The Twilight Zone: TOS [Season 1] (1959)

In Iran, with a hard disk full of films, shows, and anime, but no sweet 32inch TV, but the only visual device is my 10" screen netbook. I don't want to watch my films on a small screen, but don't really that interested in getting a TV at the moment. So I figure, I can watch "The Twilight Zone: TOS" on the small screen, since people in 1959 probably watched it in a 10 inch screen! Well, given that its widescreen and Twilight Zone is on 4:3, my height of the monitor is probably only 4-5 inchs.

Still.

Anyway, this thread will contain brief reviews of each episode, like I did with X-Files!

Episode 1: Where is Everybody?

“The place is here, the time is now, and the journey into the shadows that we're about to watch could be our journey.”

You have to wonder what the first “The Twilight Zone” episode will be. I would expect today a series would not start with a story like “Where is Everybody?”. If you want show off a new series, I do not think studios would opt to have the first episode be about a man walking into an empty town. One actor and barely any dialogue? If anything, if a show promised to be about strange science-fiction stories, the show would start off with lots of things happening in the first episode, so the audience is promised a taste of the money the studio is going to throw around for the show.

But not here. And what a start! Instantly and with just one episode, I’m hooked. A man is a town without any people. He doesn’t know who he is, but he did not exactly wake up without any memories, he became aware he was walking into town without any memories. In the town, there is no one, but there are hints of presence, such as a ringing phone, a burning cigarette in an ashtray, etc.

And as gripping as the mystery is, it is the directing and score that takes it to a level no other anthology series ever has, because it is at a level of an actual feature film, not just a TV show. There are several scenes that are astounding. In one scene, the man walks into an empty police station, then into an empty jail cell, and while inside, he says in frustration, sorrow, and fear, “Time to wake up now.”, he squeezes his eyes tight, “Time to wake up now!”. He is facing the wall, inside the cell, and the shadow of the wall in front shows the prison door slowly closing. He opens his eyes, sees this shadow, stares at it, while it slowly seems to close, and just as it is about to close, he rushes out. There is no one trying to lock the door, no actual threat, the door was just swinging shut, but while watching it, you think, what’s worse than being stuck in an empty town? How about locked in its prison cell? And that’s just one scene!

5/5

Episode 2: One for the Angels

“Street scene: summer. The present. Man on a sidewalk named Lew Bookman, age sixtyish. Occupation: pitchman. Lew Bookman, a fixture of the summer, a rather minor component to a hot July, a nondescript, commonplace little man whose life is a treadmill built out of sidewalks. In just a moment, Lew Bookman will have to concern himself with survival, because as of three o'clock this hot July afternoon he'll be stalked by Mr. Death.”

The second episode of the series fully changes its style. The first was suspenseful and gripping, the second is light-hearted, comical, and a bit cheesy. Lou Bookman (Ed Wynn) is one day visited by Death (Murray Hamilton), a well-dressed, handsome, but bored man. Death informs Lou that he is going to die at midnight but after a bit of haggling and nagging, Lou realizes there is a loophole in dying. Death can’t take him away until he fulfills his life-long desire (if only such a loophole existed, we’d all be immortals). Lou, being a street peddler, claims he always wanted to make The Pitch that would make him proud. Death agrees and Lou goes ah-ha! He feels he has outplayed Death because he has no intention of trying to make the perfect pitch.

Oh buuuut, if Death doesn’t claim Lou, he has to take a replacement. A small girl. And now Lou has until midnight to change his mind and take him instead…he has to make the Perfect Pitch.

3/5

Episode 3: Mr Denton on Doomsday

“Portrait of a town drunk named Al Denton. This is a man who's begun his dying early - a long, agonizing route through a maze of bottles. Al Denton, who would probably give an arm or a leg or a part of his soul to have another chance, to be able to rise up and shake the dirt from his body and the bad dreams that infest his consciousness. In the parlance of the times, this is a peddler, a rather fanciful-looking little man in a black frock coat. And this is the third principal character of our story. Its function: perhaps to give Mr. Al Denton his second chance.”

“The Twilight Zone” really is moving in all directions. Now we move back in time to the Wild West. Denton (Dan Duryea) is the town drunk, being made fun by everyone. He seems to have a dark past, wherein he was the fastest gunslinger in town and people from all around would come to him to challenge him, always losing. Denton’s constant killings because of the result of being challenged to a gun fight got to him and he lost himself to drinking.

A mysterious stranger called Henry J. Fate gives him another chance at life by secretly leaving a gun beside his side and controlling his aiming to shoot the gun of a bully’s hand. Suddenly, he is off the drinks…but the gunslingers are back to challenge him. Did Fate give him another chance at life or another chance at failure?

