, there is room for redemption and salvation.

MDOD: The clearest and indeed earliest example being Mr. Denton, who gains his self-respect back and also need no longer fear challengers to his prowess.

TSMS: Can it be considered redemption for Barbara, who disappears into the world in which she wants to live? Maybe.

TL: Redemption comes, finally, for Corry as he is pardoned and allowed leave the asteroid prison.

TFTS: Salvation is available to the Sturka and Riden families as they escape their doomed planet and head to a new life on Earth.

TLF: Decker finds the courage to gain redemption by sacrificing his life in the past to save his friend in the future.

AWOD: Arthur manages to find redemption when he makes it back to the world he believes is real, though everyone else seems to think it is that of a film script and a character in that film.

NAAC: Salvation for Helen as the murderer of her mother is both identified and brought to swift and brutal justice.

ASAW: And whether he actually got there or died en route to a place that did not exist, Williams seems to have found redemption in Willoughby.

APFT: Joey Crown is saved from Limbo and from a dismal existence on Earth, and allowed a second chance.

Pressures of modern life: 4

As I noted in the review of one of the episodes, the 1950s and 1960s saw the rise of the business executive, with things like Madison Avenue springing up and people no longer working just for a wage but to make a career. This led to intense and often brutal competition, both between and within companies, and gave birth to the kind of stress that could end a career, or even a life.

WD: It's the pressure of his high-powered job that sends Martin Sloan back to the carefree days of his boyhood, though in the end he makes it even worse, ending up with a limp for his troubles.

TEAL: The pressures of his bank job, to say nothing of those at home from his social-climbing wife, make Henry Bemis take refuge in the sanctuary of books.

ASAW: Gart Williams is increasingly unable to deal with the stress of his job, and pines for a simpler time, when the pace of life was slower.

MB: Mr. Bevis does not do well with the hurly-burly of modern life, and as a consequence (before the day is reset) is fired from his job.

Immortality: 5

The great goal of man, to live forever. But this always comes at a price, and to some extent could dovetail with the next theme, though we'll keep them separate.

TSMS: Barbara attains a kind of immortality, living forever now on the silver screen, where she will always be young and never age.

EC: Walter Bedeker seeks immortality, but is in the end bored by it and ends up painting himself into a corner by being far too clever for his own good.

JN: I guess you could say Lanser has also attained a kind of immortality, though he would probably prefer not to have done.

LLWJ: Walter Jameson is the longest-lived man in history. Until he pisses off the wrong woman.

ANPTV: Valentine, like Barbara and Kapitan Lanser, also becomes immortal in the very worst way.

Greed and hubris: 8

Where there's ambition and desire there's greed, and usually hubris too, which is why I'm grouping them together here. A story with a moral can only be such if the hubris of the main character - or someone else - is shown to its fullest extent. Here we have the people who thought they could have what they wanted at no price, never realising that of all places, The Twilight Zone extracts the highest tolls for the bounties it confers.

EC: As I said, there might, and probably will be, some crossover between these and the last theme, and here we have a classic example both of greed and hubris, as Bedeker tries to stack the deck in his favour, but realises too late that the devil always finds a way to win the game. Do not bet against the House!

TEAL: Perhaps not greed but definitely hubris, as Bemis realises that his own frailties have led to his disappointment and loss.

JN: The hubris of the Kapitan is rewarded by having him relive it every single night for eternity.

WYN: Renard's greed and hubris is his undoing, as he fails to be happy with what the pedlar gives him and wants to make money out of his talent.

TFOUAD: And in a similar way, hubris ends up being the downfall of Arch Hammer, who thinks he can circumvent any situation by choosing the face that best suits it, but makes the wrong choice in the wrong place.

TF: I reckon you could say Franklin's snottiness about gambling is a kind of hubris, and it certainly is newly-awakened greed which leads to his death.

LLWJ: Jameson believes he will live forever (and why not, given how long he has already lived?) but treats those around him as lesser beings, toys to be played with, and it is this hubris that fails to credit the possibility of one of these used people coming back and ending his long life.

