The Twilight Zone: TOS [Season 2] (1960)

Episode 1: King Nine Will Not Return

"This is Africa, 1943. War spits out its violence overhead and the sandy graveyard swallows it up. Her name is King Nine, B-25, medium bomber, Twelfth Air Force. On a hot, still morning she took off from Tunisia to bomb the southern tip of Italy. An errant piece of flak tore a hole in a wing tank and, like a wounded bird, this is where she landed, not to return on this day, or any other day."

First episode of the new season reminds me of the first episode of the Season 1, "Where is Everybody?", both about a single person finding themselves in an isolated situation. They don't know where everyone is and what exactly is going on, and both episodes rely on a single actor to carry the full episode.

"Where is Everybody?" was excellent but I found "King Nine Will Not Return" much weaker. The actor in this episode, Robert Cummings, did not carry the episode well. I specially did not like his man-going-crazy-so-he-laughs-manically routine. It felt like he was really doing an over the top job of it.

2/5

Episode 2: The Man in the Bottle

"Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Castle, gentle and infinitely patient people, whose lives have been a hope chest with a rusty lock and a lost set of keys. But in just a moment that hope chest will be opened, and an improbable phantom will try to bedeck the drabness of these two people's failure-laden lives with the gold and precious stones of fulfillment. Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Castle, standing on the outskirts and about to enter the Twilight Zone."

Genies! It's going to be one of THOSE episodes.

You know the one…genie gives a person several wishes and whatever the person wishes for, is not as they expected. Been done a million times, but I still love genie stories and wishes going wrong.

Not that great, but my soft spot for genie stories made me enjoy it.

3/5

Episode 3: Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room

"This is Mr. Jackie Rhoades, age thirty-four, and where some men leave a mark of their lives as a record of their fragmentary existence on Earth, this man leaves a blot, a dirty, discolored blemish to document a cheap and undistinguished sojourn amongst his betters. What you're about to watch in this room is a strange, mortal combat between a man and himself, for in just a moment Mr. Jackie Rhoades, whose life has been given over to fighting adversaries, will find his most formidable opponent in a cheap hotel room that is in reality the outskirts of the Twilight Zone."

I almost wish this WASN'T a Twilight Zone story. A small town loser criminal is in a hotel room waiting for a new order from his boss. He is fidgety, panicky, and a coward. I almost liked the Jackie character as played by Joe Mantell. He was a loser in every way you can imagine and I almost wanted to know he got there. In a cheap hotel room, he is faced with his own self in the mirror, a braver, more confident self, who talks to him and wants to get out and take over Jackie's life. Actor Joe Mantell does a great job, I was mainly satisfied by a weak conclusion. But the acting really does the job here.

4/5

Episode 4: A Thing About Machines

"This is Mr. Bartlett Finchley, age forty-eight, a practicing sophisticate who writes very special and very precious things for gourmet magazines and the like. He's a bachelor and a recluse with few friends, only devotees and adherents to the cause of tart sophistry. He has no interests save whatever current annoyances he can put his mind to. He has no purpose to his life except the formulation of day-to-day opportunities to vent his wrath on mechanical contrivances of an age he abhors. In short, Mr. Bartlett Finchley is a malcontent, born either too late or too early in the century, and who in just a moment will enter a realm where muscles and the will to fight back are not limited to human beings. Next stop for Mr. Bartlett Finchley - the Twilight Zone."

Bad episode. Arrogant, pretentious food critic is abusive to his electronic appliances at his home until they decide to come alive and take revenge on him. I bet Stephen King would love to remake this episode. Mildly amusing for the electric razor coming down the stairs trying to look menacing.

2/5

Episode 5: The Howling Man

"The prostrate form of Mr. David Ellington, scholar, seeker of truth and, regrettably, finder of truth. A man who will shortly arise from his exhaustion to confront a problem that has tormented mankind since the beginning of time. A man who knocked on a door seeking sanctuary and found instead the outer edges of the Twilight Zone."