3/5

Episode 4: The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine

“Picture of a woman looking at a picture. Movie great of another time, once-brilliant star in a firmament no longer a part of the sky, eclipsed by the movement of earth and time. Barbara Jean Trenton, whose world is a projection room, whose dreams are made out of celluloid. Barbara Jean Trenton, struck down by hit-and-run years and lying on the unhappy pavement, trying desperately to get the license number of fleeting fame.”

Take the film, “Sunset Blvd.”, and dump it in the Twilight Zone and you’d get “The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine”.

The series has never really been about the supernatural and more about the human condition. Except in this episode, about a past-her-prime actress, the human condition is almost all there is, without the supernatural, except for a dissatisfying Twilight Twist that seems added to the episode just to make it fit in the series. Otherwise, it’s a half hour episode for people who want a shorter version of “Sunset Blvd.”

2/5

Episode 5: Walking Distance

“Martin Sloan, age thirty-six. Occupation: vice-president, ad agency, in charge of media. This is not just a Sunday drive for Martin Sloan. He perhaps doesn't know it at the time, but it's an exodus. Somewhere up the road he's looking for sanity. And somewhere up the road, he'll find something else.”

A middle-aged man has left New York due to stress and the burden of a big city work life and drives away, arriving at the town he lived more than two decades ago as a kid. He is nostalgic for the past, so he visits the town, to see if there is anything that reminds him of better, more innocent days.

It seems everything reminds him, because the town has not changed, and he has stepped back in time. An absolutely amazing story that is tragic and moving, with no time travelling adventure nonsense, just a deep sense of loss to know that we have to Move On and leave the past. The episode is about our nostalgia and about our constant resentment of the present, our desire to not only have a chance to relive our past, but to tell our past self to enjoy it more. The episode reminds me of a Khalil Gibran line,
“The bitterest thing in our today's sorrow is the memory of our yesterday's joy.

5/5

Episode 6: Escape Clause

“You're about to meet a hypochondriac. Witness Mr. Walter Bedeker, age forty-four, afraid of the following: death, disease, other people, germs, draft, and everything else. He has one interest in life, and that's Walter Bedeker. One preoccupation: the life and well-being of Walter Bedeker. One abiding concern about society: that if Walter Bedeker should die, how will it survive without him?”

A man makes a deal with the devil to live forever in exchange for his soul.

Obviously, deals with the devil never go as planned, but the episode does not seem to show it well. The man initially was scared of dying, so when he gets his wish, he instantly hates it. I knew he was going to hate it, considering it always happens in stories like this, but I expected there to be a better transition. In only a few minutes, he goes from getting his wish, to getting bored, because he can’t be killed. And the Twilight Twist makes no sense. The only saving grace of the episode is that it is amusing and the line deliveries are sometimes funny.

2/5

Escape 7: The Lonely

“Witness if you will a dungeon, made out of mountains, salt flats and sand that stretch to infinity. The dungeon has an inmate: James A. Corry. And this is his residence: a metal shack. An old touring car that squats in the sun and goes nowhere - for there is nowhere to go. For the record let it be known that James A. Corry is a convicted criminal placed in solitary confinement. Confinement in this case stretches as far as the eye can see, because this particular dungeon is on an asteroid nine million miles from the Earth. Now witness if you will a man's mind and body shrivelling in the sun, a man dying of loneliness.”

People in the future must have lots of money, because instead of sending criminals to jail, they drop them off in a barren asteroid (one person to an asteroid if I’m not mistaken). Our guy has no company except for a few minutes every few months when someone comes to drop in a few goods. Lonely life, real lonely life, until a kindly crew smuggles him a female robot that looks like the real thing! Also, because this is the 50s, robot is pronounced “robet” or something.

A lot of episodes in this series seem to focus on loneliness, which is something I am interested in. A lot of our activities, social gatherings, relationships, internet, and sex, are just our way of somehow pushing away our loneliness, so when the only source of companionship is a machine, it is not unlikely that one can’t resist it.

4/5

Escape 8: Time Enough At Last

“Witness Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers. A bookish little man whose passion is the printed page but who is conspired against by a bank president and a wife and a world full of tongue-cluckers and the unrelenting hands of a clock. But in just a moment Mr. Bemis will enter a world without bank presidents or wives or clocks or anything else. He'll have a world all to himself without anyone.”

I think this is probably the most famous Twilight episode. I hadn’t seen it, but I knew it instantly when it started, since I have seen it parodied so many times. I won’t spoil it for you, in case you haven’t seen the parodied or ever heard of it before, because I wish I didn’t, because it probably has the best Twilight Twist ever. But here is a bit of info to see if you go, aha, I have seen it: Nerdy man likes reading books but he is prevented from reading books by his boss and cuntish wife. Until something Bad happens, which has a silver lining which….