AWOHO: The only place I can see where man's hubris does not turn against him, where Gregory West believes he can control everything in his life, and does. There's no real comeuppance in this story, unless you consider Victoria's hubris in refusing to believe she is a made-up character - and even when his wife is proven to be not real, he just shrugs and creates a new one.

Deal with the devil/Demons and Angels: 8

While the theme of meeting and dealing with the devil would run, not throughout just this series but fantasy and speculative fiction in general for centuries - and had done, well before Serling put pen to paper to create The Twilight Zone - the first season only has a handful of episodes involving the Fallen One, so I've paired this with episodes which feature or refer to angels and also demons if any. Also Death and Fate, and any other supernatural agencies.

OFTA: Bookman has a date with Death (no I'm not saying it any more, deal with it) which he does not relish keeping.

MDOD: Denton is helped turn his life around by Fate.

EC: Bedeker literally makes a deal with the devil, and ends up regretting doing so.

THH: Nan is pursued by the personification of Death, in the form of a hitch-hiker.

ANPTV: Valentine thinks he's dealing with an angel but finds out to his cost he could not be more wrong.

TC: Roger goes to see a man whose name is Professor A. Daemon. Yeah.

APFT: Crown is helped in the afterlife by an angel. Again, yeah.

MB: And a guardian angel helps Bevis re-run the worst day of his life.

Space exploration: 7

As discussed under the off-world theme, in at least this, the first season, there isn't as much spaceflight and going to new planets as you might expect from a show many took to be, perhaps mistakenly, a science fiction one. However there are a few. Note: for the purposes of this category, explorations of the afterlife, the future or the past are not included, only efforts - successful or otherwise - to go into space.

WIE? While still taking place on Earth, this first episode does explore (sorry) the idea of going to another world, even if it's only the boring old moon.

TL: Not strictly speaking exploration, but worthy of inclusion as, had he the interest to, I suppose Corry could explore the barren asteroid he's been condemned to live on. Not that there's much to explore there, but, you know.

AWTSWO: Certainly takes as its opening theme the idea of exploring the space outside the Earth (outer space, in other words).

TFTS: Has the protagonists leaving their own, unnamed planet to try to reach ours.

ISAAITA: Although they are actually exploring Earth, the crew believe they're on an asteroid and that they have been into space, even if they never made it beyond the Earth's atmosphere.

EL: Begins with the characters on the way home from some sort of space exploration.

PAAAO: Has the two main characters head to Mars.

Time Travel: 7

Surely needs no explanation from me. There are few in the first season, so I'm going to be including elements where the possibility is that someone has travelled backwards or forwards in time, even if that is not definitely proven or stated to be the case.

TSMS: I think it's fair to say that on the face of it, Barbara travels back in time to her glorious heyday, where she will now live.

WD: Martin Sloan goes back in time to his childhood.

JN: Lanser can be said to be getting transported back in time to the moment of the sinking, this happening constantly and, we assume, for all eternity.

TLF: Decker comes from 1915 to 1960 in order to right a wrong outcome and change the future.

EX: Caswell is dragged forward in time to meet his death in 1960 instead of 1880.

ASAW: Whether it happens or not in reality, Gart Williams thinks he has gone back in time when he reaches the stop of Willoughby.

MB: Technically he goes back in time, if only twenty-four hours.

The Afterlife: 5

Episodes which specifically and clearly show or reference what is beyond the veil. This theme will get more prevalent and complicated, not only as the series develops, but as new iterations of it appear down through the decades.

OFTA: Death takes Bookman to, presumably, Heaven at the end.

TSMS: I'm tempted to include this, as Barbara has obviously passed on to some sort of cinematic afterlife, but I don't think I can as it's not clear enough.

JN: We have to assume Lanser is in Hell, so therefore that qualifies.

THH: As Nan is in fact dead, though no afterlife is shown this can also be accepted as an example of same.

ANPTV: Probably the most clear example we have in this season of what may await us after death: if we're very unlucky, or deserving of such a fate.

ASAW: Can we accept Willoughby as a version of the afterlife? Well. given that Williams sees it twice while still alive, I'd have to say no. Can't count this one.

APFT: But Joey Crown certainly sees Limbo, at least, and meets the Archangel Gabriel, so this one can be counted.


