Season 1
- anthology series, host:
Rod Serling
-
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 1]
Where is Everybody?
Shown 02 Oct 59
A man walks into a town.
However, the man has amnesia and the town is devoid of people.
He runs around, confused, looking for any other humans.
The town's lights work, but the phone lines are cut off.
The USAF are experimenting for a manned lunar expedition.
For some perspective,
this is a decade before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin
walked on the moon for real.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 2]
One for the Angels
Shown 09 Oct 59
An elderly man named Lewis J. Bookman,
a sixty-nine year-old travelling salesman,
is visited by an avatar of Death.
Rather than agree to be reaped,
Bookman tries to talk his way out of it.
As a substitute for Bookman,
Death intends to reap the soul of
a pre-teen girl who was hit by a car.
Bookman decides to delay the Reaper,
using his skills at sales pitching.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 3]
Mr. Denton on Doomsday
Shown 16 Oct 59
Al Denton is a washed-up former gunslinger in the Wild West.
Black-hatted bullies like Dan (Martin Landau -
Space: 1999
) humiliate him.
A mysterious stranger (Dan Duryea -
) drops a magical revolver, and Denton picks it up.
His gunslinger skills return,
and he reluctantly becomes top gun again.
The good news is that his self-confidence returns.
The bad news is that he gave up gunslinging for a good reason.
Now he is targeted by rivals like Pete Grant (Doug McClure -
Warlords of Atlantis
) who want the status that comes with killing a top gunslinger.
The catalyst for this story is the stranger,
a peddler who calls himself Henry J Fate.
This plot device is key to several other stories,
and could have been the basis for the series
so it would have a steady plot thread linking every episode.
This would be the antithesis of the
Friday the Thirteenth
TV show, where the objects were cursed
and the heroes had to recover them.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 4]
The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine
Shown 23 Oct 59
Barbara Jean Trenton (
Ida Lupino
) is a faded film star who lives in the past
by constantly re-watching her old movies
instead of moving on with her life,
so this is a take on the classic movie
Sunset Boulevard (1950).
Her associate (Martin Balsam -
) tries to lure her out of her self-imposed isolation.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 5]
Walking Distance
Shown 30 Oct 59
A man in his mid-thirties returns to his hometown,
a place where he lived his happiest days
a quarter of a century earlier.
But now, as an adult, he finds himself back in the past -
observing and participating in the events of his own childhood.
This episode has the same moral as the previous one -
that it is wrong to get caught up in the past.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 6]
Escape Clause
Shown 06 Nov 59
A hypochondriac man sells his soul to the Devil
in exchange for immortality.
The man becomes impervious to damage and pain,
so his body will not even perceptibly age.
However, he wants to test himself
by surviving execution in the electric chair.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 7]
The Lonely
Shown 13 Nov 59
James A. Corry (Jack Warden -
) has been convicted of murder,
and exiled to a life sentence on an asteroid
that is as lifeless and inhospitable
as Death Valley, California.
The supply ship only arrives once every three months,
and is a four-week round-trip for the crew.
Even then, they can only stay for fifteen minutes each time.
Captain Allenby (John Dehner -
) takes pity on Corry and smuggles him some contraband.
It is a fembot named Alicia (
Jean Marsh
). But Corry bonds with her, and does not want to leave her.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 8]
Time Enough at Last
Shown 20 Nov 59
Henry Bemis (Burgess Meredith -
Santa Claus: The Movie
), a man with coke-bottle glasses, is a bank teller.
He is also a reader, but nobody will let him follow his hobby.
His boss tells him off for reading books at work.
His wife prefers the so-called Art of Conversation,
and makes him spend time talking with her friends.
She even defaces his book of poetry.
Yes, the anti-intellectualism epitomised by
Fahrenheit 451
was once mainstream.
Bemis spends his lunchtimes reading books in the bank vault.
This is lucky, because an H-bomb destroys the entire city.
Well, it kills the people
but leaves some of the buildings intact.
This includes the city library,
so Bemis is now free to enjoy his favourite vice.
Of course, this has a famously bitter twist in the end.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 9]
Perchance to Dream
Shown 27 Nov 59
A man goes to a doctor.
No, he is not the great clown Pagliachi.
Instead, he tells the doctor about his nightmares.
First he became paranoid that he would be attacked
by someone hiding in the back seat of his car.
Yes, this trope long pre-dates
Assault on Precinct 13
. Later, the nightmares became about a funfair.
The patient met Maya the cat-girl (
Suzanne Lloyd
), a femme fatale who seemed intent on giving the patient a heart attack.
With his pre-existing medical condition,
if he dies in a dream he will die in reality.
The twist seems inspired by the old
Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge story by Ambrose Bierce.
It is a bit of a non-sequitor,
but this show was all about the shock value
rather than making a good consistent story.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 10]
Judgment Night
Shown 04 Dec 59
This is set aboard the SS Queen of Glasgow,
a 5,000-ton ship of indeterminate age.
She has gotten lost from her convoy,
and is now trapped in a fog so thick
it has reduced visibility to three feet.
A ship's officer (Patrick Macnee -
View To A Kill
) enforces the blackout.
one of the passengers, Carl Lanser,
seems to be having some kind of nervous breakdown.
He cannot remember how he got aboard the ship,
although he has a strange form of deja vu about other things.
It seems inevitable that the ship will be sunk by the Germans.
The German U-Boat crew debate the morality of sinking a ship
which has civilian passengers aboard.
James Franciscus (
Beneath the Planet of the Apes
) thinks that perhaps the Germans will be damned for their actions.
Of course, this show also has episodes
about US Army Air Force personnel ...
but they never have qualms about
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 11]
And When the Sky Was Opened
Shown 11 Dec 59
An experimental USAF rocket-plane, the X-20,
crash-landed after a 31-hour flight 900 miles into space.
While on the trip it somehow
disappeared from the radar screen for 24 hours.
Colonel Clegg Forbes (Rod Taylor -
The Birds
) visits his colleague in the base hospital.
Clegg is the only one who remembers that
there was a third man aboard the space-plane.
Nobody even remembers Colonel Harrington, Clegg's best friend.
Even the physical evidence indicates
that Harrington never existed.
We get a flashback to Forbes and Harrington
hanging out after getting the all-clear.
At the time, Harrington began to feel something was wrong.
Perhaps they were never meant to return from the flight.
Remember, this is a decade before man walked on the moon
so the idea of travelling into outer space
was something some Xian people felt was almost blasphemous.
Taylor is best known for heroic male roles.
It is impressive to see him play someone
who is falling apart mentally.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 12]
What You Need
Shown 25 Dec 59
A kindly old man has the power of short-term precognition,
and uses it to sell people items that they will need
in the near future.
A thug named Reynard tries to force the old man
to supply him with the means to get rich quick.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 13]
The Four of Us Are Dying
Shown 01 Jan 60
The protagonist has a superpower - he can change his face at will.
Rather than be a superhero, he becomes a con-man.
In all fairness, he targets criminals -
after all, they can hardly call the police.
The irony is that even when he tries to turn into a civilian rando,
his bad luck drags him into something he has no guilt for.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 14]
Third From the Sun
Shown 08 Jan 60
A couple of Government employees are scared at the impending threat of nuclear war.
Luckily, they work for the military-industrial complex
so they have access to next-generation technology.
They steal a flying saucer, and set off to colonise outer space -
a bit like an unofficial Space Family Robinson from
Lost In Space
.
Their mistake is in assuming the grass is greener elsewhere.
After all, they intend to visit a planet
where the people are very similar to themselves,
even down to the language they speak.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 15]
I Shot an Arrow Into the Air
Shown 15 Jan 60
A space-plane takes off with an eight-man crew.
Their ground control loses track of them on radar.
The vessel crashes into a barren asteroid with an Earth-type atmosphere.
Half the crew are killed on impact, and another dies of his injuries.
The commander tries to keep control,
although one of the survivors is a mutinous thug.
Luckily, the spaceship equipment includes a Sten gun.
Presumably an outdated British gun looked futuristic
compared to a more standard-looking American weapon.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 16]
The Hitch-Hiker
Shown 22 Jan 60
A female motorist, Nan Adams (
Inger Stevens
) is driving across what looks like the southern California desert.
Every time she stops she sees a strange-looking hitch-hiker,
trying to thumb a lift.
However, it seems that nobody else can see him.
Rather than have heavy narration by Rod Serling,
this episode relies on the main character's voiceover
depicting her internal thoughts.
It turns out that the story was based on a radio play.
The protagonist encounters a series of men
who are of varying levels of helpfulness to her.
They all treat her decently under the circumstances,
but they do not give special exception to her for being a woman.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 17]
The Fever
Shown 29 Jan 60
A lady has won a three-day vacation in Las Vegas, Nevada.
She has to bring her husband,
who is a puritanical killjoy.
Ironically, he is the one to hear the one-armed bandit's siren song
as it tries to seduce him into a gambling addiction.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 18]
The Last Flight
Shown 05 Feb 60
A British pilot from the Royal Flying Corps in 1917
lands his First World War plane
at a Cold War USAF base in 1959.
The base is about to be visited by an Air Vice Marshal
from the Royal Air Force.
It turns out that the time-travelling pilot
was friends with the Marshal,
and has to go back in time to save him
so the time-stream will not be disrupted.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 19]
The Purple Testament
Shown 12 Feb 60
A US Army Officer in the Philipines, 1944,
discovers he has a superpower - or curse.
When he looks in a man's face,
he can tell if that man will die soon.
This is bad enough, until he looks in the mirror.
This is set in one location, the US Army camp.