4/5

Episode 9: Perchance to Dream

“Twelve o'clock noon. An ordinary scene, an ordinary city. Lunchtime for thousands of ordinary people. To most of them, this hour will be a rest, a pleasant break in the day's routine. To most, but not all. To Edward Hall, time is an enemy, and the hour to come is a matter of life and death.”

The first half of the episode is excellent. A man comes in a psychiatrist’s office and tells him that he can’t sleep, because he will die if he does. He starts explaining the reason, with some excellent monologues that happened in shows and movies but died decades ago. There is a part about where he says that his imagination plays tricks on him, and even though he knows it isn’t real, the more he thinks about it, the more real it becomes, and like a psychological pain in one’s arm, the fact that one knowing it isn’t real, doesn’t make one less afraid. I can attest to that, being a logical, scientific person, but still afraid of the dark.

The second half, not so good.

3/5

Episode 10: Judgment Night

“Her name is the S.S. Queen of Glasgow. Her registry: British. Gross tonnage: five thousand. Age: indeterminate. At this moment she's one day out of Liverpool, her destination New York. Duly recorded on this ship's log is the sailing time, course to destination, weather conditions, temperature, longitude and latitude. But what is never recorded in a log is the fear that washes over a deck like fog and ocean spray. Fear like the throbbing strokes of engine pistons, each like a heartbeat, parceling out every hour into breathless minutes of watching, waiting and dreading. For the year is 1942, and this particular ship has lost its convoy. It travels alone like an aged blind thing groping through the unfriendly dark, stalked by unseen periscopes of steel killers. Yes, the Queen of Glasgow is a frightened ship, and she carries with her a premonition of death.”

It is World War 2, on a passenger ship, and a man is on board, but he does not really remember how he got there. There are some clues as the Twilight Twist. He mysteriously knows a lot about German submarine, has a hunch that the ship will be attacked, and has a nazi cap in his luggage. Oh yes, almost obvious, and with a twist so obvious, the episode is not really fun at all.

2/5

Episode 11: And When the Sky Was Opened

“Her name: X-20. Her type: an experimental interceptor. Recent history: a crash landing in the Mojave Desert after a thirty-one hour flight nine hundred miles into space. Incidental data: the ship, with the men who flew her, disappeared from the radar screen for twenty-four hours. But the shrouds that cover mysteries are not always made out of a tarpaulin, as this man will soon find out on the other side of a hospital door.”

This episode deals with one of my most unnecessary fears. The idea that reality would change so that something you knew does not exist anymore and you are the only person to know that it was ever there. In this episode, two men survive a spaceship crash. Two men? Well, the whole world says so, but one of the survivor insists that there were actually three of them and they returned as three, but one of them suddenly disappeared from existence, and reality altered itself to accommodate to this change.

In this new reality, the disappeared man never existed, his parents don’t have a son, and newspaper articles about the “three men” have changed to “two men”. One person knows and there is no way for him to prove it.

4/5

Episode 12: What You Need

“You're looking at Mr. Fred Renard, who carries on his shoulder a chip the size of the national debt. This is a sour man, a friendless man, a lonely man, a grasping, compulsive, nervous man. This is a man who has lived thirty-six undistinguished, meaningless, pointless, failure-laden years and who at this moment looks for an escape - any escape, any way, anything, anybody - to get out of the rut. And this little old man is just what Mr. Renard is waiting for.”

An old man selling crap like shoe laces and matches sometimes gives people small things that he claims they need, really need, and later on, it seems the old man was right, it WAS something they needed.

Fred notices this and figures that he needs lots of stuff. After pushing the old man, he realizes the old man sees in the future, and gives people small items that are off help to them in the near future. But the old man does not advertise his gift and uses it rarely but Fred bullies him in reading his future and giving him the things that he needs. And he is not satisfied…

Episode doesn’t have many surprises. It is obvious from the beginning that Fred is going to get it for being such a dick to the old man.

2/5

Episode 13: The Four of Us Are Dying

“His name is Arch Hammer. He's thirty-six years old. He's been a salesman, a dispatcher, a truck driver, a con man, a bookie, and a part-time bartender. This is a cheap man, a nickel and dime man, with a cheapness that goes past the suit and the shirt; a cheapness of mind, a cheapness of taste, a tawdry little shine on the seat of his conscience, and a dark-room squint at a world whose sunlight has never gotten through to him. But Mr. Hammer has a talent, discovered at a very early age. This much he does have. He can make his face change. He can twitch a muscle, move a jaw, concentrate on the cast of his eyes, and he can change his face. He can change it into anything he wants. Mr. Archie Hammer, jack of all trades, has just checked in at three-eighty a night, with two bags, some newspaper clippings, a most odd talent, and a master plan to destroy some lives.”