What's the percentage of serious episodes versus ones meant to be taken in a humorous vein?

Serious ones: WIE?/MDOD/TSMS/WD/TL/TEAL/PTD/JN/AWTSWO/WYN/TFOOAD/TFTS

ISAAITA/THH/TLF/TPT/EL/MI/TMADOMS/AWOD/LLWJ/PAAAO/EX/TBTW/NAAC

ASAW/APFT/TAH

Humorous ones:
OFTA/EC/TF/ANPTV/TC/MB/TMC/AWOHO

So that's 27 serious versus 8 not, showing that the overall tone of the show was more sombre and serious than flippant, and that lessons should be learned from the programme.


What about the leads? How many episodes had male leads, and how many female? Let's see.

Male: WIE?MDOD/WD/TL/TEAL/PTD/JN/AWTSWO/WYN/TFOOAD/TFTS/ISAAITA/TLF

TPT/EL/TMADOMS/AWOD/LLWJ/PAAAO/EX/TBTW/ASAW/APFT/OFTA/EC

ANPTV/TC/MB/TMC/AWOHO

Female: TSMS/THH/MI/NAAC/TAH

So that's a mere 5 with female leads, compared to a massive 30 in which male characters take centre stage. But for 1960 this is not at all surprising. Let's just break that down a little further though. Of the ones with male leads, how many of those episodes even featured a female character?

OFTA has the little girl who is to die in Bookman's place, and her mother also, very peripheral characters, though the former is the device through which Bookman is motivated to try to cheat Death and ends up surrendering his own soul.
MDOD has the barmaid Denton (presumably) falls in love with.
WD has Sloan's mother, though she plays little part in the story, it being again a mosly male-driven plot.
EC has the long-suffering wife of Walter Bedeker, who gets treated very badly, and is in fact killed in an off-hand and very casually cruel way by the selfish git.
TL only allows a woman as long as she's a robot and does what she's told, however of all these so far it's the most quasi-sympathetic (and ironically strongest) role for a woman in one of these stories, as Alicia gives Corry back his dignity and his sense of purpose, his will to live and even allows him to find love of a sort. Unfortunately when he's done he just dumps her, but you can't have everything.
TEAL brings us two female characters, neither of which are in the least sympathetic. There's the irritated lady customer at the bank to whom Bemis tries to explain the workings of Dickens, and then there's his shrew of a wife. And both (along with everyone else) get killed. Heavy message?
PTD again casts a woman in the role of the bad guy, or girl, as it were. While there are essentially two female characters in this, they're both the same actress so I would count them as one. I guess you could say that this is the first episode in which a woman, while not the main character, triumphs over the man, in that Hall dies of a heart attack supposedly brought on by Maya's pursuit of him in his dreams. Like Alicia in TL, a strong female character, if for the wrong reasons here.
JN has only one female character, the sergeant (though there may be other, unnamed ones at tables - I don't count them if they're there - who plays little more part in the story than as a device to enable Lanser to pour out his troubles to.
AWTSWO has a nurse, and also a girl in a bar, (two I think) but they're very much surplus to requirements for the story. Oh, and Forbes' wife, who sort of fulfils the same criterion.
WYN has one female character, at the beginning, and though she is the first the pedlar approaches and so we think she might be a major one, she's gone pretty quickly, used as nothing more than a way to demonstrate Peddot's powers of precognition.
TFOOAD gives us one female, the woman ready to run away with the dead musician whom Hammer is impersonating, and again, she's gone long before the second act.
TFTS tries to make the women a little more important, but the wives are reduced to nodding and looking worried, and only the Sturka daughter gets to do anything, actually being the one who rescues them from the clutches of Carling when it looks like they have been caught. So maybe one more strong female character.
TF is taken over entirely by the husband, with his wife as a scared and worried onlooker.
TMADOMS shows the women bowing to the judgement of their men, and while some accuse, they only do so with the approval of their husbands, so you couldn't call any of them strong characters, and by the end they've descended into one amorphous mob anyway.
AWOD does make an effort. The wife - shrewish and grasping again - in the so-called "wrong" life of Arthur Curtis is well written, btu again she's a negative stereotype, whining about alimony and her ex-husband's drunkenness. The other wife, the "real" one, is a pastiche of fifties housewifery and seems to have no real qualities of her own. There's also the secretary (in both worlds, though in the "wrong" one she's playing a part) but she doesn't do much but make phone calls and smile.
LLWJ has just two female characters (other than possibly TMADOMS, I count no more than three in any episode), one of which is the fiancee of Jameson, so demeaned that her father jokingly (we assume) threatens to spank her, the other a previous wife of Jameson's, who eventually kills him, so I guess that makes her a strong character. There's also a very brief cameo for a female student, but hardly worth mentioning.
PAAAO: Introduces perhaps the first sympathetic female character in a male-driven episode, though she is unable to go against her male superiors to help the poor Earthman. She does however display more, um, humanity than any of her people.
TBTW has only one female, the mother of Henry and (it's said) the fiancee of Bolie. There are various women out on the street, but again these are just extras. Henry's mother gets a small slice of the story, but it's again dominated by the males, in this case young and old.
ANPTV only makes room for women if they're floosies, good-time gals, broads or skirts. Very fluff, very eye-candy, very superfluous. I'm not sure they even speak.
ASAW again has a shrewish wife who berates her husband and blames him for not giving her the life she had expected. There are also office workers, but none of them matter to the story much.
TC has a shrew, who first wants nothing to do with Roger and then becomes happily enslaved to him, enslaving him in the process, which I have to admit is pretty clever. But I don't think Leila can be considered a strong personality in this episode.
APFT brings in a love interest for Joey, but right at the end, and only to show that his life is about to turn for the better.
MB has a snappish landlady who evicts Bevis (though in the redo she thanks him for having paid months in advance) and a sympathetic office worker, as well as a resident in the lodgings from which he is being evicted.
AWOHO shows the utter disdain Gregory has for women, as he writes/creates ones that suit his own personal tastes, though he does try to stop his wife from throwing her tape on the fire, and even considers recreating her, changing his mind when he realises he can instead have the submissive and pretty and undemanding Mary.