While it takes place in the middle of a war,
all the violence and deaths occur off-screen.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 20]
Elegy
Shown 19 Feb 60
Three astronauts land on an asteroid.
Somehow the atmosphere and gravity are identical to Earth.
There are people all over the place,
but they are strangely frozen in place.
The astronauts have no way of taking off,
so they are stuck on the asteroid.
However, it is only three hundred million miles from Earth
so it is somewhere in the solar system.
They should be able to call home and get a rescue mission sent.
However, they meet the place's caretaker
who offers them a drink of happy juice.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 21]
Mirror Image
Shown 26 Feb 60
Millicent Barnes (
Vera Miles
) is waiting at a bus station,
where she starts to see her doppelganger.
Is the location a weak spot in the multiverse,
where she is crossing over with a parallel version of herself?
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 22]
The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street
Shown 04 Mar 60
A meteorite lands near smalltown USA.
The locals think they are being invaded by aliens,
and a child's Science Fiction story makes them suspect
that the aliens have disguised themselves as humans.
This leads to Cold War style paranoia.
The setup is clearly inspired by
The Day the Earth Stood Still
. However, the twist in the end is reminiscent of
The Screwfly Solution.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 23]
A World of Difference
Shown 11 Mar 60
Arthur Curtis (Howard Duff -
Spaceways (1953)
) is a successful businessman.
Then he discovers he is a character in a TV show,
and has to live as the actor who plays him.
Can he get back to his original reality?
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 24]
Long Live Walter Jameson
Shown 18 Mar 60
Professor Walter Jameson (Kevin McCarthy -
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
) is an expert on US history,
and talks about the US Civil War as if he had been there.
Unbeknownst to his students, he actually was there.
He is an immortal who has outlived several wives,
and seeks to marry a new one.
This is hardly fair on the bride-to-be,
especially since his previous wife is not even dead yet.
The supposedly first-hand account of the burning of Atlanta
is part of the Lost Cause myth,
a Confederate apologist movement.
Jameson blames Sherman for burning Atlanta on 11th September 1864,
while that fire was actually lit by the retreating Confederates
as part of their scorched earth policy.
Sherman's fire was lit months later in November of that year.
This is not made clear in the episode,
although it fits in with Jameson's duplicitous and self-serving nature.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 25]
People Are Alike All Over
Shown 25 Mar 60
Sam Conrad (Roddy McDowell -
Planet of the Apes
) is the first man on Mars.
He is a reluctant astronaut,
being a scientist instead of an explorer.
Since his mind is the reason he is being sent there,
he suggests that NASA might just send his mind
and leave his body on Earth.
In reality, after the Apollo missions ended in the 1970s
NASA switched to unmanned probes for exploration missions.
Sam meets the Martians.
They use telepathy so they can communicate with him in English,
and their most attractive ambassador is
Susan Oliver
. If this sounds familiar,
that is because this also happened in the pilot episode of
Star Trek: The Original Series
. While the twist ending is not a vicious as in To Serve Man,
it certainly has a sting in the tail.
Sam is forced to accept that People Are Alike All Over.
One of the other guest-stars is Vic Perrin,
perhaps best-known as the voice
in the introduction to rival SciFi anthology series
The Outer Limits (1963)
.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 26]
Execution
Shown 01 Apr 60
In the wild west, a convicted killer named Clayton (Albert Salmi -
) is executed by hanging.
His body disappears from the noose,
pulled into 1960s New York by a scientist.
Only too late does the scientist realise that he
abducted a nineteenth century primitive
and placed him in a twentieth-century urban jungle.
While the killer is certainly dangerous,
he is painfully unequipped for a 1960s city.
After all, he is unfamiliar with telephones and horseless carriages.
As the old man says in
Shawshank Redemption
, the world done got itself in an awful hurry.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 27]
The Big Tall Wish
Shown 08 Apr 60
Aging boxer Bolie Jackson fights his last big match.
His neighbour, a six-year-old boy,
casts him a magical wish that he will win.
And when things get bad, it seems the wish comes true.
Unfortunately, the wish only works if you believe in it ...
and Bolie is too old to believe in magic.
This means the story is a bit like the
Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge story by Ambrose Bierce.
However, what is nice about it is the majority-black cast -
a new thing in the year it was shot.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 28]
A Nice Place to Visit
Shown 15 Apr 60
Rocky Valentine, a professional burglar,
is shot in the back by the Police while he is running away.
He wakes up to discover a stranger standing over him.
This stranger is Pip, his guide to the afterlife,
who gives him access to infinite luxury.
Rocky gets Pip to show him the records,
so he can work out how he earned his way into
The Good Place
. After all, Rocky was a scared,
angry little man who never got a break.
Rocky's record lists bad deeds rather than good ones.
He killed a mad dog in self-defence,
and referred to his childhood friend-group as a street-gang.
There is also lots of petty larceny,
but nothing actually that bad.
Eventually, Rocky gets tired of the easy life.
It is like playing a video game in God Mode,
or watching a movie where the stakes are non-existent.
This leads up to the big twist,
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 29]
Nightmare as a Child
Shown 29 Apr 60
A lady schoolteacher, Helen Foley (
Janice Rule
), returns home to find a young girl waiting outside her apartment.
Helen invites the girl inside,
and is subjected to a strange line of questioning
about recognising someone from her own childhood.
Helen is also visited by a man who she recognises ...
from her own childhood.
This man was a friend of her mother -
the same mother who was murdered,
and the killer was never found.
This episode has a scientific explanation,
using psychology rather than fantasy or science fiction.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 30]
A Stop at Willoughby
Shown 06 May 60
A middle-class man is sick of his job.
His protege is a backstabber and his boss is a bully.
Worse, his wife is a selfist shrew.
This seems like a contender
for the list of Cubicle movies of 1999.
On his commute to and from work in New York City,
he falls asleep on the train and wakes up in 1888.
The oldy-timey train stops at a place called Willoughby,
but the man does not get off in time.
He always wakes up ...
and there is no stop at Willoughby in the modern day.
As in
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 26]
Execution
, the 1880s is presented as a far better time than the 1960s.
Less noise, less hustle-bustle -
like a comparison between the big city
and a small peaceful town.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 31]
The Chaser
Shown 13 May 60
A young man wants a beautiful woman,
but she thinks she can do better than him.
He goes to an alchemist, and buys a love potion.
It only costs a dollar,
but the cure will be far more expensive.
Be careful what you wish for.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 32]
A Passage for Trumpet
Shown 20 May 60
A trumpet-player (Jack Klugman - Quincy
) cannot get hired because he is a recovering alcoholic.
Then he gets hit by a car,
and has to reexamine his life.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 33]
Mr. Bevis
Shown 03 Jun 60
Mr Bevis is a nerdy man who suffers the worst day of his life.
He gets fired from his job,
and evicted from his rented apartment.
Luckily, Bevis has a guardian angel who gives him a do-over day.
Bevis learns what it would take to be successful.
The price is that he must give up his uniqueness.
His hobbies must be sacrificed.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 34]
The After Hours
Shown 10 Jun 60
A lady shopper (
Ann Francis
) visits a department store,
and has odd interactions with the staff.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 35]
The Mighty Casey
Shown 17 Jun 60
The story is set a couple of decades earlier,
in the time before rotory telephones existed.
A failing baseball team gets a new member,
a humanoid robot.
His talent for bowling makes the team champions.
When the bowler gets hit on the head,
the team medic insists on giving him a checkup.
The robot's designer confesses the truth,
so the medic has to report this to the referee.
The robot is banned from playing again ...
until the designer installs a heart.
Yes, possession of a physical pump is apparently
the only definition of a human!
Even worse, when the pump is installed
the robot's personality is somehow changed.
Yes, he has developed empathy.
Not for his manager or team-mates,
but for the opposing team!
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 36]
A World of His Own
Shown 01 Jul 60
Gregory West (Keenan Wynn) is America's top playwright.
Mary (
Mary La Roche
) looks after him in their suburban home.
Unfortunately his wife Victoria (
Phyllis Kirk
) comes hope early and sees them together.
Gregory's excuse is that Mary is a fictional character come to life.
Is he insane, or is he trying to drive his wife insane?
Rod Serling actually interacts with
some of the characters he narrates about.
Season 2
- anthology series, host:
Rod Serling
-
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 1]
King Nine Will Not Return
Shown 30 Sep 60
A pilot wakes up in the desert beside a crashed bomber.
As his memory slowly returns,
he works out that he was the pilot.
But where is the rest of the crew?
This was based on the real-life story of a USAAF bomber
that was discovered crashed in the Libyan desert
almost twenty years after it went missing.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 2]
The Man in the Bottle
Shown 07 Oct 60
The proprietor of an antiques store
buys what turns out to be a genie's bottle.
The genie gives him four wishes,
although the first one is wasted on a test.
Of course, the genie gives the most twisted version
of what is requested.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 3]
Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room
Shown 14 Oct 60
Jackie is a low-level career criminal in debt to a loan shark.
The shark has a plan - to kill a debtor and encourage the others.
He reasons that Jackie is the perfect killer
because he is the last person anyone would expect to do wetwork.
Jackie gets confronted by his reflection in the mirror,
who tries to convince him to change his criminal ways
before it is too late.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 4]
A Thing About Machines
Shown 28 Oct 60
Mr Bartlett Finchley,
a pompous arrogant snob, thinks that machines hate him.
The repairman suggests that if this is the case
it must be because Finchley treats the machines badly.
Finchley insults his human hirelings until they all quit.
Unfortunately, once he is all alone with the machines
there is nothing to stop them from attacking him.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 5]
The Howling Man
Shown 04 Nov 60
David Ellington relates the story
of the one time he went hiking in Europe.