Best episode so far this season. Story is set before World War 2, David is on a walking tour, and during a dark and stormy night, finds himself at a monastery with a religious order of monks. David accidently meets a main imprisoned in the monastery who is claiming to be innocent and that the monks are crazy. But Brother Jerome with his long flowing robes, white beard, staff, and loud dramatic voice, claims that he has caught the devil!

Should David believe him? Would YOU believe him?

5/5

Episode 6: Eye of the Beholder

"Suspended in time and space for a moment, your introduction to Miss Janet Tyler, who lives in a very private world of darkness, a universe whose dimensions are the size, thickness, length of a swath of bandages that cover her face. In a moment we'll go back into this room and also in a moment we'll look under those bandages, keeping in mind, of course, that we're not to be surprised by what we see, because this isn't just a hospital, and patient 307 is not just a woman. This happens to be the Twilight Zone, and Miss Tyler, with you, is about to enter it."

A good idea but the twist, which is the point of all the built up, can be guessed in the first few minutes. Here, see how easy it is to figure out. A woman is in a hospital bed, bandages on her face to completely conceal how she looks. Apparently she is disfigured and they are trying medical procedures to fix her. We don't get to see her face, buuuuut, the faces of every other character in the show is also concealed. Not by wearing a mask, but filming the episode in such a way that their faces are always concealed by an object (such as a lamp) or by turning the back on the camera.

Okay, lets summarize. Episode. Woman's face is not being shown, nor is everyone else's. The woman is said to be ugly. Episode is called "Eye of the Beholder". Guess the Twilight Twist and then imagine waiting 20 minutes to reach it. Would be an amazing twist if I was 12 or if the episode was 5 minutes long. It could have been a better episode if it did not waste all of its effort on that one twist.

2/5

Episode 7: Nick of Time

" The hand belongs to Mr. Don S. Carter, male member of a honeymoon team en route across the Ohio countryside to New York City. In one moment, they will be subjected to a gift most humans never receive in a lifetime. For one penny, they will be able to look into the future. The time is now, the place is a little diner in Ridgeview, Ohio, and what this young couple doesn't realize is that this town happens to lie on the outskirts of the Twilight Zone."

My favorite episodes are the ones that you aren't even sure are supernatural stories. A young couple's car breaks down in a small town. While waiting for it to be fixed they spend some time at a coffee shop. The husband, who is superstitious by nature, notices a cheap penny fortune machine on the tables. You drop in a coin, ask it a question, and it pops out a generic answer cardboard, such as "What do YOU think?" or "It is possible". The husband is convinced that the machine's answers are actually true and the answer's can't be a coincidence, while the wife claims that it is just generic answers.

But what if it IS true?

4/5

Episode 8: The Lateness of the House

"The residence of Dr. William Loren, which is in reality a menagerie for machines. We're about to discover that sometimes the product of man's talent and genius can walk amongst us untouched by the normal ravages of time. These are Dr. Loren's robots, built to functional as well as artistic perfection. But in a moment Dr. William Loren, wife and daughter will discover that perfection is relative, that even robots have to be paid for, and very shortly will be shown exactly what is the bill."

The daughter is bored of her perfect household. The family has everything, money, comfort, and robot slaves to do their every bidding. But to the daughter this is boring, but to the parents, this is the a perfectly assembled lifestyle, manufactured servants designed to fit every need, to ensure their life is drawn up in a way to meet their own requirements.

There is a twist in it too, ooooh.

3/5

Episode 9: The Trouble with Templeton

" Pleased to present for your consideration Mr. Booth Templeton, serious and successful star of over thirty Broadway plays, who is not quite all right today. Yesterday and its memories is what he wants, and yesterday is what he'll get. Soon his years and his troubles will descend on him in an avalanche. In order not to be crushed, Mr. Booth Templeton will escape from his theater and his world and make his debut on another stage in another world that we call the Twilight Zone."