And before we leave this category, let's take a quick look at those female-centric episodes. How does the heroine fare, how is she painted in each?

TSMS shows us a belligerent, haughty woman refusing to live in reality, getting by on her memories and eventually being sucked into them.
THH really has Nan as a scared, confused girl trying to avoid a nasty hitch-hiker, even enlisting the aid of a tough, strong sailor in her attempt to get away. Hardly a strong figure.
MI gives us another scared woman, but one who has a mind of her own and has sussed out what is happening, when she is unexpectedly (to her anyway) betrayed by the male, who rather fittingly ends up suffering her fate as he realises she was quite sane.
TAH shows us the selfish side of a woman (even if she's not real) and her willingness to risk everything for the chance to remain as she is.
NAAC has another frightened woman, but she does take charge and, while it may be accidentally, triumphs over the male killer, so that has to make her a strong female character.

That makes uncomfortable reading. Of the mere 5 episodes featuring female leads, more than half portray her as a weak, nasty or incompetent figure, making the unmissable comment that really, women should not be allowed out on their own. Sad.

How many episodes written entirely by Rod Serling, how many based on the work of others and how many written without his input (other than as I guess story editor/executive producer/man with the final say)?

The first seven are all his work then TEAL is the first where he bases his story on the writings of another person. After that we have the first written without him (a Charles Beaumont story) in PTD, then him again and then the next six are based on the writing of other authors. The sixth of these is followed by a sequence of 1,2,1,2, by which I mean one written by him, one written without him, and repeat, then he writes the next two before ceding writing duties for the next two, with the one after that based on a short story, as is the next, then one without his input sandwiched between three of his own writing, followed by the first where he doesn't even write the teleplay, but takes the reins for the next four, while leaving the closing episode to be written by another author, into which he has no input on the story.

So that makes a total of 19 written solely by Serling
9 which he writes based on the writings of others and
7 which are written by others without his input

That's still pretty impressive, giving him overall 80% of the writing credit for the first season.