Eh. A man can change his face so he looks at the newspaper obituaries, changes to their face, and visits the dead person’s contacts, trying to gain something out of reliving the life for a short period.

Such trickery in the world of Twilight Zone never ends well, but one would hope it would not end well in a more interesting and meaningful manner.

But what this episode DID make me think about was a scam. I wonder if a person could actually look at newspaper clippings for people’s obituaries and then try to sort-of harass them by pretending to be spirits of the disease by making mysterious calls, writing stuff on walls, etc, and then sending them a psychic to speak with the dead and make shit load of money.

2/5

Episode 14: Third from the Sun

“Quitting time at the plant. Time for supper now. Time for families. Time for a cool drink on a porch. Time for the quiet rustle of leaf-laden trees that screen out the moon. And underneath it all, behind the eyes of the men, hanging invisible over the summer night, is a horror without words. For this is the stillness before storm. This is the eve of the end.”

It’s the 50s, so nuclear threat is going to constantly come up in science-fiction stories. A man working for the government has heard the rumors that they are going to fire their nukes at the enemy and they expect the enemy to retaliate. The man expects nuclear warfare to commence in 48 hours, so with the help of a friend, they are secretly hoping to leave for space with their families and go to another planet, to escape the destruction of their home and the whole planet.

The only good part of the story is the Twilight Twist, everything else up to “ohhhhhh” final scene is boring.

2/5

Episode 15: I Shot an Arrow into the Air

“Her name is the Arrow One. She represents four and a half years of planning, preparation and training, and a thousand years of science and mathematics and the projected dreams and hopes of not only a nation but a world. She is the first manned aircraft into space. And this is the countdown, the last five seconds before man shot an arrow into the air.”

The first space rocket into space crashes and the crew find themselves on a barren landscape. Most of them are dead, leaving three survivors, of which one of the man’s surviving instinct is in so much overdrive that he is willing to fight and steal water from the rest, just to live a few more days. Man’s struggle for existence is important, but this episode has the unfortunate, traditional manner of story-telling where the man who wants to live at whatever cost is shown to be bad, morally corrupt, and a coward, while the other two are ethical. In an early scene, one of the crew members is dying, expected to die in a few hours. The bad survivor claims that it is futile to waste water on the dying man while the two good survivors say that they would give him water. I side with the douchy guy because frankly, it makes survival sense. It has a neat “oooh” ending too, but frankly, it was kind of obvious.

3/5

Episode 16: The Hitch-Hiker

“Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Gibbs, three days and two nights, all expenses paid, at a Las Vegas hotel, won by virtue of Mrs. Gibbs's knack with a phrase. But unbeknownst to either Mr. or Mrs. Gibbs is the fact that there's a prize in their package neither expected nor bargained for. In just a moment one of them will succumb to an illness worse than any virus can produce, a most inoperative, deadly, life-shattering affliction known as the fever.”

After a few mediocre episodes, this episode proved to be fantastic. A woman is doing a road trip by herself and at every stop, she notices the same hitchhiker. The hitchhiker doesn’t look like a threat, he’s a small mousy man, but he is there everywhere she goes, and she starts feeling discomfort and slowly the discomfort turns to terror.

The strength of the episode is the way the episode is built. The guy doesn’t do anything, he is just there, always standing at the edge of the road, thumps up, asking her for a ride. What does he want? Who is he? And with the women occasionally doing a voice-over, it becomes a strong, tense episode.

5/5

Episode 17: The Hitch-Hiker

“Her name is Nan Adams. She's twenty-seven years old. Her occupation: buyer at a New York department store, at present on vacation, driving cross-country to Los Angeles, California, from Manhattan. Minor incident on Highway 11 in Pennsylvania, perhaps to be filed away under accidents you walk away from. But from this moment on, Nan Adams's companion on a trip to California will be terror; her route - fear; her destination - quite unknown.”

An older couple have won an all-expense trip to Las Vegas. At the casino, the women excitedly wants to play, but her husband, a rigid conservative, looks down at the casino gambling and aside from allowing her to drop one nickel in a slot machine, he refuses her to play. But when a drunk man drops a coin for him to a slot machine, he gets The Fever and instantly gets addicted.

It’s a great episode about the power of addiction to gambling. The episode’s only flaw is its weak ending, but aside from that, throughout the episode, the man’s struggle with the slot machine is fantastic.

4/5

Episode 18 – The Last Flight

"Witness Flight Lieutenant William Terrance Decker, Royal Flying Corps, returning from a patrol somewhere over France. The year is 1917. The problem is that the Lieutenant is hopelessly lost. Lieutenant Decker will soon discover that a man can be lost not only in terms of maps and miles, but also in time, and time in this case can be measured in eternities."

A British pilot in World War 1 flies threw a white cloud and lands in…an army base in America? Decades after the war? Obviously, he is freaked out and obviously he isn’t necessarily believed.