Old actor is feeling nostalgic. He misses his first love and remembers it fondly. Through the magic of the zone, the actor is transported back to those days, but finds that his love is not as warm to him as he would have remembered. His love and his best friends seem to be nonchalant with him and push him away.

Think about this. If you could visit your memories, would you prefer them to welcome you…or wouldn't be it actually be better if they push you away, out of their love, so you could go back to your own life?

3/5

Episode 10: A Most Unusual Camera

" A hotel suite that in this instance serves as a den of crime, the aftermath of a rather minor event to be noted on a police blotter, an insurance claim, perhaps a three-inch box on page twelve of the evening paper. Small addenda to be added to the list of the loot: a camera, a most unimposing addition to the flotsam and jetsam that it came with, hardly worth mentioning really, because cameras are cameras, some expensive, some purchasable at five-and-dime stores. But this camera, this one's unusual, because in just a moment we'll watch it inject itself into the destinies of three people. It happens to be a fact that the pictures that it takes can only be developed in the Twilight Zone."

A couple consists of two small time crooks. They rob a store and among all the garbage they seem to have collected is one vintage looking camera. You take a picture and the picture that comes out seems to be take of the event five minutes into the future. Fascinating, but how useful can a machine like this be? The man decides to donate it to science for the sake of humanity…

Until he notices horse racing on TV and decides to use it for betting on races instead! Light in tone and a very anti-climax ending proves this to be an amusing but ultimately unsatisfying episode.

2/5

Episode 11: The Night of the Meek

" This is Mr. Henry Corwin, normally unemployed, who once a year takes the lead role in the uniquely popular American institute, that of department-store Santa Claus in a road company version of 'The Night Before Christmas.' But in just a moment Mr. Henry Corwin, ersatz Santa Claus, will enter a strange kind of North Pole which is one part the wondrous spirit of Christmas and one part the magic that can only be found in the Twilight Zone."

Christmas episode! And in 1959, it was still too early for Christmas episodes to be dark and edgy and anti-Christmasy, so it means to a person like me who has no emotional connection to Christmas, this episode was bad. Department store Santa is a drunk wino who only wishes that for once he could be like the real Santa. So he finds a Santa bag and gives everyone the gift they please. No Twilight Zone morality lesson here so after giving gifts to everyone, not bad happens, except everyone is happy and he is also happy. Happy fucking Christmas.

2/5

Episode 12: Dust

" There was a village, built of crumbling clay and rotting wood, and it squatted ugly under a broiling sun like a sick and mangy animal wanting to die. This village had a virus, shared by its people. It was the germ of squalor, of hopelessness, of a loss of faith. For the faithless, the hopeless, the misery-laden, there is time, ample time, to engage in one of the other pursuits of men. They begin to destroy themselves."

Twilight Zone is at its best when the episode seems to be good even if it does not have any supernatural element to it. It’s the Old West, a young man is in jail, sentenced to be a hang for accidently driving over a young girl with his wagon (he was drunk). It’s the day of the sentence, the weather is good, the village is dusty, and the mob angry. The prisoner is resigned to his fate, saddened by his action, terrified of dying, but knowing he deserves it. The prisoner's father is desperate, crying, asking for his son's forgiveness, knowing that time is running out. The dead girl's parents are morose, silent. The sheriff is solemn, knowing he has a job to do but not liking it. An opportunist fat man is jolly, using the execution to sell his rope and mocking the prisoner, who when rebuffed by the sheriff, angry asks the sheriff when the day is over, who is going to cry for, the girl or the prisoner. The sheriff says, "I have tears enough for both".

For the Twilight part of it, the setting, the characters, the feel of it is all excellent.

5/5

Episode 13: Back There

"Witness a theoretical argument, Washington D.C., the present. Four intelligent men talking about an improbable thing like going back in time. A friendly debate revolving around a simple issue: could a human being change what has happened before? Interesting and theoretical because who ever heard of a man going back in time, before tonight, that is. Because this is the Twilight Zone."