He got lost in a storm,
and wound up seeking sanctuary in a remote monastery.
The head monk, Brother Jerome (John Carradine -
Bluebeard (1944)
), wanted to keep Ellington out of the building.
However, it would be unchristian to abandon him in the storm.
Ellington discovered that the monks had a secret.
In a basement cell they had imprisoned a man,
who seems to be the one howling at the moon.
The prisoner claimed to be innocent,
but Brother Jerome insisted the man was the Devil himself.
Yes, not A devil, but THE Devil!
The ending ties up the bookend story.
Ellington is not just narrating the flashback to the TV audience,
it is actually part of the main story itself ...
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 6]
The Eye of the Beholder
Shown 11 Nov 60
A woman is in hospital,
her face bandaged due to plastic surgery she recieved
to correct an apparently horrific facial condition.
She was born with this condition,
and will do anything to be normal.
It turns out that this is a dystopian society,
where the Great Dictator demands conformity from all citizens.
What is unusual about this episode is that,
with the exception of the presenter Rod Serling,
all the characters' faces are obscured somehow
until the final climactic reveal.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 7]
Nick of Time
Shown 18 Nov 60
This was written by
Richard Matheson
, which makes it one of the better episodes.
It features Don Cooper (William Shatner -
Star Trek: The Original Series
) and his new wife,
who are driving across the USA for their honeymoon.
They stop at a small town diner,
and feed some coins into a vending machine
that purports to forecast the future.
The answers seem generic enough,
but Don interprets them as being accurate.
The new bride is quite resentful towards the machine.
She seems jealous of it, without worrying about what it is saying.
It seems to be able to warn them of something bad about to happen,
but she wants to ignore these warnings on general principle
and embrace unpredictability.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 8]
The Lateness of the Hour
Shown 02 Dec 60
Jana lives with her middle-aged parents.
They have an army of servants,
which are a bunch of human-looking robots.
Of course, Jana feels stifled by this excessive level of comfort.
She yearns to upset the system and to break free.
Of course, there is one thing she did not consider.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 9]
The Trouble with Templeton
Shown 09 Dec 60
Boothe Templeton, star of over thirty Broadway plays,
is a middle-aged man whose current wife is cheating on him.
He does not care, since he misses his first wife.
He finds himself transported back to 1927,
when he was still happily married to the first wife.
However, it is not the way he remembered it.
Rose-tinted spectacles and all that.
Or perhaps it is he who has changed.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 10]
A Most Unusual Camera
Shown 16 Dec 60
A gang of thieves have burglarised an antiques store.
The most valuable item in the haul is a wooden polaroid camera.
It takes pictures of things five minutes before they happen.
The crooks could use the camera to do something good for humanity.
Instead they decide to cheat at gambling on horse-races.
Since one of them is on the run after escaping jail,
drawing attention to themselves is not a good idea.
However, they appear to have no survival instincts.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 11]
The Night of the Meek
Shown 23 Dec 60
An alcoholic (Art Carney) earns some spare cash at Xmas
as a department-store Santa Claus.
Unfortunately this clashes with his alcoholism.
After all, the job is best-suited to someone with a beer gut,
a red nose and bushy beard - all signs of alcoholism.
The job itself is seasonal and low-paying,
so only the desperate will agree to it.
And the worst thing is ...
the man who plays Santa knows that there is no real Santa.
On his way home after being fired,
the alcoholic discovers a magical sack
that contains whatever gifts a person desires.
Unfortunately it does not contain a receipt,
so he cannot easily prove to the police
that the items are not stolen.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 12]
Dust
Shown 06 Jan 61
This is set in a wild west town,
where a Mexican man is in a jail cell awaiting execution.
He had been drunk-driving his wagon,
and accidentally killed a little girl who walked into the road.
Somehow the jury sentenced the drunk-driver to death.
The only one in town who thinks this is excessive is the Sheriff,
who is in charge of the execution process.
The town's racist decides to con the convict's father,
by selling him what he claims is
a magic dust that turns hate into love.
The result is a story that is heart-rending.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 13]
Back There
Shown 13 Jan 61
A rich man hangs out with his friends in 1961,
talking about the theory of time-travel.
He believes it is impossible to change history.
Ironically, he somehow ends up in the 1860s ...
just in time for him to save Abraham Lincoln.
It seems that certain historical events
are fixed moments in time.
After all, they happened because of major forces at play.
However, smaller things may actually be changed.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 14]
The Whole Truth
Shown 20 Jan 61
A sleazy second-hand car salesman cheats an old man
out of a valuable antique car.
The victim warns him that the car is haunted,
and has been since it rolled off the production line - like
Christine
. It does not kill its owners,
it just forces them to tell the truth.
The curse threatens to destroy the salesman's business.
After all, his cars are all junk-heaps
and his only skill is salesmanship.
This is all a bit reminiscent of the Jim Carey movie
Liar, Liar
. However, he finds a loophole.
The person best suited to such a car would be a politician.
Since this episode was made in the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis,
there are name-drops of a couple of famous politicians.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 15]
The Invaders
Shown 27 Jan 61
A middle-aged woman (
Agnes Moorehead
) lives alone in a remote
Cabin in the Woods
. A flying saucer lands,
disgorging a couple of alien invaders.
The woman must fight them off single-handedly.
The aliens are bipedal, clad in armoured spacesuits ...
and less than a foot tall.
Although they are equipped with energy weapons,
the woman holds her own against them.
This episode stands out for a couple of reasons.
One is the actress's performance,
as she wordlessly conveys everything necessary.
The other is the dramatic twist at the end,
which features the only words spoken
in the otherwise silent story.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 16]
A Penny for Your Thoughts
Shown 03 Feb 61
A bank worker (Dick York -
) discovers he has developed the superpower
of being able to read peoples' minds.
He uses this to intrude into peoples' thoughts,
and weaponises it to help the bank.
Of course, this means he is risking his job
since he has no real proof of other peoples' thoughts.
Finally he uses his power for personal gain -
not a morally pure thing, according to
Charmed
, but one that seems earned.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 17]
Twenty-Two
Shown 10 Feb 61
A dancer, Liz Powell (
Barbara Nichols
), is troubled by recurring nightmares
in which she is drawn inexorably to Room Twenty-Two.
The doctor (Jonathan Harris -
Lost in Space
) tries everything he can to help her.
Nice to see Harris as a more serious Doctor than Smith ...
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 18]
The Odyssey of Flight 33
Shown 24 Feb 61
A passenger flight loses contact with ground control.
It seems they have flown through some kind of anomaly, like in
The Langoliers
. Instead of dodgy CGI monsters,
they see claymation dinosaurs on the ground.
Yes, the anomaly time-traveled them back to the Jurassic era.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 19]
Mr. Dingle, the Strong
Shown 03 Mar 61
This is set in 1960s USA.
A man named Dingle (Burgess Meredith -
Santa Claus: The Movie
) hangs out in a bar
with the likes of Don Rickles (Kelly's Heroes).
A couple of Martian scientists arrive,
under a cloak of invisibility,
and observe the Earthlings in their natural habitat.
The Martians' experiment involves gifting the weakest Earthling,
clearly Mr Dingle, the strength of three hundred men.
Once he discovers how strong he now is,
he does not use this superpower for anything constructive.
Instead he uses it to make himself the centre of attention,
showing off for newspaper reporters and TV crews.
Yes, if this story were told today
he would just be another online influencer.
The ending involves some Venusian scientists
who have a different experiment.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 20]
Static
Shown 10 Mar 61
An old man living in a House of Multiple Occupancy
is unhappy with the other residents' habit of watching television.
He gets his old radio out of the basement,
and listens to it in his room.
It only plays older programmes from the 1930s -
from the era when most shows were live and recordings were rare.
Strangely, the radio only plays when he is alone.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 21]
The Prime Mover
Shown 24 Mar 61
Ace Larsen is a compulsive gambler
who works in a cheap diner in smalltown USA.
When a car crashes outside their workplace,
Ace discovers his boss Jimbo is a telekinetic.
Larsen takes his boss and his girlfriend to Vegas,
where they win big in a casino.
Of course, Larsen pushes things to their limits
and insists on a private gambling match with a high roller.
Unfortunately Jimbo gets a headache every time he uses his superpower,
so there are obviously limits to his ability.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 22]
Long Distance Call
Shown 31 Mar 61
Billy (Billy Mumy -
Lost In Space
) is very attached to his grandmother.
She is dying of a fatal illness,
and her last gift to him is a toy telephone
that he can use to talk to her when she is not around.
After grandma dies, Billy starts talking to her on the phone.
He tells his mother that Grandma is lonely,
and that she wants him to join her.
Next thing anyone knows,
Billy starts doing risky things as if he wants to kill himself.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 23]
A Hundred Yards Over the Rim
Shown 07 Apr 61
In 1847, a small wagon train is stuck in the New Mexico desert.
The leader, Chris Horn (Cliff Robertson -
Spider-Man
), goes over the rim to explore.
He leaves Charlie (John Astin - Addams Family) in charge.
Chris finds himself a hundred years in the future.
Can he find medicine for his sick son?
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 24]
The Rip Van Winkle Caper
Shown 21 Apr 61
A gang of robbers have stopped a train en route from Fort Knox to LA
and stolen a million dollars in gold bullion.
They hide it in a cave in the Death Valley desert,
then use cryogenic pods to sleep for a hundred years.
What could possibly go wrong?
The men awaken in an uncertain future,
in the wilderness of Death valley.
They have to hike out on foot,
carrying as much gold as they can.
This has elements of Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 25]
The Silence
Shown 28 Apr 61
The story is set in a gentlemen's club.
One member, a younger man, is a talkaholic.