Like most “The Twilight Zone” episodes, the time travel concept is just an excuse to explore the real story, and that is a man’s guilt over his cowardice and his sudden realization that he has to combat it, because through his understand of time travel paradox, he understands that he has to go back in time and do something that he normally would not do, but if he fails to do it, the future that he is in will be negativity affected. Once we are faced with the positive consequence of our courage, can we than be brave?

3/5

Episode 19 – The Purple Testament

"Infantry platoon, U.S. Army, Philippine Islands, 1945. These are the faces of the young men who fight. As if some omniscient painter had mixed a tube of oils that were at one time earth brown, dust gray, blood red, beard black, and fear - yellow white, and these men were the models. For this is the province of combat and these are the faces of war."

I guess it’s not impossible to have a power in “The Twilight Zone” and have it actually be useful. Imagine suddenly having this ability. Leading a platoon in World War 2 and out of the blue, gaining a new talent that allows you to see a strange light on a certain soldiers’ faces. You then realize that these same soldiers get to die.

What can you do? Aside from the guilt and the psychological pain of seeing death on people’s faces before they die. The only thing worse than having the young men under your command die is probably knowing they will die and not being able to do anything about it.

4/5

Episode 20 - Elegy

"The time is the day after tomorrow. The place: a far corner of the universe. The cast of characters: three men lost amongst the stars, three men sharing the common urgency of all men lost - they're looking for home. And in a moment they'll find home, not a home that is a place to be seen but a strange, unexplainable experience to be felt."

A group of astronauts crash their spaceship in an unknown meteor only to realize that, for some reason, the air is exactly like that of earth. They then come across something even stranger. It LOOKS like Earth, with buildings and locations, except for some small difference. While the astronaut’s era is in the future, the buildings in this meteor seems from the 50s.

There is also another small difference. The people that they see around seem to be frozen, no motions. They insist they are not statues but living people, motionless, stuck in the middle of an action.

Multiple theories are offered by the crew members, but there something they are all sure about. It’s creepy. Damn creepy.

3/5

Episode 21: Mirror Image

"Millicent Barnes, age twenty-five, young woman waiting for a bus on a rainy November night. Not a very imaginative type is Miss Barnes, not given to undue anxiety or fears, or for that matter even the most temporal flights of fancy. Like most young career women, she has a generic classification as a, quote, girl with a head on her shoulders, end of quote. All of which is mentioned now because in just a moment the head on Miss Barnes's shoulders will be put to a test. Circumstances will assault her sense of reality and a chain of nightmares will put her sanity on a block. Millicent Barnes, who in one minute will wonder is she's going mad."

A woman is waiting for a train at a terminal. She goes to us the clerk when the train will come and the clerk rudely tells her to wait, as she keeps asking.

She keeps asking? But the woman has asked only once!

But then her luggage seems to shift places. The woman in the restroom also seems to claim that she saw her before. And in the mirror, the woman sees herself sitting behind her.

Panicked, scared, the woman figures that there is another alternative dimension, and for some reason, the person that is she in that other dimension is trying to enter her dimension and take over her life. Interesting to watch, but the episode does not really know where to go with the concept.

3/5

Episode 22: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street

"Maple Street, U.S.A. Late summer. A tree-lined little world of front porch gliders, barbecues, the laughter of children, and the bell of an ice-cream vendor. At the sound of the roar and the flash of light, it will be precisely 6:43pm on Maple Street. This is Maple Street on a late Saturday afternoon. Maple Street, in the last calm and reflective moment before the monsters came."

Occupants of a small town see a meteor pass the sky. A while later, everything stops working in the town, electricity, cars, phone. The town folks are concerned and frightened, but the seed of doubt and fear is planted by a young boy that claims that he has read a similar story in his comic book. The meteor has brought aliens and a family in the town is actually part of the aliens, but only pretending to be human.

The towns people laugh it off but they start suspecting their neighbors. Fear increases fear, like a vicious cycle, once the first push is made, the first question is asked, things start going wrong. Slowly, the public becomes an angry mob, something that is all too realistic in a world that has seen normal, everyday people turn into irrational creatures once a light is ignited among them.

4/5

Episode 23: A World of Difference

"You're looking at a tableau of reality, things of substance, of physical material: a desk, a window, a light. These things exist and have dimension. Now this is Arthur Curtis, age thirty-six, who also is real. He has flesh and blood, muscle and mind. But in just a moment we will see how thin a line separates that which we assume to be real with that manufactured inside of a mind."

Arthur Curtis is having a normal day. He goes to office, talks to his secretary, settles down on his chair, and then hears something. He looks around and he realizes he is on a film set, people are directing him, and everyone is calling him Gerry Reagan, an actor that everyone seems to claiming is only playing the life of Arthur Curtis.