A man goes back in time and finds that it’s the day that President Lincoln is to be assassinated! Oh no! Can this man from the future save the President?!?

Pointless episode. Next.

1/5

Episode 14 – The Whole Truth

“This, as the banner already has proclaimed, is Mr. Harvey Hunnicut, an expert on commerce and con jobs, a brash, bright, and larceny-loaded wheeler and dealer who, when the good lord passed out a conscience, must have gone for a beer and missed out. And these are a couple of other characters in our story: a little old man and a Model A car - but not just any old man and not just any Model A. There's something very special about the both of them. As a matter of fact, in just a few moments they'll give Harvey Hunnicut something that he's never experienced before. Through the good offices of a little magic, they will unload on Mr. Hunnicut the absolute necessity to tell the truth. Exactly where they come from is conjectural, but as to where they're heading for, this we know, because all of them - and you - are on the threshold of the Twilight Zone.”

Us sales people have such a bad reputation. Everyone thinks our job involves us lying! Well, it’s a part of it, but not the only part! Lies can take you only so far.

But the sales person, a used cars salesman, seems to have lying as part of his whole identity. He buys a car from an old man, a run-down, cheap car, hoping to make a good profit on it. The old man who is selling the car claims the car is haunted. Haunted? The salesman obviously doesn’t care.

In the Twilight Zone, people who don’t care for such things learn soon enough that they should have. Whoever owns the car is forced to always tell the truth until he sells it. A used car sales man that is forced to always tell the truth?

Bad for business!

3/5

Episode 15 – The Invadors

"This is one of the out-of-the-way places, the unvisited places, bleak, wasted, dying. This is a farmhouse, handmade, crude, a house without electricity or gas, a house untouched by progress. This is the woman who lives in the house, a woman who's been alone for many years, a strong, simple woman whose only problem up until this moment has been that of acquiring enough food to eat, a woman about to face terror which is even now coming at her from the Twilight Zone."

The thing about the Twilight Zone is that it generally never feels cheap nor does it seem like a lot of 50s and 60s science fiction when viewed today, that is cheap and cheesy. This episode is an exception. A women living in a farm is visited by a space ship and its inhabitants. Both are tiny and the woman, out of fear, tries to kill them. The episode is all about one woman versus tiny invaders, and the invaders, looking like small, cheap toys, does not give the episode the air of suspense and thrill that the episode is supposed to have and it might have had back five decades ago. But watching it today, the short twenty minutes of the episode felt long and did not justify the twist at the end.

2/5

Episode 16 – A Penny for Your Thoughts

"Mr. Hector B. Poole, resident of the Twilight Zone. Flip a coin and keep flipping it. What are the odds? Half the time it will come up heads, half the time tails. But in one freakish chance in a million, it'll land on its edge. Mr. Hector B. Poole, a bright human coin, on his way to the bank."

Suddenly a man can read thoughts!

A great ability and one that seemed like an ideal Twilight situation. Unfortunately, it proved to be very underwhelming. The man in question works at a bank. He reads thoughts, learns a lesson, gets the girl, gets promoted, and loses the ability. Eh.

2/5

Episode 17 – Twenty-Two

"This is Miss Liz Powell. She's a professional dancer and she's in the hospital as a result of overwork and nervous fatigue. And at this moment we have just finished walking with her in a nightmare. In a moment she'll wake up and we'll remain at her side. The problem here is that both Miss Powell and you will reach a point where it might be difficult to decide which is reality and which is nightmare, a problem uncommon perhaps but rather peculiar to the Twilight Zone."

Woman has a dream, insists it’s not a dream, doctor says it’s JUST A DREAM. It’s never JUST A DREAM in the Twilight Zone!

Spooky atmosphere but stories about dreams are never my thing, unless I guess David Lynch is involved.