While it's a little simplistic perhaps to say "good" or "bad", which episodes end well - either for the character(s) or us - and which end badly?

I count 11  ending what I consider as well, or happy, and they are

OFTA: Much as I dislike this episode, I have to admit in the end Bookman sacrifices his life to save the little girl, and so earns a kind of redemption, so it would be considered a "good" ending.

MDOD: Despite its dark tone, ends well and certainly can be said to be a happy ending.

WYN: Despite Renard dying at the end, he is more or less identified as the bad guy in this one, and so I'd say that yes, this is, all things taken into account, a happy ending.

TFTS: The families manage to escape and are heading to a new life so that's definitely a good ending.

TLF: Although Decker's decision in the future will lead to his death in the past, his actions will save his friend, and so that has to be a positive ending.

AWOD: Arthur Curtis finds his way home, giving us an unexpectedly happy ending.

NAAC: Again, though there is a death at the end it's the death of a murderer, and Helen gets her memories back, so this is a good ending.

ASAW: I'm a little torn on this one. Essentially, Williams gets his wish and ends up in Willoughby, out of the rat race. But then we see his dead body, adn he's out of the human race too. But overall I think it's a happy ending, for him at least.

APFT: Joey Crown gets a second chance, so that has to be a happy ending.

MB: Bevis chooses in the end to be who he was in the first place, problems and all, and while a simplistic one, it has to be regarded as a good ending.

AWOHO: Gregory gets the wife he wants, and all is well in this final happy ending.

Well, that should leave 25, more than twice as many, ending badly or darkly, should it not? Let's check it out.

WIE? While there's a happy resolution - the astronaut is not alone - he does go a bit mad, and the problems of the intense loneliness of deep space remain, so on balance this one I would consider a dark ending.

TSMS: While you could argue this is a happy ending, I don't agree. I feel Barbara turned her back on the world and ended up being consumed by her past, and for her agent at any rate it's a bad ending, as she's gone.

WD: Sloan achieves nothing, but adds a limp for the rest of his life which he didn't have before his trip back through time, so that has to be a bad ending.

EC: While we want the little **** to die, or be left living forever in jail, Bedeker does end up having to give up his immortality, and far sooner than he would have expected if at all. That then makes this a dark ending to a bitingly satirical episode.

TL: Corry escapes but has to turn his back on the robot that has made his life on the asteroid bearable, and there's a palpable sense of pathos and tragedy to the ending of this one.

TEAL: Perhaps the darkest of all dark endings, as not only is the world destroyed but Bemis's chance to be alone with his books is taken from him with cruel caprice.

PTD: Hall dies. Can't get too much darker than that.

JN: Except I guess if you're condemned to relive one terrifying night you're responsible for, all down through eternity in your own private Hell.

AWTSWO: Or when you are literally erased from existence, no memory or trace of you remaining.

TFOOAD: Another death, another dark ending.

ISAAITA: Corey finds he has killed his crewmates for nothing. There's no coming back from that.

THH: Death claims his dominion.

TF: A stupid, funny episode ends in tragedy.

TPT: More death and despair here.

EL: And more here, with a twist.

MI: Millicent is committed while Paul realises too late she was right all along.

TMADOMS: Chaos explodes in smalltown America as neighbour turns on neighbour and everyone is a suspected alien.

LLWJ: No matter how long you live, remember the words of the bard: hell hath no fury like a woman scorned!

PAAAO: There's really no way to put a positive spin on ending up as an exhibit in a Martian zoo!

EX: And if death follows you eighty years into the future, you know it's not going to be your day.

TBTW: What could have been a sappy, happy ending turns sour because one man can't believe in magic.

ANPTV: Even the nicest most gilded cage is still a cage.

TC: Trapped, not in a loveless relationship, but a suffocatingly close one, there's no escape for Roger.

TAH: Hard to feel good about the sudden revelation and realisation that you're a shop dummy.

So that's 24, not 25. Why? Because I deliberately left TMC out, as I can't decide (or care) whether it's a happy or a sad ending. In some ways it's happy, as the robot gets to live with a human heart and there is an intimation that he ends up becoming part of a team of all robots. On the other hand, his career playing against human opponents is over, and so are the hopes of the shitty baseball team of dragging themselves into the big leagues. But again, as I say, I don't care.