Arthur, or Gerry, is confused and lost. He insists he is Arthur the businessman but everyone around him claims he is only Gerry the actor merely playing Arthur.

It is a frightening concept, to suddenly, without a warning, have everything we thought we knew changed. If everyone around you insists you are not who you think you are, then who are you really?

5/5

Episode 24: Long Live Walter Jameson

"You're looking at Act One, Scene One, of a nightmare, one not restricted to witching hours or dark, rainswept nights. Professor Walter Jameson, popular beyond words, who talks of the past as if it were the present, who conjures up the dead as if they were alive. In the view of this man, Professor Samuel Kittridge, Walter Jameson has access to knowledge that couldn't come out of a volume of history, but rather from a book on black magic, which is to say that this nightmare begins at noon."

What's worse than the fear of death, of dying, of not being able to live forever? Dr Sam accuses his younger friend Dr Walter that the latter is ageless. Walter agrees, he has lived for thousands of years, but worse than dying is living, is watching everyone you love slowly die and others that you eventually get to love, to also die.

But if it's so bad, why not end it? Why not kill yourself? Because a man that used to be too scared of dying, never really lets go of that fear, throughout it all, even as he dreams of shooting himself in the head, he retains his cowardice. His fear of death remains greater than his hatred of living.

4/5

Episode 25: People Are Alike All Over

"You are looking at a species of flimsy little two-legged animal with extremely small heads whose name is Man. Warren Marcusson, age thirty-five. Samuel A. Conrad, age thirty-one... They're taking a highway into space, Man unshackling himself and sending his tiny, grouping fingers up into the unknown. Their destination is Mars, and in just a moment we'll land there with them."

Two astronauts are the first people to travel to Mars. One of them is the brains of the group while the other seems to be the pilot. The pilot is fearless and confident, the scientist scared of the Martians he will meet there. The pilot insists that there is nothing to fear, because inside his heart, he believes that people are alike all over.

When the spaceship crashes and the pilot dies, only the scientist is left to come face to face with the Martians. When he is faced to them, he realizes that they look and speak just like humans. To the scientist, the pilot's prediction is confirmed. People do seem to alike all over. But, and in the Twilight Zone there is always a but, while we might fear things that are different from us, however, isn't it sometimes scarier when we are faced with a group that is actually like humans?

3/5

Episode 26: Execution

"Commonplace, if somewhat grim, unsocial event known as a necktie party. The guest of dishonor a cowboy named Joe Caswell, just a moment away from a rope, a short dance several feet off the ground, and then the dark eternity of all evil men. Mr. Joe Caswell, who, when the good Lord passed out a conscience, a heart, a feeling for fellow men, must have been out for a beer and missed out. Mr. Joe Caswell, in the last quiet moment of a violent life."

A man in America Old West is a criminal, murderer, and is in the process of being hanged. He has no regrets and no fears. Noose around his neck, he is dropped, but suddenly, he is gone.

Scene change. The killer is now in the present. Apparently, a scientist has pulled him out of time using a time machine, the killer being the world's first time traveler. Forgetting about the fact that world's first time traveler probably has some sort of paradox in it somewhere, a deeper question is if it’s the first ever time traveler incident, why is the scientist conducting the experiment alone, in a small office? You'd expect the scientific community to be more interested in this.

There exists another concern in my mind. The killer lies about his origin and does not tell him that he used to be a murderer and about to be hanged. The scientist looks at the rope marks on his neck and thinking on it, later confronts the killer about the marks and his correct guess. The killer is put on the defensive, but the scientist pushes forward, finally claiming that not only will he have to send the killer back, but send him back to the moment of him being hanged. Is it a surprise then that the killer attacks the scientist? What kind of super-smart IQ scientist tells a 19th century murderer that he will send him back to his death and not expect a fight from the man. Nerds, good at science stuff, stupid at everything else!

2/5

Episode 27: The Big Tall Wish

"In this corner of the universe, a prizefighter named Bolie Jackson, one hundred eighty-three pounds and an hour and a half away from a comeback at St. Nick's Arena. Mr. Bolie Jackson, who, by the standards of his profession is an aging, over-the-hill relic of what was, and who now sees a reflection of a man who has left too many years before too many screaming people. Mr. Bolie Jackson, who might do well to look for some gentle magic in the hard-surfaced glass that stares back at him."