An older member draws up a contract
with the help of his lawyer, George Alfred (Jonathan Harris -
Lost in Space
). If the young man can remain silent for an entire year,
he will win half a million dollars.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 26]
Shadow Play
Shown 05 May 61
Adam Grant is found guilty of murder, and sentenced to death.
The execution is due at midnight of the same day.
He pleads innocence, on the grounds that he is dreaming.
His lawyer and the prosecutor start to consider his story.
This takes solipcism to the next level.
The focus of the story is on the lawyers for half the time,
as they question whether they exist because someone else thinks.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 27]
The Mind and the Matter
Shown 12 May 61
The protagonist is a misanthrope named Archibald Beechcroft.
He is given a book about mind-over-matter ESP skills,
and when he reads it he learns to master those skills.
Then he weaponises them to remove everyone who annoys him.
And since everyone annoys him,
he just removes everyone.
Yes, like Thanos in
Avengers: Infinity War
- but he snaps BOTH halves of the population.
The bad news is that life alone becomes boring.
He decides to bring everyone back, but as versions of himself.
In other words, a bit like a certain scene in
Being John Malkovich
.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 28]
Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up
Shown 26 May 61
A pair of State Troopers respond to a UFO sighting.
They discover a pair of mysterious footprints in the snow,
and follow them to a roadside diner.
Inside are seven strangers,
who claim to have arrived on a bus.
However, the bus driver is certain there were only six passengers.
The cops try to deduce who the alien is ...
Jack Elam (
Hannie Calder
) stands out as a googly-eyed old man.
However, he is also the most human of the bunch.
This is a bit like
The Thing
, itself a remake of
The Thing From Outer Space
based on the 1940s short story Who Goes There?.
However, the ending takes things in a completely different direction.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 29]
The Obsolete Man
Shown 02 Jun 61
This is set in a dystopian future.
An old man named Romney Wordsworth (Burgess Meredith -
Santa Claus: The Movie
) is on trial, accused of being obsolete.
He admits to being a librarian,
and since nobody needs books any more
there is also no need for librarians.
The old man is thus a drain on society,
and is sentenced to Death.
The only form of mercy provided is that
the victim is allowed to choose the method of his death.
He demands that only he and the executioner
be allowed to know the method.
Then he invites the Chancellor (Fritz Weaver -
) to say goodbye to him.
Of course, this is all part of a cunning plan.
The moral is that it is the system which is obsolete,
which Rod Serling literally tells us
in his heavy-handed ending monologue.
This was written during the Cold War,
so it is obvious that the system in question
is the Stalinist/communist one of the Soviet Union.
In the Twenty-First century,
it is the USA's laisse faire capitalism
which only values people for their careers
and their ability to fund the financial services industry.
Season 3
- anthology series, host:
Rod Serling
-
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 1]
Two
Shown 15 Sep 61
This is set six years after a devastating nuclear war.
The streets look like a post-apocalyptic USA,
but in his prologue Rod Serling explains
that the signs may be presented in English
but this is only for the audience's benefit.
In a bit of a spoiler,
he reveals that the story could be set anywhere at any time.
A female scavenger (
Elizabeth Montgomery
) finds some tinned food in a store.
She is discovered by a man (Charles Bronson -
), who she immediately attacks.
Although they were different-coloured uniforms,
this is somewhat let down by the fact
this episode was shot in black and white.
The man declares that their war is over -
the uniforms and flags are nothing but rags.
The woman takes a bit more convincing.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 2]
The Arrival
Shown 22 Sep 61
An FAA investigator has a puzzle to solve.
A DC-3 airliner arrived at an airport, and landed safely,
but without any passengers or crew aboard.
The investigator makes a leap of logic,
but to prove his theory he must make a leap of faith.
This episode has a scientific explanation,
using psychology rather than fantasy or science fiction.
The strangest thing is that the flight's number is 107,
which is a pity because the storytellers could have
tied this in with episode
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 18]
The Odyssey of Flight 33.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 3]
The Shelter
Shown 29 Sep 61
A radio broadcast announces that UFOs have been spotted.
It seems that they might be incoming missiles,
and an all-out nuclear war has begun.
A surburban householder and his wife take their son
to the air-raid shelter they built in their basement.
The neighbours, fellow suburbanites,
all want into the shelter too.
It does not matter that it was only built to hold three people.
They try to smash their way in.
This is reminiscent of a couple of films.
One is Twelve Angry Men,
which is about a bunch of diverse personalities
who are white and male and middle-class.
One is even racist, against other white-passing people.
The second film is
The Purge
, which is about toxic neigbours in suburbia.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 4]
The Passersby
Shown 06 Oct 61
In the aftermath of the US Civil War,
a stream of survivors walks home past an old Southern house.
One Confederate stops to help the owner, a widow woman.
As more ex-soldiers walk past,
they recognise a couple of faces that they thought were dead.
Eventually the harsh reality becomes clear.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 5]
A Game of Pool
Shown 13 Oct 61
A pool player, Jesse Carter (Jack Klugman - Quincy
), wants to be the biggest pool player in Chicago history.
He makes a wish that he could play against Fats Brown,
the biggest pool player in Chicago history.
His wish comes true,
and Fats Brown is summoned from the afterlife to play him.
Fats is a font of knowledge.
He insists the stakes be life-or-death,
but Jesse does not seem affected by this.
Instead he is obsessed with proving himself as the best.
He should be careful what he wishes for.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 6]
The Mirror
Shown 20 Oct 61
Ramos Clemente (Peter Falk -
The Princess Bride
), a Castro lookalike, has taken over his country's government.
The ex-President, now a prisoner,
warns him that power will corrupt him too.
Or rather, fear that he will lose the power.
The President also tells him about The Mirror,
which he says an old woman gave to him.
Apparently she said it was magic,
and it would show him the faces of his assassins.
Pretty soon, Clemente becomes paranoid
and the killings begin.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 7]
The Grave
Shown 27 Oct 61
Conny Miller (Lee Marvin -
), a bounty hunter, walks into a bar.
Mothershed (Strother Martin -
Hannie Calder
), the bartender,
tells him what happened to the outlaw
that Miller was hunting.
He got shot by an eight-man posse,
and somehow lingered long enough to deliver some famous last words.
Specifically, if the bounty hunter gets near the grave
then the dead man will reach out and grab him.
Johnny Rob (James Best -
Killer Shrews, The (1959)
) and Steinhart (Lee Van Cleef -
Escape From New York
), a pair of gamblers,
bet that Miller will not visit the grave.
Of course, Miller accepts this dare.
He wanders into the graveyard alone at midnight ...
Next morning, the gamblers visit the graveyard
to see what happened.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 8]
It's a Good Life
Shown 03 Nov 61
This is set in smalltown USA.
The small community of adult survivors
are all scared of Anthony (Billy Mumy -
Lost In Space
). He has developed a superpower,
and weaponised it against anyone who annoys him.
Whatever he wants, he gets.
If he thinks anyone is against him,
he sends them away to a place they can never come back from.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 9]
Deaths-Head Revisited
Shown 10 Nov 61
A German officer returns to the town of Dachau,
seventeen years after the camp was permanently closed.
He decides to walk around it,
and meets the caretaker - a former prisoner.
It turns out the officer was not a tank man,
as he claimed, and he did not serve on the Eastern front.
The Nazi is put on trial by the ghosts of his victims.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 10]
The Midnight Sun
Shown 17 Nov 61
A young woman and her elderly neighbour, Mrs Bronson,
are the only people remaining in a New York City block.
The Earth has left its orbit and is falling into the sun,
so the temperatures have slowly risen over the previous month.
All the other inhabitants went north to Canada,
in the hope of finding slightly more liveable conditions.
Of course,
the police are busy monitoring the refugees on the highways.
This means the city residents will have to look after themselves.
This is foreshadowing that a marauder will appear.
The protagonist passes the time by painting pictures.
This keeps her sane, while the others lose their sanity.
Of course, there is a twist ending.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 11]
Still Valley
Shown 24 Nov 61
During the US Civil War,
a bedraggled Confederate soldier finds a remote town.
It is occupied by a garrison of blue-coats,
but they are all frozen in time.
Luckily there is another person trapped there
who can provide some much-needed exposition.
The caretaker explains his method of freezing the Yankees.
The Confederate takes it to his superiors,
and offers them the chance to weaponise it.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 12]
The Jungle
Shown 01 Dec 61
An American couple have returned to New York City
after five years in Africa.
The wife still keeps voodoo trinkets for luck.
Her husband prides himself on being logical.
He equates the voodoo religion with Western superstitions,
which he also rejects in the name of his own logic.
The husband's job was to prepare a remote African region
for some new scientific development.
Not oil drilling, which would not be demonised in the 1960s.
No, it is a renewabole energy plan for a hydroelectric dam.
The region's top voodoo witch-doctors put a curse
on anyone associated with the project.
That night, the husband tries to make his way home.
Everyone who tries to help him disappears or drops dead.
He is stalked by a ghostly lion ...
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 13]
Once Upon a Time
Shown 15 Dec 61
The story starts in 1890 in Harmony, New York.
This is illustrated with title cards,
and a piano soundtrack reminiscent of the silent movie era.
This was not a thing in 1890,
but the protagonist is played by Buster Keaton
so we should ignore that for convenience.
A scientist, Professor Gilbert,
invents a Time Helmet while working in his basement.
It will take the wearer to another time period,
but only for thirty minutes.
The same effect could be achieved by a Virtual Reality helmet,
since it has such limitations.
Mulligan (Buster Keaton), the janitor,
borrows the helmet and tries it out.
He ends up 72 years in the future,
and slapstick hijinks ensue.