3/5

Episode 19 – Mr Dingle, the Strong

"The uniquely American institution known as the neighborhood bar. Reading left to right are Mr. Anthony O'Toole, proprietor who waters his drinks like geraniums but who stands foursquare for peace and quiet and for booths for ladies. This is Mr. Joseph J. Callahan, an unregistered bookie, whose entire life is any sporting event with two sides and a set of odds. His idea of a meeting at the summit is any dialogue between a catcher and a pitcher with more than one man on base. And this animated citizen is every anonymous bettor who ever dropped rent money on a horse race, a prize fight, or a floating crap game, and who took out his frustrations and his insolvency on any vulnerable fellow barstool companion within arm's and fist's reach. And this is Mr. Luther Dingle, a vacuum-cleaner salesman whose volume of business is roughly that of a valet at a hobo convention. He's a consummate failure in almost everything but is a good listener and has a prominent jaw. And these two unseen gentlemen are visitors from outer space. They are about to alter the destiny of Luther Dingle by leaving him a legacy, the kind you can't hardly find no more. In just a moment, a sad-faced perennial punching bag who missed even the caboose of life's gravy train will take a short constitutional into that most unpredictable region that we refer to as the Twilight Zone."

A meek man is given super strength by aliens! He uses it to show off. That’s pretty much the whole episode.

The only good thing about the episode is the aliens. Their design is really amusing!

2/5

Episode 20 – Static

"No one ever saw one quite like that, because that's a very special sort of radio. In its day, circa 1935, its type was one of the most elegant consoles on the market. Now, with its fabric-covered speakers, its peculiar yellow dial, its serrated knobs, it looks quaint and a little strange. Mr. ed Lindsay is going to find out how strange very soon—when he tunes in to the Twilight Zone."

There seems to a lot of stories in this show about old people feeling nostalgic about their younger days. You’d think Rod Serling was 90 when he made this show.

Old man listens to his big ass radio and hears shows from decades ago.

2/5

Episode 21 – The Prime Mover

"Portrait of a man who thinks and thereby gets things done. Mr. Jimbo Cobb might be called a prime mover, a talent which has to be seen to be believed. In just a moment, he'll show his friends and you how he keeps both feet on the ground and his head in the Twilight Zone."

A compulsive gambler finds out that his best friend has a secret he never shared. The friend can move objects with his mind, a talent he always had, but hid rarely used it and doesn’t share it with people, due to having bad experiences with it back in school.

The gambler feels like he has the jackpot with this because of his friend’s talent, he can really make it big in the gambling scene! And the gambler makes a lot of money and quits while ahead!

Of course not. This is the Zone and there is a lesson in there somewhere and you can’t learn a lesson unless something goes wrong!

3/5

Episode 22 – Long Distance Call

"Portrait of a man who thinks and thereby gets things done. Mr. Jimbo Cobb might be called a prime mover, a talent which has to be seen to be believed. In just a moment, he'll show his friends and you how he keeps both feet on the ground and his head in the Twilight Zone."

A good episode after so many mediocre ones. An old woman is close to death and she knows it. She loves her five year old grandson and gets him a gift for his birthday, a toy telephone, which she says he can always use to keep in touch with her.

And on her deathbed she tells her grandson she is going away but she wishes she could take him with her. A sweet, grandmotherly gesture.

But.

The following day, the grandson rushes into the street and a car nearly hits him. And he is talking on the toy telephone insisting that he is talking to his grandmother. When she said that she wishes she could take him with her, was it something more to it?

4/5

Episode 23: A Hundred Yards over the Rim

"The year is 1847, the place is the territory of New Mexico, the people are a tiny handful of men and women with a dream. Eleven months ago, they started out from Ohio and headed west. Someone told them about a place called California, about a warm sun and a blue sky, about rich land and fresh air, and at this moment almost a year later they've seen nothing but cold, heat, exhaustion, hunger, and sickness. This man's name is Christian Horn. He has a dying eight year-old son and a heartsick wife, and he's the only one remaining who has even a fragment of the dream left. Mr. Chris Horn, who's going over the top of a rim to look for water and sustenance and in a moment will move into the Twilight Zone."