Leaving that one out then, we still have over 70% of the episodes ending darkly, sadly or badly, in terms of their tone. For a family show, that's, as they say, pretty dark, man. And it will only get worse.

How many famous actors, or actors who went on to be famous, did we meet in season one?

MDOD: This is the first where we can say there are any real actors who had, or would go on to, achieve fame. We have Martin Landau, Doug McClure and Jeanne Cooper, so that makes 3, and all in one episode! Then Ida Lupino and Martin Balsam in TSMS, so that's 5, Ron Howard makes 6 when he appears as a kid in WD, Jean Marsh and Ted Knight in TL bring it to 8, Burgess Meredith in TEAL and Richard Conte in PTD rounds it out to 10. Patrick McNee in JN, Rod Taylor, Sue Randall and Jim Hutton in AWTSWO bring it to 14, Fritz Weaver and Denise Alexander in TFTS make 16, Jeff Morrow and Kevin Hagen in EL run the total to 18, and Vera Miles in MI and Claude Atkins in TMADOMS give us 20.

Howard Duff, Eileen Ryan and David Whyte in AWOD move it to 23, Kevin McCarthy in LLWJ makes 24, then Roddy McDowall, Vic Perrin, Susan Oliver and Paul Comi in PAAAO push it to 28, and Russel Johnson and John Lormer in EX take it to the round 30. Morgan Brittany and Joseph Perry in NAAC increase the total to 32, James Daly, Howard Irving Smith and Jason Wingreen in ASAW make it 35, while George Cooper Grizzard Jr and John Herrick McIntire in TC lift it to 38, and Jack Klugman and John Anderson in APFT make it 40. Orson Bean, Florence MacMichael, Charles Lane, Vito Soctti and William Schallert in MB bring the figure up to 45. Anne Francis in TAH and Jack Warden and Abraham Sofaer in TMC make it 48, Keenan Wynn in the final episode of season one, AWOHO, leaves us one shy of 50, at 49.

That is one impressive list! Look at the big names!

Klugman. McDowell. Howard. Lupino. Meredith. Landau. McClure. Serious stuff.

The final thing I want to do before I close is to check the
Bodycount.

That's right: how many people died overall in season one? I should say, how many people are shown as dying? And this can be stretched to people losing their minds, just for the heck of it. In later seasons when I'm doing the overview we'll be adding these and doing a cumulative bodycount, so we can see how many died over the entire series. Could be fun! For now, though...

WIE? -  0
OFTA - 1 (Bookman)
MDOD - 0
TSMS - 1 (Barbara - all right, technically she's not said to be dead, but she may as well be)
WD - 0
EC - 2 (Bdeker and his wife)
TL - 0 (Unless you count a) Alicia which you can't as she's a robot and therefore not alive or b) Corry's victim, which I'm inclined not to)
TEAL - 0 (I seriously can't count all of Earth's population, and while yes obviously his wife, his manager, that annoying customer etc all died, it seems a pointless exercise so we'll gloss over this one)
PTD - 1 (Edward Hall)
JN - ? Not sure how to approach this one. Obviously Lanser dies, but later, possibly after the war, and I have no idea how many crew and passengers the Queen of Glasgow was carrying, so it's hard to make a stab at it.
TOTAL SO FAR (with some caveats) = 5
On we go.
AWTSWO - 3 (Technically, as it turns out they are seen never to have existed, but we know they did, so let's include them)
WYN - 1 (Renard)
TFOOAD - 3 (We know of the musician Johnny Foster, the musician whose identity Hammer takes, Virgin Sterig, who again he robs the face of, and then Andy Marshall, though in reality that person never died, Hammer just took his appearance, so he himself is number three, and in actuality it's the three of us, not the four of us are dying)
TFTS - 0 (Again, the assumption is the whole planet, or most of it, will die, but we don't even know the population of the planet so must ignore those deaths).
ISAAITA - 7 (The ship had a crew of 8; 4 died on impact, Corey killed 3 more)
THH - 1 (Nan is already dead when the episode begins, though she doesn't know it)
TF - 1 (Franklin is the only one to die here in Vegas)
TLF - 1 (Decker goes back in time to give his life to save his friend)
TPT - 4 (Obviously it's far more than that, but given this is wartime and we know nothing of the size of Fitz's platoon, we can't get an accurate count so can only look at the ones we actually see die. That's the soldier in the bed in the hospital, Fitz's CO and Fitz and presumably his driver at the end)
TOTAL NOW STANDS AT 26
EL - 3 (All three crew are murdered by Wickwire)
MI - 0
TMADOMS - 1 (The only one we see actually die is Peter Van Horn, who is shot as he returns to Maple Street that evening)
AWOD - 0
LLWJ - 1 (Walter himself)
PAAAO - 1 (Marcusson dies on the ship)
EX - 3 (Caswell, the professor and the thief)
TBTW - 0
ANPTV - 1 (Valentine)
TOTAL IS NOW 36
And finally
NAAC - 2 (Helen's mother and Selden)
ASAW - 1 (Williams)
TC - 0
APFT - 0
MB - 0
TAH - 0
TMC - 0
AWOHO ? (Hard to say; if Victoria was a construct of Gregory's mind, could she die? He could just bring her back again, as he did Mary).
FINAL TOTAL = 39