In Season one there were a couple of stories
about how the 1880s were better than the 1960s.
Here, we get to see an alternate viewpoint.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 14]
Five Characters in Search of an Exit
Shown 22 Dec 61
A group of five mis-matched persons find themselves
locked in a strange prison.
There is no door, but the ceiling is open to the sky
so they try to climb out.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 15]
A Quality of Mercy
Shown 29 Dec 61
August 1945, and Japan is on the verge of surrender.
A group of US soldiers, including Leonard Nimoy (
Star Trek: The Original Series
), have trapped some Japanese soldiers in a cave.
The artillery falls short, and the air force keeps missing.
The infantry has a choice - attack the cave, or just bypass it.
The unit is joined by its new leader,
a lieutenant (Dean Stockwell -
Quantum Leap
) who is so green he almost orders the men to salute him.
Luckily the sergeant (Albert Salmi) does not sniper-check him,
even when he spouts the usual bloodthirsty propaganda.
The lieutenant finds himself transformed into a Japanese officer
in a similar position, three years earlier.
His superior spouts the usual bloodthirsty propaganda
that the lieutenant himself had spoken earlier.
Yes, he finally discovers empathy.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 16]
Nothing in the Dark
Shown 05 Jan 62
A reclusive old lady sees a policeman (Robert Redford -
) outside her home.
He has been shot in the line of duty,
so she reluctantly takes him inside.
She explains that she has seen Mr Death, the grim reaper,
and she has become a shut-in in the hope of living forever.
Well, what quality of life she has is debatable.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 17]
One More Pallbearer
Shown 12 Jan 62
Paul Raiden (Joseph Wiseman -
Dr No
) is a multi-millionaire who has constructed the perfect bomb shelter.
Well, it is the middle of the Cold War
so nuclear bombs are an ever-present threat.
He invites three people from his past -
authority figures who he believes humiliated him -
so he can play a practical joke on them.
Although he convinces them that nuclear oblivion is imminent,
Raiden discovers that they have strong principles.
The Pastor, the Schoolteacher and the Colonel all persecuted him
because he had done dishonorable and borderline criminal acts.
The final twist is something of a non-sequitor.
It seems almost magical, with no scientific explanation.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 18]
Dead Man's Shoes
Shown 19 Jan 62
A couple of gangsters dump a dead man in an alley,
where his shoes are stolen by a homeless man.
The homeless man is possessed by the dead man's ghost,
who goes after the gang boss who had him killed.
The gang boss has a couple of tricks up his sleeve.
However, this begs a question.
Will the boss run out of tricks
before the ghost runs out of homeless men?
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 19]
The Hunt
Shown 26 Jan 62
An old hillbilly goes hunting for racoons.
When his dog gets in trouble in the swamp,
the master goes in to help it.
Eventually he learns that he did not make it out alive.
Later, the man gets to the gates of the afterlife.
The gatekeeper welcomes him, but there is one small catch.
Apparently there are no dogs allowed in Heaven.
This should be a major red flag.
How can it be Heaven without puppies?
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 20]
Showdown with Rance McGrew
Shown 02 Feb 62
Rance is a cowboy actor,
a much whinier version of the protagonist in
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
. He plays a two-dimensional character
who benefits at the expense of the reputations of real-life Wild West gunslingers.
Then he finds himself in the real Wild West,
where he is forced to prove himself for real.
It turns out that the ghosts of the gunslingers got together,
and selected Jesse James to coerce Rance
into making his character a bit more realistic
and start losing for a change.
If only this was the case with modern-day 2-D characters.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 21]
Kick the Can
Shown 09 Feb 62
Some young kids play childhood games like Hide and Seek
in the grounds of an Old Folks' Home.
A couple of the inmates see this,
and one of them is inspired to attempt to relive his younger days.
His theory is that one can become younger
simply by regressing to a younger state of mind.
All he and the other OAPs have to do
is play Kick the Can ...
The down side is that anyone in the Old Folks Home
who exhibits youthful behaviour
is treated as senile and put in solitary confinement.
This is a strong disincentive
towards attempting to become younger again.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 22]
A Piano in the House
Shown 16 Feb 62
A man buys a wild west-style self-playing piano
as a gift for his wife's birthday.
Like many items in this show, it has magical powers.
When he discovers that it can influence an audience member
into revealing their innermost thoughts and feelings,
he decides to weaponise it as the centrepiece of the birthday party.
The protagonist, Fitzgerald Fortune (Barry Morse -
Space 1999
), is a cynical theatre critic.
His cynicism is merely insightful at first,
but becomes more cruel as the story goes on.
This is alluded to,
but not really shown on screen enough to justify his comeuppance.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 23]
The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank
Shown 23 Feb 62
Jeff (James Best -
Killer Shrews, The (1959)
) emerges from the coffin at his own funeral.
He claims to be wrongly diagnosed as dead,
and blames his doctor for incompetence.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 24]
To Serve Man
Shown 02 Mar 62
Earth is visited by friendly aliens
who offer free access to live-saving technologies.
One of the aliens (Richard Kiel -
Spy Who Loved Me
) accidentally leaves his playbook at the United Nations.
The US military take it to an analyst (Lloyd Bochner -
6 million Dollar Man
), who fails to decode it through substitution cyphers.
After all, that would only work if the aliens' written language
was English with a different alphabet.
Luckily his female cow-orker (
Susan Cummings
) is able to translate the book.
Its title seems to be To Serve Man.
Can she decode the rest of the book in time?
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 25]
The Fugitive
Shown 09 Mar 62
Old Ben is a nice old man who is kind to children like Jenny (
Susan Gordon
) the crippled orphan.
He also has a superpower, he is a shapeshifter.
A couple of men who dress like plain-clothes cops are after Ben.
Presumably they are the
Men in Black
, and he is a dangerous alien on the run.
Of course, there is a twist in the tale.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 26]
Little Girl Lost
Shown 16 Mar 62
A little girl has been tucked into bed by her parents,
but when they hear her cry they cannot find her.
She is still heard within the room,
but not physically present.
The parents have a friend who is a physicist.
He explains that the girl has slipped into another dimension,
and they must get her back before the hole closes up.
A bit like a cheaper version of
Poltergeist
, with the daughter getting sucked into a wall.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 27]
Person or Persons Unknown
Shown 23 Mar 62
David Gurney wakes up after a night of heavy drinking,
and discovers that his personal effects are missing from the house.
His wife does not recognise him,
nor do his cow-orkers in the bank.
After getting institutionalised,
Gurney is told that his identity does not exist.
He assumes he is the victim of a conspiracy,
while everyone else assumes he is a John Doe
who has invented the Gurney identity.
He escapes in order to search for proof.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 28]
The Little People
Shown 30 Mar 62
A couple of bickering astronauts crash-land in a desert.
William Fletcher (Claude Akins -
) is the commander,
but the co-pilot Peter Craig does not like taking orders.
Well, this is from the post-WW2 era when the astronauts
were portrayed as random military conscripts
rather than well-selected individuals.
Craig discovers a civilisation of tiny humans,
whose technology is similar to that of the USA in 1962.
He decides to enslave them,
brutally crushing some of them underfoot
just to prove that he has power over them.
However, he eventually gets his comeuppance.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 29]
Four O'Clock
Shown 06 Apr 62
The main character is the living embodiment of Cancel Culture.
He spends his days trawling newspapers
for info on people he decides are evil,
then bombards them and their employers with letters
and telephone calls.
When he realises this is too slow,
he arbitrarily decides to magically punish them at 4pm.
Yes, at 4pm all the evil people in the world
will magically get reduced to two feet tall.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 30]
Hocus-Pocus and Frisby
Shown 13 Apr 62
Mr Frisby is a store-owner in a small town in MidWest USA.
He is also the world's biggest liar,
with a never-ending series of boasts and tall tales.
A couple of strangers discover that Frisby is an unusual specimen.
They are alien scientists, like in
Mr Dingle, The Strong
. Unfortunately their world has no concept of untruthfulness,
like in the Rocky Gervase movie
The Invention of Lying
. They want to take Frisby as an exhibit in their zoon, like in
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 25]
People Are Alike All Over
.
The saddest thing about this kind of episode
is not that it re-uses tropes from previous episodes.
The real problem is that they pretend to be unrelated episodes,
while it makes more sense that they would be recurring characters
in a series of linked stories in an ongoing storyline.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 31]
The Trade-Ins
Shown 20 Apr 62
An elderly man and his wife are offered the chance
to swap their elderly bodies for twenty-something versions.
Yes, they can have eternal life just by swapping bodies
every fifty years or so.
However, this will cost a massive ten thousand dollars.
The senior citizens do not have enough money,
so the old man goes to an illegal poker game
and hopes to win enough to pay.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 32]
The Gift
Shown 27 Apr 62
This is set in a small village in Mexico.
The village policeman reports a strange encounter
with a flying object he cannot identify.
Shots were fired.
An American man arrives,
supposedly after crashing his plane in the desert.
He has two bullet wounds, possibly from law enforcement.
A small boy, Pedro, is used as a skivvy by the tavern-owner.
He was a foundling, and is obsessed with watching the stars.
Of all the townsfolk,
he is the one that trusts the stranger the most.
The climax is reminiscent of
The Day the Earth Stood Still
. Perhaps the story was meant to be more palatable
to middle-class American TV audiences
by making the Earthlings a group of Mexican peasants.
However, this story could be the same in modern-day USA.
More so than ever, in fact,
because it includes a cancer-preventing vaccine.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 33]
The Dummy
Shown 04 May 62
Jerry Efferson (Cliff Robertson -
Spider-Man
) is a professional ventriloquist who does a live stage act.