This is the first Zone episode focusing on African-American characters and in 1960 slightly groundbreaking. Rod Sterling doesn't even have an African-American episode just so he can focus on racism or black issues or any of that. The episode, about an aging boxer, could very well have been an episode with white characters. Anyway, pushing the black thing aside, let's talk about the story. The boxer, aging, past his glory, has a fight that he could probably not win. A small boy, who is his neighbor's child and whom he has befriended, claims that he will make a wish for him. The boxer doesn't believe him, but when the wish changes the outcome of the match and the boy insists it was due to his wish, the boxer refuses to believe him. But if you don't believe in something, it does not exist…

"Little Boys. Little boys with their heads filled up with dreams. When do they find out, Frances? When do they suddenly find out that there aint any magic? When does somebody push their face down on the sidewalk and say to them, "Hey little boy, it's concrete. That's what the world's made out of, concrete." When do they find out that you can wish your life away?"

3/5

Episode 28: A Nice Place to Visit

"Portrait of a man at work, the only work he's ever done, the only work he knows. His name is Henry Francis Valentine, but he calls himself "Rocky", because that's the way his life has been-rocky and perilous and uphill at a dead run all the way. He's tired now, tired of running or wanting, of waiting for the breaks that come to others but never to him, never to Rocky Valentine. A scared, angry little man. He thinks it's all over now but he's wrong. For Rocky Valentine, it's just the beginning."

The Twilight Twist is so obvious from early on that watching the episode is just a process of waiting for it to happen. A crook gets shot by the police, he wakes up to find a white suited man claiming he is his guide and that he will provide the crook everything he ever wanted. The crook gets a huge apartment, with lots of money, hot women, and wins at every game. He must be in heaven! Buuuuut, obviously, he isn't.

The moral of the story is that if you had everything you ever wanted, you'd get bored, and eventually it would be hell. That's the twist. That getting everything you ever wanted is not heaven, it is hell. Good point, but bad execution.

2/5

Episode 29: Nightmare as a Child

"Month of November, hot chocolate, and a small cameo of a child's face, imperfect only in its solemnity. And these are the improbable ingredients to a human emotion, an emotion, say, like fear. But in a moment this woman, Helen Foley, will realize fear. She will understand what are the properties of terror. A little girl will lead her by the hand and walk with her into a nightmare."

Children acting solemn in movies and shows always freak me out a bit. Unlike grown-ups, children acting off is difficult to handle. Society has ingrained in us that children are harmless and need to be protecting, so how do you handle a situation when a child does not seem as innocent as you would like them to be?

A woman talks to a child in her apartment, assuming the child is her neighbor’s daughter. But there is something strange about the child…not only does she sound solemn and morbid, but the little girl knows details about the woman’s personality and history that a random stranger, much less a child, should not know about. Who IS this child? Wait for the Twist!

3/5

Episode 30: A Stop at Willoughby

"This is Gart Williams, age thirty-eight, a man protected by a suit of armor all held together by one bolt. Just a moment ago, someone removed the bolt, and Mr. Williams's protection fell away from him and left him a naked target. He's been cannonaded this afternoon by all the enemies of his life. His insecurity has shelled him, his sensitivity has straddled him with humiliation, his deep-rooted disquiet about his own worth has zeroed in on him, landed on target, and blown him apart. Mr. Gart Williams, ad agency exec, who in just a moment will move into the Twilight Zone - in a desperate search for survival."

The best Twilight episodes are the ones that deal with everyday concerns. A businessman is tired of his life. He is under a lot of pressure at work due to his boss and even more pressure at him due to his wife. From an outsider view, this businessman is probably a success. He is doing holding an executive position at a prominent ad agency, but his material success is not the key to the man’s happiness. He feels like he is not made for this time and in his naps, he dreams of another place, a little town, hundred years back, called Willoughby. This little town never existed, but in his dreams, the man wishes he lived there instead of the present.

It is something that I can relate to. In my fantasies, like the businessman, I sometimes dream of an alternative time and place, of peace and serenity, and a desire to step out of this life and into my made-up fantasy life…

4/5

Episode 31: The Chaser

"Mr. Roger Shackleforth. Age: youthful twenties. Occupation: being in love. Not just in love, but madly, passionately, illogically, miserably, all-consumingly in love, with a young woman named Leila who has a vague recollection of his face and even less than a passing interest. In a moment you'll see a switch, because Mr. Roger Shackleforth, the young gentleman so much in love, will take a short but very meaningful journey into the Twilight Zone"

One of the morals that is repeated several times in this show is, be careful what you wish for. A young man is smitten by a girl that ignores him. He is introduced to a mysterious place where a professor sells potions, all kinds of potions.

His love-remover costs 1,000 dollars (I think that’s like 9,000 dollars in today’s money), but why would the man need that? Who would pay so much money for something like that? Instead he’d rather pay the cheap cost of the love potion, costing only 1 dollar.

