The Twilight Zone

I would assume that everyone knows "The Twilight Zone"'s theme song, and recognizes Rod Serling's monotone explanations of how the given character has just crossed over into the Twilight Zone. I'm not sure which episode is my favorite. There's "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet", in which William Shatner sees a monster tearing at an airplane wing, and there's also "Time Enough at Last", where Burgess Meredith plays a bookworm who gets enough time to read as much as he wants...or does he? Or, it might be another episode. But no matter. "The Twilight Zone" never ceases to impress me. Even the 1983 movie was pretty interesting, not something that many movies based on TV shows accomplish. You should try to see the show.

In 1959, network TV was dominated by pretty-boy detective shows (77 Sunset Strip; Hawaiian Eye), law & order westerns (Gunsmoke; Have Gun, Will Travel), and innocuous sitcoms, (Ozzie & Harriet; Leave It to Beaver; The Donna Reed Show). If little else, most of these were entertaining in a blandly narcotizing way. TV producers may have wanted to experiment, but were hamstrung by a production code that was even more restrictive than the notorious motion picture code (crime must not be rewarded; moral transgressors must be punished; the sexes must not be shown in the same bed, etc.). Perhaps more important, producers were strait-jacketed by sponsors who insisted that programming should be as inclusive as possible so as not to risk offending or "confusing" any segment of the audience-- all the better, of course, to sell the sponsor's product, a not unreasonable requirement, given TV's commercial basis.

I mention this background, because it's hard to appreciate the cultural significance of Serling's Twilight Zone without it. For the above restrictions inevitably produced a product that was almost uniformly bland, superficial, and, by most accounts, boringly predictable-- (One near exception was the series from that sly old subversive, Alfred Hitchcock.) But pity the poor writers who week after week had to search for fresh water in the middle of this much traversed desert. Because of the conformist approach, two of the biggest casualties were, not unnaturally, Reality and Imagination. For rarely did any of these shows demonstrate even a nodding acquaintance with reality as most of us live it, while what imagination was shown was, of course, channeled into safe variations on the usual. I think many of us old enough and imaginative enough at the time, knew that network programming could be a lot better than what FCC Commissioner Newton Minnow characterized as TV's "vast cultural wasteland".

Obviously, it would be a great overstatement to view The Twilight Zone as a magic cure for this blighted situation. But, Serling did boldly and persistently set out to challenge the blandness, and in the process prepare the way for greater offbeat programming. Of course, TZ never claimed to introduce 'reality' into a weekly series-- that would come later with 1971's All in the Family. However, Serling did insist upon that other missing ingredient, 'imagination'-- and by the bucket loads. How well I remember that 1959 evening when I tuned in "Where Is Everybody?", the series' pilot and first installment-- Earl Holliman wandering through a mysteriously deserted town, running smack-dab into a mirror, and winding up in a plausibly topical outcome. I expect many others besides myself were bowled over by the novelty of what we had seen. A whole new world of what TV could be opened up, thanks to Serling, and his success in getting sponsors to take a chance on an innovative concept. Even more happily, was the promise of more to come.

Sure, few of the following episodes reached the riveting level of that first installment, at least in my book. But rarely did an entry completely disappoint. Then too, after the first couple of years, the quality dropped off as scripts began buckling under the weekly pressure by falling back on old material for new variations. However, such classics from the first year as "Walking Distance", "And When the Sky Opened", and "The Hitch-Hiker" are among the finest dramatizations of the supernatural ever to appear on TV, and hold up as well today as in that long ago black-and-white. Of course, Serling shouldn't get all the credit. As other reviewers point out, authors such as Charles Beaumont and the greatly under-rated Richard Matheson contributed much to the series' classic standing, as did the often overlooked producer Buck Houghton and director Douglas Heyes. Still and all, it was D-Day paratrooper Serling who exhausted himself in the struggle to deliver three key qualities always in short supply on public airways-- intelligence, innovation, and insight. And for that, those of us graybeards who still enjoy a re-run or two, will always be ready with a tip of the hat to the squinty-eyed gentleman with the cigarette and the powerful belief in the liberating role of imagination.