However, his dummy moves when he is not looking.
He has had psychiatric treatment,
but now self-medicates with alcohol.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 34]
Young Man's Fancy
Shown 11 May 62
An elderly lady has died.
Her grown-up son is now married,
and his wife wants him to sell the old lady's house.
However, she is still a presence there
and her influence over her son is unbroken.
Now his wife must fight for control.
This was written by
Richard Matheson
.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 35]
I Sing the Body Electric
Shown 18 May 62
A lonely middle-aged male widower looks after
his three young grand-children,
without the benefit of a woman in the house.
A bossy old lady wants him to give up his children,
and let them be raised by someone else.
He decides to compromise,
and has a fembot constructed to serve as a Mrs Doubtfire.
This was written by
Ray Bradbury
.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 36]
Cavender is Coming
Shown 25 May 62
A gawky woman (
Carole Burnett
) is having a bad time career-wise in New York City.
The head Angels appoint their least competent underling
to act as her guardian angel for the day.
He is like Clarence in
It's A Wonderful Life
, but this is his last chance to get his wings.
The Angel uses miracles to bribe his charge,
in the hope of making her happy.
He offers her riches, whatever she desires -
like Pip and the burglar in the Season One episode.
However, the ending is slightly different.
At least the woman gets the chance to reject the life of luxury,
and feel happy with the life she made for herself.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 37]
The Changing of the Guard
Shown 01 Jun 62
Professor Fletcher (Donald Pleasance -
You Only Live Twice
) gets fired from his job as a teacher.
As a result, he becomes incredibly depressed
as his life's work seems meaningless.
He is visited by the ghosts of the young men he taught,
and re-examines the impact his life has on others.
It turns out that the poetry he taught them
is how they learned about bravery, ethics and morality.
Season 4
- anthology series, host:
Rod Serling
-
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 4, Episode 1]
In His Image
Shown 03 Jan 63
Alan Talbot takes his fiance to his hometown.
However, nobody there remembers him.
His memories appear to be fake -
and he discovers that he himself is fake.
Strangely, nobody recognises his face -
even though he is modeled on his father.
Surely someone would recognise a familial resemblance.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 4, Episode 2]
The Thirty-Fathom Grave (60 min)
Shown 10 Jan 63
A US Navy warship patrols the South Pacific in 1963.
The crew detect an unusual sonar signal, and investigate.
It is a USN submarine that was believed sunk twenty years previously.
Is someone somehow still alive inside the sunken hull?
Captain Bell (Simon Oakland -
) insists on sending the ship's diver down to investigate.
The Destroyer's Chief Bosun has an inexplicable malady.
It turns out he was the sole survivor of the ship's sinking.
If the ship's OOD (Officer On Duty) looks familiar,
he is a young Bill Bixby AKA David Banner in
The Incredible Hulk
!
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 4, Episode 3]
Valley of the Shadow (60 min)
Shown 17 Jan 63
A newspaper journalist (Ed Nelson) is driving to Boston, Massachussetts.
He takes a shortcut through Pleasant Valley
and stops to get his car fixed.
A small girl uses a magical device,
and the journalist sees everything.
The girl's father (James Doohan -
Star Trek: The Original Series
) tries to cover the event up,
but it is too late.
The reporter discovers the townsfolks secret:
they have matter-energy converters.
This allows them to transfer objects from one place to another,
or to create a protective forcefield around the town.
They can even replicate items from stored patterns.
This storage does not use electronic pattern buffers,
but paper punch-cards!
How much of an influence did this show have on
Star Trek: The Original Series
? Shatner and Nimoy appeared in previous episodes,
so Doohan is the third regular here.
The use of field-tech, the transporter technology of TOS
that became the replicator/holodeck tceh of TNG,
seems based on this episode.
But perhaps the real influence on TNG is the show's moral quandry.
The town inadvertently exposed their technology
to someone from a more primitive civilisation.
If they let the tech get out of their control,
it will be weaponised and cause destruction of nuclear levels.
Remember, this episode was made less than two years after
the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 4, Episode 4]
He's Alive
Shown 24 Jan 63
Peter Vollmer (Dennis Hopper -
Waterworld
) is a young wannabe Nazi.
By day he rouses the rabble with his sidekick Frank (Paul Mazursky -
Police Academy 2
), but by night he crashes on the couch of an old holocaust survivor.
Vollmer gets a secret supporter,
a literally shadowy figure who gives him tips on
how to gaslight people and dominate them.
This leads to fascist speeches that sound earily like something
that one might expect to hear at a MAGA party.
However, Volmer has to cross a few moral lines.
Murder is only the first one.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 4, Episode 5]
Mute (60 min)
Shown 31 Jan 63
In 1953, a group of German scientists vow to raise their children
to only use telepathy as their sole method of communication.
This all seems a bit reminiscent of The Boys from Brazil.
Ten years later, one of the families is living in smalltown USA.
The parents are killed, orphaning their young daughter.
She is fostered by a local couple, who lost their own daughter.
The wife wants her as a replacement, and gets controlling and clingy.
Worse, the local schoolteacher insists the girl attend school.
Presumably the birth-parents were home-schooling her.
However, the girl's mutism makes it impossible for her to interact.
It seems the teacher's attempts to deprive the girl
of what is basically a superpower
is all part of a deliberate agenda.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 4, Episode 6]
Death Ship
Shown 07 Feb 63
In 1997 a saucer-shaped spacecraft from Earth arrives at an alien planet,
looking for an inhabitable world to colonise.
This is the 13th planet of Star System 51,
so Earth is well into expanding outside the solar system.
The astronauts discover a crashed spaceship.
It seems identical to their own,
even down to the bodies of the crew.
Captain Ross (Jack Klugman - Quincy
) tries to find logical explanations.
Under the circumstances,
it is probably either time travel or aliens.
Written by
Richard Matheson
, this seems reminiscent of
The Martian Chronicles
.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 4, Episode 7]
Jess-Belle
Shown 14 Feb 63
Billy Ben Turner (James Best -
Killer Shrews, The (1959)
) is about to get married.
His ex-girlfriend Jess-Belle Stone (
Anne Francis
) wants him back,
so she has the local witch cast a love spell on him.
This previously ended badly in
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 31]
The Chaser
so we all know it will backfire badly on her.
The episodes of this Season have been stretched to double length.
This particular story is padded out with a new twist.
The witch-woman demands a strange price of Jess-belle.
Every night, the girl turns into a were-leopard.
This episode has an unlikely pairing.
James Best is well-known as Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane.
Anne Francis was the female lead in
Forbidden Planet
, and thus a proper movie actress.
However, in that movie her love interest was Leslie Nielsen -
later known as Frank Drebin in the
Naked Gun
series. In other words, she has a history with comedy cops.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 4, Episode 8]
Miniature (60 min)
Shown 21 Feb 63
Charley Parkes (Robert Duvall -
) is obsessed with a doll-house in the city museum.
He sees the doll come to life, although nobody else does.
Charlie is thirty, and still lives with his mother.
His sister wants to help him grow up,
so she sets him up on a date with her friend Harriet.
She is very enthusiastic on the first date,
especially for a woman in 1963.
However, Charlie's mental issues prevent him from taking advantage.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 4, Episode 9]
Printer's Devil (60 min)
Shown 28 Feb 63
A small-town newspaper is going out of business.
No, not because of digitalisation and the death of print media.
It is being out-competed by a large conglomerate.
The owner is about to close down his small business for good
when he meets Mr Smith (Burgess Meredith -
Santa Claus: The Movie
) - an expert journalist who is also an expert typesetter.
This new employee sets the newspaper back on top again.
Mr Smith always happens to be in the right place
to report on horrible events.
The editor starts to suspect that Smith might be responsible.
Of course, this would be physically impossible.
The only explanation would be a supernatural one.
Did he make a deal with the devil?
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 4, Episode 10]
No Time Like the Past
Shown 07 Mar 63
A physicist named Driscoll is unhappy with the Twentieth Century,
since he lives in the Cold War era of mutually assured destruction.
He time-travels back to change history.
He tries to persuade the Japanese to evacuate Hiroshima,
or the Captain of the Lusitania to reroute his ship.
He even tries to assassinate Hitler.
When his plans to change history fail,
he adopts a new plan.
Instead of saving the Twentieth Century,
he plans to settle down in the Nineteen Century.
He chooses a small town at the start of the Gilded Age.
Yes, this was also deemed the perfect life in
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 30]
A Stop at Willoughby.
This could be a problem if he accidentally changes history.
However, the first section of this episode established
that the timeline is immutable and unbreakable.
Driscoll falls for the local school-marm.
However, he is cursed by knowledge of the future.
He must sit back and let President Garfield be assassinated,
and worse - a fire in the town's schoolhouse.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 4, Episode 11]
The Parallel
Shown 14 Mar 63
A US Astronaut (Steve Forrest -
Sahara (1983)
) is trained to be sent into space.
But when he comes back from the flight,
there are certain irregularities.
This is all a bit reminiscent of
Far Side Of The Sun
.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 4, Episode 12]
I Dream of Genie
Shown 21 Mar 63
A man gets talked into buying a lamp.
Luckily it turns out to have a genie.
His wishes are for love, wealth and power
so that he can help other people.
He has the best of intentions,
but the circumstances he finds himself in
are twisted against him.
Almost as if the genie were deliberately rigging it against him.
However, he has one last idea to outwit the genie
and make some good come of the wishes.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 4, Episode 13]
The New Exhibit (60 min)
Shown 04 Apr 63
Martin Lombard Senescu (Martin Balsam -
) is the curator of the chamber of horrors at a waxwork museum.
