Season 1
- anthology series, host:
Rod Serling
-
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 1]
Where is Everybody?
Shown 02 Oct 59
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 2]
One for the Angels
Shown 09 Oct 59
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 3]
Mr. Denton on Doomsday
Shown 16 Oct 59
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 happied 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
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 26]
Execution
Shown 01 Apr 60
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
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 29]
Nightmare as a Child
Shown 29 Apr 60
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 1, Episode 30]
A Stop at Willoughby
Shown 06 May 60
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) 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
) 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
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
A con-man takes his telekinetic new-found friend to a casino.
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
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 2, Episode 28]
Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up
Shown 26 May 61
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
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 2]
The Arrival
Shown 22 Sep 61
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 3]
The Shelter
Shown 29 Sep 61
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 4]
The Passersby
Shown 06 Oct 61
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 5]
A Game of Pool
Shown 13 Oct 61
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 6]
The Mirror
Shown 20 Oct 61
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 7]
The Grave
Shown 27 Oct 61
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 8]
It's a Good Life
Shown 03 Nov 61
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 9]
Deaths-Head Revisited
Shown 10 Nov 61
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 10]
The Midnight Sun
Shown 17 Nov 61
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 11]
Still Valley
Shown 24 Nov 61
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 12]
The Jungle
Shown 01 Dec 61
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 13]
Once Upon a Time
Shown 15 Dec 61
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 14]
Five Characters in Search of an Exit
Shown 22 Dec 61
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 15]
A Quality of Mercy
Shown 29 Dec 61
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 16]
Nothing in the Dark
Shown 05 Jan 62
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 17]
One More Pallbearer
Shown 12 Jan 62
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
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 -
), 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
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 27]
Person or Persons Unknown
Shown 23 Mar 62
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 28]
The Little People
Shown 30 Mar 62
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
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 31]
The Trade-Ins
Shown 20 Apr 62
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 32]
The Gift
Shown 27 Apr 62
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 33]
The Dummy
Shown 04 May 62
(Cliff Robertson -
Spider-Man
)
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 34]
Young Man's Fancy
Shown 11 May 62
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 35]
I Sing the Body Electric
Shown 18 May 62
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 36]
Cavender is Coming
Shown 25 May 62
Twilight Zone (1959) [Season 3, Episode 37]
The Changing of the Guard
Shown 01 Jun 62