So there are - leaving out world populations, ship's crews and marine battalions - more people killed in the first season of The Twilight Zone than there are episodes!

So ends our first foray into one of the most important and influential television programmes in history, and certainly in science fiction history. Five years on, a new and different phenomenon would take the world by storm, using and building on many of the themes expressed here, and looking to Serling's moralistic, teaching nature for guidance on how to handle their own show, which would itself become a template and marker for science fiction and drama. By the time Star Trek debuted The Twilight Zone would have finished its five-year run (five-year mission?) and Roddenberry, Shatner, Nimoy and Co. would take up the baton, taking television audience where no man had gone before, and in the process predicting much of the future.

Like Star Trek though, The Twilight Zone would not stay dead and has been revived three times, the most recent being last year, although it must be said I found personally the quality of the episodes to be far below par, even compared to later incarnations of the show. But that's all for later and we'll get there in due course.

Feel free to continue to engage me and each other in conversations about the show - there's certainly enough there to talk about - and I'll be back before you know it.

Literally, if I can get this darned time machine working!

See ya some other time!
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5a/Krustytheclown.png)

(https://c.tenor.com/z0xK794tF-kAAAAM/yelling-cloud.gif)
No, no!  You can't get rid of me that easily! I have more statistics to impart!

Here's a graph (look at it!!) (https://c.tenor.com/8JWIvddTsO4AAAAM/angry-fist-shake-fist.gif)

showing what I consider to be the progress of the show over the first season, in terms of quality. It's pretty simple: ratings are from 1 to 10 at the side and each episode is numbered at the bottom, the red line shows how good, or bad, each episode was and how the quality fluctuated, or remained solid, or even rose, over the course of the season.

Spoiler

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[close]

Wait! Wait! Don't go! I have more!
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And here is my how I rated the episodes, numbering them from 36 (worst) to 1 (best)



36. The Mighty Casey

35.  Mr. Bevis

34. A Passage for Trumpet

33. The Big Tall Wish

32. One for the Angels

31. The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine

30. Mr. Denton on Doomsday

29. The Fever

28. A World of His Own

27. The Chaser

26. A World of Difference

25. Nightmare as a Child

24. Walking Distance

23. The Last Flight

22. Execution

21. The Purple Testament

20. The Four of Us Are Dying

19. Perchance to Dream

18. Long Live Walter Jameson

17. Judgement Night

16. A Nice Place to Visit

15. Where is Everybody?

14. What You Need

13. Escape Clause

12. People Are Alike All Over

11. Elegy

10. The Lonely

9. Mirror Image

8. And When the Sky Was Opened

7. Third from the Sun

6. Time Enough at Last

5. A Stop at Willoughby

4. The Hitch-Hiker

3. I Shot an Arrow Into the Air

2. The After Hours

1. The Monsters are Due on Maple Street