It starts off as a very simple story. It is the 1800s and a man is traveling to Pre-Gold Rush California, with his family and friends. Several wagons slowly moving through the hot, empty American desert. They are hungry, thirsty, and losing hope. The man's child is sick. The people around him want to turn back, but he is insistent. He alone wanders off to bring them back news of a spring or something but as he crosses the dune, he travels time itself, entering the future, the now of the show, 1960s.

Man out of time is a repeated story in sci-fi, but there reason this works, is biggest of the excellent acting the man played by Cliff Robertson. I'm constantly surprised by how good some of the acting in this show is, often associating sci-fi shows with mediocre acting at best. But Robertson's reaction and the way he handles the situation is shock, but from a perspective of intelligence. He alone makes this an above-average episode.

4/5

Episode 24: The Rip Van Winkle Caper

"Introducing four experts in the questionable art of crime. Mr. Farwell, expert on noxious gases, former professor with a doctorite in both chemistry and physics. Mr. Erbie, expert in mechanical engineering. Mr. Brooks, expert in the use of firearms and other weaponry. And Mr. DeCruz, expert in demolition and various forms of destruction. The time is now and the place is a mountain cave in Death Valley, U.S.A. In just a moment, these four men will utlize the services of a truck placed in cosmoline, loading with a hot heist cooled off by a century of sleep, and then take a drive into the Twilight Zone."

The plan is solid. Rob a train, take the gold, hide the gold and yourself inside a cave. Now you can't spend the gold same time, because the whole world is looking for you and the gold is hot. What to do? Use a sleeping gas to suspend your body in hibernation for 100 years, wake up after that time, and now spend the gold. What could possibly go wrong?

There is a twist at the end, but unlike some other episodes, the whole twenty minutes isn't a slow journey to the final money-shot. Even without the Twilight Twist, the episode is good, with one of the interesting parts is two of the men going into the desert, carrying two sacks full of gold. One forgot his water canteen and when thirsty, the other sells him a sip of water for one bar of gold. In the desert, dying of thirst, what value is gold to you, compared to water?

4/5

Episode 25: The Silence

" The note that this man is carrying across a club room is in the form of a proposed wager, but it's the kind of wager that comes without precedent. It stands alone in the annals of bet-making as the strangest game of chance ever offered by one man to another. In just a moment, we'll see the terms of the wager and what young Mr. Tennyson does about it. And in the process, we'll witness all parties spin a wheel of chance in a very bizarre casino called the Twilight Zone."

A twist I could not predict at all! Because the story was so good that I never thought about a twist at the end. It is an inclusive, posh club. An older gentleman is bothered by a younger man that seems to talk constantly in the club. The older man gives him a wager.

Stay in a specially prepared glass enclosed room in the club. And keep quiet for a full year. No talking, no words.

If you succeed, you get $500,000. In today's money, that's almost $3.5 million. He believes the young man, due to his character, will crack after a few weeks. A full year without talking…impossible.

What follows is two man's battle of wits, as their honor and integrity is put to the test.

5/5

Episode 26: Shadow Play

"Adam Grant, a nondescript kind of man found guilty of murder and sentenced to the electric chair. Like every other criminal caught in the wheels of justice he's scared, right down to the marrow of his bones. But it isn't prison that scares him, the long, silent nights of waiting, the slow walk to the little room, or even death itself. It's something else that holds Adam Grant in the hot, sweaty grip of fear, something worse than any punishment this world has to offer, something found only in the Twilight Zone."

This is a nightmarish version of "Groundhog Day". A man starts his day in court, he gets sentenced to death, same day, he gets electrocuted.

It starts again.

