50 Years of the Twilight Zone 104
pickens writes "Fifty years ago on October 2, American television viewers first heard the words: 'You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into... the Twilight Zone.' Like the time-space warps that anchored so many of the show's plots, Rod Serling's veiled commentary remains as soul-baring today as it did a half-century ago, and the show's popularity endures in multiple facets of American pop culture, appearing nearly uninterrupted through television, syndication and DVD releases and under license to air in 30 countries. 'The whole idea of "The Twilight Zone" jumped off the television screen and became a catchphrase, a buzzword for something much beyond the TV show itself,' says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. 'When you say Twilight Zone, it's its own genre.' The original show ran just five seasons, 1959 to 1964, with 156 episodes filmed; Serling wrote 92 of them, and other contributors included Richard Matheson and Ray Bradbury. Anniversary observances were held at Ithaca College in New York, where Serling taught from 1967 until his death in 1975, and which keeps Serling's archives; and also at Antioch College in Ohio, where Serling was a student."
Great Writer (Score:2, Interesting)
Makes you wonder in 50 more years or 100 years if some future race of humans dig us up and find all these works what they will think.
We had space travel, wars with other worlds, technology that rivaled anything future man will invent.
Keep that mindset and the Sandskrit writings of India, the Greek tales of Atlantis, and pretty much all of the stuff we think may have been real; ancient Egypt all becomes flight of fantasy. Or does it.
Man's imagination is vast and uncharted.
Scary Stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
I still get the hee-bee-jeebies about ventriloquist dummies after I watched The Dummy when I was like four or five years old. It's actually pretty amazing, which cheesy late 1950s early 1960s special effects that a lot of the stories are incredibly powerful. Serling and the writers he got make scripts were some of the best the business ever had.
Twilight Zone isn't SciFi enough. (Score:2, Interesting)
Both shows can be a little preachy, but the Twilight Zone can get a little overboard. But then again, Rod Serling intended that when he created the show. Speaking of Rod Serling, a great show about him and his creations at PBS [pbs.org]
Favorite Twilight Episodes (Score:2, Interesting)
Some of my favorites: ...and many more, but those are the two on my mind.
1. The Pitch - to distract Death from taking a little girl.
2. Santa's sack - the bum giving presents to all.
50yrs! Wow.... I feel old :)
Re:Scary Stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
Believe it or not, the majority of Twilight Zone episodes merely adapted episodes of the radio series Dimension-X (and X Minus One, itself both continuing and drawing heavily on Dimension-X material) to TV.
But aside from that detail, yeah, I'll agree, some of the best.
Re:Twilight Zone isn't SciFi enough. (Score:5, Interesting)
So what you're saying is you have a hard time with any kind of fiction that's not science fiction?
The Twilight Zone was never pitched as a science fiction show. In his intros during the opening credits, Serling specifically says things like, "It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge."
The point was not to tell you a cool story with aliens and space ships in it, or to speculate on what the future would be like (though some episodes had these elements). The point was to present teleplays that used elements of the fantastic as shortcuts that allowed the show to present universal moral dilemmas and commentary on the human condition within its half-hour format. If you can't deal with that because it doesn't include aliens, then I suspect you've been missing out on a vast world of literature and ideas.
So often I read Slashdot and I see all these smart people, and then every kind of discussion of any fiction or entertainment is always science fiction. And then there's always one of those "Star Trek vs. Star Wars" nerd who will jump in and scream, "That's not really science fiction, it's fantasy! IT'S FANTASY!!!!" Y'know... who cares? Good stories are good stories.
Re:Favorite Twilight Episodes (Score:3, Interesting)
"The Arrival", a DC-3 lands at an airport with no crews, passengers, or luggage-- and despite being a normally-scheduled flight, no family members of the passengers inquire about the status of the flight. An FAA investigator, assisted by the airline's PR guy and ground crew, tries to figure out what happened.
About 20 minutes in there's a scene that's just amazingly mind-blowing. (The last 10 minutes or so, unfortunately, are kind of wasted. But alas.)
Re:WOW! I *am* old!!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Shanter showed up in two episodes - the airplane one and one where his character and his newlywed wife discover a fortune telling machine in a small town.
Nimoy also showed up in an episode dealing with WWII and seeing things through the eyes of both American and Japanese troops.
I finally got a Tivo awhile back and Twilight Zone is one of the first shows I had it start recording. It's amazing the actors that have appeared on that show.