And like all good salesmen, the professor has priced it like that for a reason. He knows once a man gets the full, complete, and unconditional love of a woman, he’ll pay anything to get rid of it…

3/5

Episode 32: A Passage for Trumpet

"Joey Crown, musician with an odd, intense face, whose life is a quest for impossible things like flowers in concrete or like trying to pluck a note of music out of the air and put it under glass to treasure... Joey Crown, musician with and odd, intense face, who in a moment will try to leave the Earth and discover the middle ground, the place we call the Twilight Zone."

Trumpet player is having a bad life. He is an alcoholic, has no friends, and no job. Sells his trumpet, commits suicide, and finds himself to be a ghost. Meets someone, gets a second chance, episode ends. Pretty much pointless episode. Would have been worse if it was not carried so well. The trumpet player, with his moody sullen disposition and voice, adds a certain depression atmosphere to the episode.

2/5

Episode 33: Mr Bevis

"In the parlance of the twentieth century, this is an oddball. His name is James B.W. Bevis, and his tastes lean toward stuffed animals, zither music, professional football, Charles Dickens, moose heads, carnivals, dogs, children, and young ladies. Mr. Bevis is accident prone, a little vague, a little discombooberated, with a life that possesses all the security of a floating crap game. But this can be said of our Mr. Bevis: without him, without his warmth, without his kindness, the world would be a considerably poorer place, albeit perhaps a little saner. Should it not be obvious by now, James B.W. Bevis is a fixture in his own private, optimistic, hopeful little world, a world which has long ceased being surprised by him. James B.W. Bevis, on whom Dame Fortune will shortly turn her back, but not before she gives him a paste in the mouth. Mr. James B.W. Bevis, just one block away from the Twilight Zone"

Most everyone likes Mr Bevis. He is an eccentric, from his clothes to his mannerism. But at the same time, he is not exactly a success by society’s standards. He keeps getting fired from his job due to his eccentricity and can’t pay his rent. While he is always optimistic and friendly, he finds himself out of a job and kicked out his apartment.

And then he gets a visit from his Guardian Angel, who changes his life around. The angel changes Bevis’ life, gives him better clothes, better car, and a controls his eccentricity. This changes everything. He gets to keep his apartment and job, but at what cost? Is a normal life and being a respectable member of society the kind of life Bevis wants to lead?

3/5

Episode 34: The After Hours

"Express elevator to the ninth floor of a department store, carrying Miss Marsha White on a most prosaic, ordinary, run of the mill errand. Miss Marsha White on the ninth floor, specialties department, looking for a gold thimble. The odds are she'll find it, but there are even better odds that she'll find something else, because this isn't just a department store. This happens to be the Twilight Zone."

I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable when looking at mannequins. In this episode, a woman talks to a weird sales person at a department store but later on sees the same woman as a mannequin…

My favorite aspect of the episode is the atmosphere. The woman, locked in the department store at night, surrounded by mannequins, hearing voices, and running around scared and crying, creates a scary atmosphere, one of the best in the show so far.

4/5

Episode 35: The Mighty Casey

"What you're looking at is a ghost, once alive but now deceased. Once upon a time, it was a baseball stadium that housed a major-league ballclub known as the Hoboken Zephyrs. Now it houses nothing but memories and a wind that stirs in the high grass of what was once an outfield, a wind that sometimes bears a faint, ghostly resemblance to the roar of a crowd that once sat here. We're back in time now, when the Hoboken Zephyrs were still a part of the National League and this mausoleum of memories was an honest-to-Pete stadium. But since this is strictly a story of make-believe, it has to start this way. Once upon a time, in Hoboken, New Jersey, it was tryout day. And though he's not yet on the field, you're about to meet a most unusual fellow, a left-handed pitched named Casey."

Silly, harmless episode. Small time baseball coach has a team full of inexperienced, inferior players and his team always loses. This time he gets a new recruit, who is a robot!
The robot is ultra-realistic and can play perfect baseball. Eventually there are complications but nothing suspenseful or really worthwhile. Very average, but in a good way at least.

3/5

Episode 36: A World of His Own

"The home of Mr. Gregory West, one of America's most noted playwrights. The office of Mr. Gregory West. Mr. Gregory West - shy, quiet, and at the moment very happy. Mary - warm, affectionate...And the final ingredient - Mrs. Gregory West."

And we reach the finale! What a spectacular first season. 36 episodes, and most of them above average stories. Really, in today's TV world, it just seems amazing that a show could bring in new actors and actresses, stories, and directors for each episode, and make them all from scratch, and have them shine.

The finale is a fitting episode to close the season. It's an episode about a writer who can write about characters so well that they…well, come alive. It's also the only time in the first season (I don't know if there are other incidents in other episodes in the future) that Rod Serling pops up at the end of the episode, talking to us, and suddenly have the writer in the episode interact with Rod, and have all walls broken, inserting Rod and us into the story. A very neat ending to a great first season.

4/5

Season 1 Rating: 3.25/5