When the museum is sold,
he stores his five favourite waxwork models in his basement.
His wife is unhappy about his obsession,
not to mention the expense of the air conditioning unit.
The waxworks are of famous murderers like
Burke and Hare
, with Jack the Ripper in centre space.
They are creepily lifelike,
and bad things happen to people who are left alone with them.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 4, Episode 14]
Of Late I Think of Cliffordville (60 min)
Shown 11 Apr 63
Feathersmith (Albert Salmi -
) is a sadistic multimillionaire.
Despite taking pleasure in destroying business rivals,
he is becoming bored with life.
The janitor quotes the line
He cried because he had no more world to conquer.
This seems to have inspired the line
Alexander wept because there were no more worlds to conquer
from the movie
Die Hard
. Of course, these are not authentic -
the real quote from Tacitus was explained by the man in Black in
Westworld
.
Feathersmith makes a deal with the Devil, AKA Miss Devlin (
Julie Newmar
), to send him back to his home town.
However, he is clearly overconfident.
The Devil already has his soul,
because of the evil deeds he perpetrated,
and just wants his money.
The problem is that it seems that the money corrupted him.
Without it, he is redeemed
and someone else is corrupted in his place.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 4, Episode 15]
The Incredible World of Horace Ford
Shown 18 Apr 63
Horace Ford (Pat Hingle -
Batman (1989)
), looks like a middle-aged man even though
he is only in his late thirties.
He has spent the last fifteen years as a professional toy designer,
which means he got the job straight out of college.
Horace visits his old neighbourhood,
and sees the boys he knew when he was ten years old.
Somehow, they are still ten years old themselves.
Strangely, he starts to mentally regress
and act like a ten-year-old himself.
Horace's childishness gets him fired from his job.
With a wife and a sixty-something mother to support,
he has a lot of responsibility.
He wants to retreat into his childhood.
However, he has to confront the reality of his selective memories.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 4, Episode 16]
On Thursday We Leave for Home
Shown 02 May 63
Captain Benteen (James Whitmore - Shawshank Redemption)
commands a group of settlers who have spent thirty years
trapped in the blistering heat of a desert planet
with twin suns.
The expedition originally landed in August 1991.
Luckily a rescue ship is en route.
The planet may have inspired Tatooine in
Star Wars: ANH
but the backdrop looks like Altair 4 in
Forbidden Planet
. In fact, the rescue ship and the crew's uniforms
also look like hand-me-downs from that movie.
Colonel Sloane (Tim O'Connor -
Buck Rogers: Season 1
) gives the survivors three days to prepare themselves for evacuation.
However, Benteen has problems with his new change in status.
He likes being a big fish in a small pond,
where everyone has to look to him for help and advice.
The ending is reminiscent of Stuart Whitman's in
Sands of the Kalahari
.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 4, Episode 17]
Passage on the Lady Anne
Shown 09 May 63
A rich man and his wife go on vacation together, a second honeymoon.
The wife refuses to fly,
so they book a cabin in the first available liner.
It is an elderly ship with lots of elderly passengers,
presumably wanting to relive memories of their golden years.
The ship specialised in honeymoons during the interwar years.
The couple befriend Wilfred Hyde-White (
Buck Rogers: Season 2
) and his wife.
However, there is something the old folk are not telling the younger couple.
First the ship starts steaming in the wrong direction,
then the wife mysteriously goes missing.
Finally, the story is all tied up aboard a lifeboat.
This is all a bit of a non-sequitor.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 4, Episode 18]
The Bard
Shown 23 May 63
Julius Moomer, a talentless wannabe screenwriter,
bluffs his way into a job as a writer
on a TV show about black magic.
He goes to a second-hand bookstore in search of books for research,
and a magical grimoire conveniently appears.
The grimoire helps Moomer take a shortcut.
Rather than teach him about black magic
so he can write the script,
it just raises William Shakespeare from the dead
so that he can write the script on Moomer's behalf.
The agent, the TV network and the prospective sponsor -
a soup manufacturer - are impressed with the script.
Of course, Moomer takes all the credit for himself.
Shakespeare is less than happy,
and gatecrashes the rehearsal.
Of course, the Jacobean prose of Shakespeare
has been updated for the early 1960s.
The high point of the episode is a young Burt Reynolds
playing a Marlon Brando impersonator named Rocky Rhodes.
Season 5
- anthology series, host:
Rod Serling
-
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 1]
In Praise of Pip
Shown 27 Sep 63
A bookmaker, Max Kelly (Jack Klugman - Quincy
), gets word that his son Pip has been wounded in Vietnam.
This gives him a crisis of conscience,
and drives him to give a refund to a bad gambler
who stupidly gambled with stolen money ... and lost.
This brings them into conflict with organised crime.
As the bookie is mortally wounded,
he has a vision of his son's younger self (Billy Mumy -
Lost In Space
).
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 2]
Steel
Shown 04 Oct 63
Human boxing was outlawed in 1968,
so by 1971 the sport is robots only.
Steel Kelly (Lee Marvin -
) is the manager of Battling Maxo, a prize-fighting robot.
They travel by bus from one town to the next,
fighting public exhibition matches for money.
Each town has their own local champion, it seems.
When Maxo becomes impossible to repair,
Kelly takes his place in the ring.
Despite his undefeated record against human fighters,
Kelly is sorely disadvantaged against the robot.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 3]
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
Shown 11 Oct 63
Bob Wilson (William Shatner -
Star Trek: The Original Series
) gets the window seat on an airplane.
He is a cured man, with his nervous breakdown in the past.
However, when he looks out the plane's window ...
there's something on the wing!
Written by
Richard Matheson
and directed by
Richard Donner
, this is regarded as a classic
to the extent that it was reused as one of the segments in
Twilight Zone: The Movie (1982)
starring John Lithgow.
This leads on to the ultimate homage in the TV show
3rd Rock From The Sun
, when Shatner and Lithgow talk about their shared fear of flying.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 4]
A Kind of a Stopwatch
Shown 18 Oct 63
McNulty is a loudmouth who gets fired from his job.
He befriends a stranger in his local bar,
and is gifted a magical stopwatch.
Somehow it has the ability to freeze and unfreeze time,
like in the kids movie
Clockstoppers
.
When McNulty realises what the watch can do,
he cannot get anyone to believe him.
After all, they are frozen when he stops time
so they cannot see what he is doing.
The greatest conversation piece in the world.
And what does it do? It stops conversations!
Power corrupts,
and McNulty decides to use his watch for crime.
Of course, this is a morality play
so he gets an ironic punishment.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 5]
The Last Night of a Jockey
Shown 25 Oct 63
Grady (Mickey Rooney -
) is an unhappy man whose career is at an end.
He is a disgraced jockey,
which means that not only is he exiled
from the one sport that accepted him
but that he is a lot shorter than average.
His Napoleon complex makes him rage against the world.
Grady's own subconscious starts talking to him.
It offers him a magical wish.
He instantly decides he wishes he was taller.
Be careful what you wish for!
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 6]
Living Doll
Shown 01 Nov 63
A woman buys an expensive doll for her daughter.
Her second husband Eric Straker (Telly Savalas -
) is unhappy at the expense on his stepdaughter.
Talky Tina, the clockwork wind-up doll,
starts to talk to Eric when nobody else is around.
She picks up on his resentment, and threatens him.
He tries to throw the doll away,
but it seems to have a mind of its own.
Savalas is younger than in most of his movies,
so he is simply balding rather than completely bald.
In fact, he looks a bit like Homer Simpson in this story.
Looks aside he is an imposing presence,
so it works well that he is menaced by the female equivalent of
Chucky (2021)
.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 7]
The Old Man in the Cave
Shown 08 Nov 63
In 1974, ten years after a nuclear war,
the survivors are desperae for food.
In their post-apocalyptic world,
the survivors get by with advice from the title character.
The townsfolk have never seen him -
according to Mr Goldsmith, he sends messages out ...
Major French (James Coburn -
In Like Flint
) arrives in town and demands lodgings for his soldiers.
He insists that there is no reason to obey the Old Man,
and lets the townsfolk eat canned food
that the Old Man condemned as contaminated by strontium 90.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 8]
Uncle Simon
Shown 15 Nov 63
The title character is a crotchety old inventor (Cecil Hardwicke -
). His niece is his live-in carer.
She has spent twenty-five years looking after her,
but all she wants is for him to die so she can inherit.
What is worse is that he knows it,
and their relationship is a very bitter one.
It turns out that the inventor's will
is dependent on her remaining resident in the house
and looking after his experiments.
If she fails to obey the instructions,
his lawyers must donate all his assets to the State University.
Unfortunately the experiment is Robbie the Robot from
Forbidden Planet
.
This was written by
Rod Serling
himself, but the director was
Don Siegel
of all people.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 9]
Probe 7 - Over and Out
Shown 29 Nov 63
An astronaut crash-lands on a remote planet.
It is too far away from base for him to be rescued.
However, the air is breathable and there is water and fruit available.
Although the planet is supposedly uninhabited,
it turns out he is not the only one there.
This turns into a predictable twist.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 10]
The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms
Shown 06 Dec 63
Three soldiers of the US National Guard are on maneuvres
near the Custer battlefield at the Little Big Horn.
They discover items that were described in Major Reno's account,
written eighty years previously.
As they continue on their route,
they find themselves being dragged
further into the events of Custer's fatal expedition.
Back at camp, the Colonel is less than happy.
His assistant is Greg from the 1960s TV show
Mission Impossible
.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 11]
A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain
Shown 13 Dec 63
An old man has a much younger wife,
so he gets a series of injections to make him younger.
