The Couch Potato Presents: Trollheart Falls Into "The Twilight Zone"

[Trollheart]

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...?

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.

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.

[Trollheart]

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...?

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.

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.

[Trollheart]

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...?

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.

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.

Florence MacMichael (1919 - 1999)
Best known for her TV appearances on the show Mister Ed.

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.

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?

[Trollheart]

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...?

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.

[Trollheart]

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...?

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.

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.

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.

[Trollheart]

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...?

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.

[Trollheart]

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.

[Trollheart]

Go no further, if ye be not of great nerdly quality! Turn back, young errant knight, if statistics, charts and graphs be not thy thing, if numbers bore ye or waffling to the nth degree doth send thee into a coma.

Thou hast been warned. If thou art of stout heart and firm brain, proceed at thine own risk. If thou dost take no heed of these warnings, and doth possess not the stomach for such arcane knowledge, then

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.

[Trollheart]

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.

[Trollheart]

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.

[Trollheart]

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.

[Trollheart]

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!

[Trollheart]

No, no!  You can't get rid of me that easily! I have more statistics to impart!

Here's a graph (look at it!!)

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

[close]

[Trollheart]

Wait! Wait! Don't go! I have more!


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