Re:Charles Beaumont wowed by big budget (Score:3, Interesting)
You probably have to see more episodes. Yeah - some ended along the lines of "wow - what was that - guess we'll never know." But a lot of them had pretty solid endings. A few that come to mind...
A passenger bus stops off at a small roadway diner with a problem - somehow they ended up with one more than the passenger manifest claims should be there. The mystery is solved after the bus leaves and all are presumed drowned when the bus crosses an unstable bridge. All, except for one gentleman who returns to the diner to smugly announce that not only is he the extra passenger, but he's from mars and colonization will begin soon. Only he finds out that the lonely Sodajerk is really from Venus and his people intercepted the Martian ship on their way to colonize earth.
A local policeman visits a high-strung independence-minded City girl trying to get away from it all. Odd things happen and eventually, it appears that a massive alien has landed and threatens them. But it turns out it's all a ruse - the monster alien is a decoy. The tiny aliens flee, realizing their attempts to conquer through terror have failed.
A wife accompanys her husband on a flight home after spending time at a hospital recovering from a nervous breakdown. Things are looking bright until the man sees a ape-like gremlin on the wing. He is alone in witnessing the creature slowly take interest in tearing the wing apart. Unable to get any help, he decides to take matters in his own hands, belts himself in, pops an escape hatch, and fires at the creature as the cabin decompression almost sucks him out of the aircraft. The aircraft makes an emergency landing and the audience is left wondering if this man was really unstable... until the camera pans over to some airport mechanics discovering a portion of the wing torn up in an unexplainable manner.
It's not resolution that you're missing. It's the fact that the Twilight Zone was a mix of scifi, horror, and fantasy when you're expecting nothing but scifi.
My Favorite (and Only) Rod Serling Story (Score:5, Interesting)
It goes like this... a buddy of mine was going to Cornell at the time, which as you may know is a stone's throw from Ithaca College... It was a dark and stormy night... quite literally... my friend is driving back to campus and sees this one lone guy, trenchcoat, hat pulled down, making his way through the pouring rain... small college town, he does what any decent person would do, he pulls over to see if he can give the guy a lift... by now you know that guy is Rod Serling... my buddy pulls the window down, and Serling smiles and says something like, "You've just crossed over!"
Apparently, Rod Serling used to do "the hitchhiker bit" ALL THE TIME around Cornell -- he got a big kick out of the expressions on the good samaritan's faces when they realized who they had just picked up...
Re:Scary Stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
My mother met Rod Serling at a writer's conference (she wrote Disney comic books and a few of the old Crusader Rabbit scripts. Fast company!)
She said Serling was very short and extremely charismatic.
Come to think of it, my little sister is a bit under-height for our family...
Re:Charles Beaumont wowed by big budget (Score:2, Interesting)
My recollection is that none of the stories ever resolved. That always seemed sloppy and lazy to me. The basic Twilight Zone plot always seemed to be: a) Creepy, weird, moderately intriguing things start to happen for no reason. b) Things continue to happen. c) Finally, things stop happening, for no reason. I always felt cheated. Couldn't the writer at least have taken the time to, say, have someone throw a bucket of water on whatever creepy entity was doing the weird things, and have the entity scream "No! No! I can't stand water! I'm melllltttting! I'm melllllttting!" Or end with the main character waking up and finding out that It Was All A Dream? :-) Well, maybe a little bit more clever than that; but it's those little touches of verisimilitude that distinguish SF from fantasy and help suspend disbelief. I always felt that The Twilight Zone was unequivocally fantasy, not science fiction.
Actually, I've been showing season one of the Twilight Zone to my students for a while (as an alternative to reading more short stories, and as a treat), and I can't say that I agree with your impression. My favourite one ("Time Enough at Last") has the dramatic unities of time, space, and character and resolves, tragically. My second favourite ("The After Hours") resolves when the main character finds out and accepts who she is. "What You Need" resolves when a conflict between characters ends (I won't say how and spoil it). "The Monsters on Maple Street" ends when the reason for all the activity is revealed. "The Obsolete Man" ends satisfyingly. I could go on.
There's no arguing over taste, and you're welcome to dislike it, but I've turned modern teenagers who hate black-and-white shows into fans who beg for yet another episode. There is an integrity in the writing and acting on The Twilight Zone that still captures.
By the way, does anyone remember Rod Serling's "Night Gallery" with fondness?
-Gareth
Twilight zone radio (Score:5, Interesting)