Unfortunately they make him too young.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 12]
Ninety Years Without Slumbering
Shown 20 Dec 63
An old man is obsessed with his grandfather clock.
He thinks that if he stops winding it and lets it run down,
that his own life will come to an end.
Then his daughter makes him sell the clock.
The good news is that he sells it to a friendly neighbour
who lets him wind it for her every other day.
The bad news is that eventually she goes away for a weekend
and he cannot get into the house to wind the clock.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 13]
Ring-a-Ding Girl
Shown 27 Dec 63
Bunny Blake (
Maggie McNamara
) is a major Hollywood star.
Instead of heading to Paris to further her career,
she heads home to take a day in her home town.
Bunny has visions of a disaster happening
at her home town's annual picnic.
She sets up a rival event elsewhere,
hoping to lure as many people to safety as possible.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 14]
You Drive
Shown 03 Jan 64
A driver knocks a newspaper delivery-boy off his bike,
and rather than take responsibility he just drives home.
He may not have much of a conscience,
but his car acts as jimminy cricket.
It seems to be alive, like Herbie.
The stakes are increased when the cops arrest an innocent man.
Will the driver do the right thing?
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 15]
The Long Morrow
Shown 10 Jan 64
An astronaut (Robert Lansing -
) goes on a thirty-year trip to another world.
He leaves behind his girlfriend.
The theory is that he will be in suspended animation,
so will not age, while she will age at normal Earth rate.
The spaceships communication system malfunctions,
so the pilot and the girlfriend are in ignorance of each others actions.
It turns out that she has access to
a suspended animation facility on Earth.
Perhaps if she had talked it over with the pilot,
he would not have done a Chris Pratt in
Passengers
. This is in ignorance of relativity, which states that someone
traveling at nearly the speed of light should not age.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 16]
The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross
Shown 17 Jan 64
A man discovers his superpower.
He can swap one of his less desirable attributes
for someone else's better ones.
This lets him trade up,
swapping his youth for an old man's money
and then trading smaller payments for a year of other peoples' lives.
The protagonist's endgame is to seduce a beautiful woman.
However, she always seems to raise the bar somehow.
Eventually he overreaches.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 17]
Number Twelve Looks Just Like You
Shown 24 Jan 64
This is set in the far future, circa the year 2000AD.
A young girl has hit her eighteenth birthday,
and her mother schedules her to have a cosmetic operation.
Their entire society reduces people into a prearranged series
of appearances that can be selected from a catalogue.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 18]
Black Leather Jackets
Shown 31 Jan 64
Three bikers in Black Leather Jackets ride into smalltown USA.
They rent an apartment there,
and fail to blend in inconspicuously
because of their outlandish manners.
One of the bikers falls for a local girl,
and tells her the truth about his presence.
The bikers are an advance unit of an alien invasion.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 19]
Night Call
Shown 07 Feb 64
An old lady gets mysterious phone calls on her bedside land-line.
The calls are coming from the graveyard.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 20]
From Agnes - With Love
Shown 14 Feb 64
A computer operator wants to date his female counterpart.
He seeks dating advice from his computer,
an artificial intelligence named Agnes.
However, Agnes has her own agenda.
This was made in the era when computer nerds wore white coats like scientists,
while computers consisted of multiple filing cabinets
and the output system was printed paper.
That said, the input is verbal so it must be more hi-tech than it looks.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 21]
Spur of the Moment
Shown 21 Feb 64
Anne-Marie Henderson is engaged to marry a merchant banker.
However, she has an ex-boyfriend who still wants her.
She goes for a horse-ride to clear her head,
and is pursued by a woman clad in black.
The phantom is the 45-year-old version of herself.
She regrets the life she chose for herself.
How should the love triangle have ended?
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 22]
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Shown 28 Feb 64
Rod Serling introduces this as
the first time the show's makers have shown someone else's work.
This episode is a short film,
the French version of the Ambrose Bierce story.
The visuals are impressive,
perhaps due to the influence of the French new Wave.
The sound effects are reminiscent of a spaghetti western.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 23]
Queen of the Nile
Shown 06 Mar 64
A writer goes to interview a famous actress (
Ann Blyth
). She has not visibly aged a day since her debut a decade earlier.
Stranger still, the elderly woman she introduces as her mother
later claims to be her daughter.
The Writer discovers that the actress might actually be
a lot older than he can prove,
kept alive by ancient egyptian magicks.
This certainly seems to be reminiscent of
The Picture of Dorian Gray
. But does he have leverage on her
or is she just stringing him along
so she can drain his life force too?
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 24]
What's in the Box
Shown 13 Mar 64
A working-class man in the USA wants to watch his TV in peace.
The mysterious repair man fixes it,
somehow adding reception for an extra channel
that only the main character can see.
And what it shows him mirrors his own life.
The events get further and further ahead,
and depict a spiral into terror.
The man and his wife (
Joan Blondell
) have a terrible marriage.
According to the TV show, it will result in death.
Can the man prevent this, or is the show a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 25]
The Masks
Shown 20 Mar 64
A crazy old millionaire is on his deathbed.
He gathers his heirs, the only family he has left.
They are his adult daughter,
her husband and their twenty-something offspring.
Since he despises them for their many flaws,
he makes each of them wear a hideous face-mask.
If any of them takes off the mask before midnight,
they will all be disinherited.
The masks have been cursed by a Cajun witch-doctor.
The result is perhaps a karmic punishment
for the character flaws of the family members.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 26]
I Am the Night - Color Me Black
Shown 27 Mar 64
In smalltown USA, a man has been sentanced to hang.
This is not a Federal case or even a State one.
The town sheriff is in charge of the execution.
This is in spite of the conflict of interest,
since the redneck deputy's purjored testimony
and the sheriff's deliberate mishandling of the investigation
are what led to the death sentance being passed.
On the morning of the execution,
the sun does not rise over the town.
This event is unique to that town,
as things are perfectly fine everywhere else.
The darkness is perhaps a karmic punishment
for the town's choosing to side with the victim,
the head of the local KKK
who was seemingly killed in self-defence.
Shades of To Kill A Mocking Bird,
although the condemned man is caucasian.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 27]
Sounds and Silences
Shown 03 Apr 64
Roswell G. Flemington (John McGiver) is a bossy man
who is obsessed with the US Navy
and loves loud noisy things associated with it.
His unfortunate wife (
Penny Singleton
) has enough, and decides to leave him.
Roswell's sense of hearing turns against him and becomes hyper-sensitive,
perhaps a karmic punishment for the loudness he inflicted on others.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 28]
Caesar and Me
Shown 10 Apr 64
A ventriloquist has trouble finding work
His dummy starts telling him to steal money instead.
The landlady is nice and understanding about his inability to pay rent.
Unfortunately she has an annoying little niece
who takes an interest in everyone else's life.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 30]
Stopover in a Quiet Town
Shown 24 Apr 64
A couple of New York Yuppies wake up in a creepy small town.
The food is all inedible props, and the animals are all stuffed.
There are no people in sight,
although a child's laughter is audible.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 31]
The Encounter
Shown 01 May 64
Arthur (George Takei -
Star Trek: TOS
) is invited to have a beer with his employer,
a white man who is a WW2 veteran and a borderline racist.
The veteran's attic contains a samurai sword,
a memento of his war service.
This acts as a catalyst for conflict.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 32]
Mr. Garrity and the Graves
Shown 08 May 64
Mr Jarred Garrity, a snake-oil salesman, arrives in Happiness Arizona,
a small town in the Wild West.
He convinces everyone he has the power to raise the dead,
and is about to do the deed and revive all 128 people in Boot Hill cemetery.
However, only one of those corpses died of natural causes.
The other 127 were shot dead -
and the living would rather the dead stayed dead.
In other words, it is more lucrative to NOT raise the dead.
As always, there is a twist in the tale.
In fact, there are two.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 33]
The Brain Center at Whipple's
Shown 15 May 64
Mr Whipple, owner of a factory,
replaces his 61,000 workers with automation.
Why pay for humans when you can have Robbie the Robot (
Forbidden Planet
) as the night-watchman?
Whipple's father ran the factory for forty years,
but always maintained good will and the wellbeing of the employees.
The automated system,
which does away with inconveniences like maternity,
will significantly lower birth rates.
As the technician reminds him,
the company will have wonderful products
but mighty few people to buy them.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 34]
Come Wander with Me
Shown 22 May 64
The Rock-a-Billy Kid stops off at a small town,
so small it is off the maps.
He meets a girl who is a singer-songwriter,
and she composes a memorable melody for him.
Unfortunately this is a country and western song,
and it starts to come true.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 35]
The Fear
Shown 29 May 64
State Trooper Franklin (Mark Richman -
) drives out to a
Cabin in the Woods
in the middle of the night.
He is there to get a statement from the inhabitant, Miss Scott (
Hazel Court
), who reported some creepy lights in the sky.
The UFO turns out to be what looks like a massive alien invader.
It damages the police car, trapping the two humans in the cabin.
The nearest town is thirty miles away,
so they have no practical means of escape.
This was directed by
Ted Post
, the director-for-hire best known for
the Dirty Harry sequel Magnum Force.
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 5, Episode 36]
The Bewitchin' Pool
Shown 19 Jun 64
The protagonist is a pre-teen girl named Scout,
like the character in To Kill A Mocking Bird.
She and her brother are avoiding their quarrelling parents,
so they dive into their swimming pool.
They end up with the Lost Boys,
although instead of Peter Pan the leader is Huck Finn!
The place is run by Aunt Tea,
who seems like the nice little old lady in
Night of the Hunter
. However, she makes the boys clean boots and the girls do needlework.
Yes, she exploits the children for free labour.