To this doomed man, it’s a nightmare he keeps repeating and can't seem to wake up from. He tries to convince everyone that in his dream world if he dies, they all disappear, so he must live. Because as the dream gets repeated, the events stay the same, but the people in the roles keep changing. There is nothing he can do, and no one he can convince. Because if a guy on death-row claims that if you execute him, the whole world will disappear, wouldn't it just seem like a desperate attempt by a man trying to escape death?

And the age old philosophical exercise. Can you know your life is not a just someone's dream? Or, Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi,

"Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn't know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi."

And Twilight Zone ending lines are always great, but there was something extra chilling about this episode, "We know that a dream can be real, but whoever thought that reality could be a dream? We exist, of course, but how, in what way? As we believe, as flesh-and-blood human beings, or are we simply parts of someone's feverish, complicated nightmare? Think about it, and then ask yourself, do you live here, in this country, in this world, or do you live instead in the Twilight Zone?"

5/5

Episode 27 – The Mind and the Matter

"A brief if frenetic introduction to Mr. Archibald Beechcroft, a child of the twentieth century, a product of the population explosion, and one of the inheritors of the legacy of progress. Mr. Beechcroft again. This time act two of his daily battle for survival. And in just a moment, our hero will begin his personal one-man rebellion against the mechanics of his age, and to do so he will enlist certain aids available only in the Twilight Zone.'

Archibald Beechcroft is a douchebag. He works in an office and he hates people. He hates them in the train and he hates them at work. He reads a book about controlling matter with his mind and realizes that by concentrating really hard, he can conjure up anything. Here is a scenario about a man that could conjure up anything and does he ask for hot chicks and money? No, he makes everyone in the world disappear because he hates people.

And of course, he gets bored. This is typical Twilight Zone cautionary tale about asking about the things you want and realizing it sucks when you get it, but really, anyone watching would know that wishing everyone away is not an excellent idea so I’m not sure who this cautionary tale is for...

2/5

Episode 28 – Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?

"Wintry February night, the present. Order of events: a phone call from a frightened woman notating the arrival of an unidentified flying object, and the check-out you've just witnessed with two state troopers verifying the event, but with nothing more enlightening to add beyond evidence of some tracks leading across the highway to a diner. You've heard of trying to find a needle in a haystack? Well, stay with us now and you'll be a part of an investigating team whose mission is not to find that proverbial needle, no, their task is even harder. They've got to find a Martian in a diner, and in just a moment you'll search with them, because you've just landed in the Twilight Zone."

A bit of “The Thing” here. A small coffee shop in a little town at night. A bus driver and his passengers are resting up and waiting for a bridge to be checked before they move on. Two police officers come in because they have been investigating a noise. The outcome of their investigation is that an unidentified flying object has landed in the parts outside the town. The footprints take it to the coffee shop. The bus driver says he had six passengers, but wait, counting heads, it seems there were seven people on the bus. The bus driver claims he didn’t see who was on the bus because of the heavy snow.

Which means, one of them is a Martian and they (and we!) have to find out which one. Full of paranoia and finger pointing. I love paranoia!

3/5

Episode 29 – The Obsolete Man

"You walk into this room at your own risk, because it leads to the future, not a future that will be but one that might be. This is not a new world, it is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advances, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like every one of the superstates that preceded it, it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace. This is Mr. Romney Wordsworth, in his last forty-eight hours on Earth. He's a citizen of the State but will soon have to be eliminated, because he is built out of flesh and because he has a mind. Mr. Romney Wordsworth, who will draw his last breaths in the Twilight Zone."

Garbage episode. It’s a future about an autocratic, tyrannical government (aren’t all futures like that?). These guys don’t like religion and book reading and are basically cold and mean. Mixture of Nazism and communism, but then again, it was the 60s when this episode was made.

The Obsolete Man in question claims he is a librarian and is being sentenced to death. Episode is extremely pro-religion, so basically, takes one dogma and replaces with another without realizing the irony.

1/5

Season 2 Rating: 3/5