Rod Serling's distinctive approach gave "The Twilight Zone" a unique character that will always keep it among the best-remembered of all classic television shows. Not only that, but it set high goals for itself, and it took a lot of chances - and not chances in the phony, trivial sense in which a lot of more recent series "take chances" by resorting to unnecessarily provocative or indecent material that actually guarantees them attention and acclaim.

"The Twilight Zone" took chances by experimenting with many different kinds of stories and material, and by aiming to provide high-quality entertainment while simultaneously giving you something to think about. As a result, there were a few episodes that didn't quite click, and that seem odd or even dull. But when it worked - as it did a great deal of the time - no television show then or now was more imaginative.

In a short review, it would be impossible to list all of the memorable episodes, or even to cover the full range of the kinds of material that it used. There were chilling episodes like "To Serve Man", which is often remembered by those who saw it decades ago, and there were thought-provoking episodes like "In the Eye of the Beholder", which was also imaginatively filmed.

Many episodes relied primarily on a well-written and well-conceived story, while others, like "The Invaders", relied heavily on excellent acting performances (in that case, by Agnes Moorehead). There were occasional light-hearted episodes like "Once Upon a Time", which was also a nice showcase for the great Buster Keaton.

It's too bad that these anthology-style series went out of fashion, because a number of them were of high quality. This one, in particular, stands well above its subsequent imitators. The best science fiction, like the best of any genre or art form, appeals to the imagination, not to the senses, and imagination is what "The Twilight Zone" was all about.

Just recently, I finished a kick of re-watching all 156 episodes of the original Twilight Zone series. If I were to average out all my individual episode rankings, that number would probably fall between 7-8 stars. Yet, when looked at as a whole rather than the sum of its parts, The Twilight Zone is 10/10 all the way.

When TZ is hitting on all cylinders, it is easily one of the greatest anthology pieces ever produced. The lion's share of the credit here goes to show creator and writer Rod Serling, who is truly one of the most inspired individuals to ever put pen to paper in screenplay format. The deeper themes about society or humanity are just as relevant now (if not sometimes more so!) than they were upon original airing.

It absolutely astounds me that this show premiered in 1959. That was ten years before the moon landing! I can't imagine what my grandparents would have thought about a show like this, dealing with space travels, aliens, and all manner of oddities hardly a decade removed from the Second World War and firmly in the Cold War.

Like I said, the best TZ episodes are treasures that will be enjoyed and studied for decades to come. Does the show have its share of clunkers? Of course. But only a true handful of episodes are truly bad. The others largely depend on personal sci-fi tastes or the time-period in which they are viewed.

About the only reason I would even consider dropping this from a perfect ranking is the fourth season of the show, which produced hour-long episodes. Those efforts aren't bad, per se, but are simply padded with dialogue to fill time rather than written for a longer runtime, for the most part.

When taking the long view, however, The Twilight Zone firmly resides in my top-five television programs of all-time. Despite premiering well before it could fully be appreciated, having to deal with the inane TV standards and practices of the era, and being constantly underfunded, Serling managed to keep everything afloat and write some of the best multi-genre material ever seen on the small screen. Whether comedy, mystery, horror, sci-fi, human drama, or any other genre is your game, you'll likely find something to enjoy in the breadth of The Twilight Zone.

"The Twilight Zone" brought a complexity and maturity to television that had never existed before and probably hasn't been seen since. The stories were always ironic, briliant, and fascinating, and they often came with a moral lesson. Episodes like "A Kind of a Stopwatch", with Richard Erdmann, "Time Enough At Last", with Burgess Meredith, "Nightmare at 20,00 Feet", with William Shatner, and "Where is Everybody," with Earl Holliman, dove into concepts and situations no other show would have even touched. The entertainment brought on by "The Twilight Zone" was as vast as the Zone itself. Its principal writers, Sterling, Beaumont, and Matheson, were the best of their era. For sheer television entertainment, nothing compares to the brilliant, heavyweight stories of "The Twilight Zone." TO be frank, "The Twilight Zone" was the first show that didn't insult the viewer's intelligence.