Does anyone else go into fits of ecstasy on New Years day over the Twilight Zone marathon on Sci-Fi? It's definately the best sci-fi television show EVER!

I didn't catch as many episodes this year as I usually do. But then, I have all the episodes on tape...

Please, I spent every waking minute that I was home watching Twilight Zone. Sci-fi always chooses the best episodes for the primetime run too.

I always look forward to SciFi's TZ marathons. I find them very comforting for some reason. Even though some episodes don't hold up as well as others, there were some real gems. I swear, "It's a Good Life" gets more chilling every time I see it. I keep hoping the crazy aunt will, for the love of God, smash Billy Mumy's skull in with an andiron.

Has anyone else noticed how many episodes revolved around middle-aged white men wanting to return to the "simpler" era, circa the late 1800s? Seriously, how hard could it have been to be a middle-class white guy in the late 1950s? It's ironic how we look back at that era nostalgically now.

If they did it now, they could have a downsized exec with terrorism anxiety and post-Goth kids finding a portal to fifties America, with its own complications...

Now that's funny. But ain't it the truth. Must be some kind of post-war/cold war thing.

Whenever I watch the TZ marathons I always feel like I'm in some sort of Twilight Zone episode because I swear to god I always end up watching an episode that I've never seen before (and I'm no spring chicken)! It's uncanny. How many episodes did they do? It seems like hundreds. But it is very comforting to see those shows.

There were five seasons and a total of 156 episodes (if you count the hour long episodes as one.) There were two TV-Movies for the original series. That said, there were three seasons totalling 110 episodes of the 1985 series and 44 episodes of the 2002 series.

The original is still the best. imho, of course.


Heh. I just got a mental picture of some guy fifty years from now saying 'How hard could it have been to be a whit guy in the early 2000s?'
But I think a lot of the episodes were based on then-current fears: war, nuclear weapons, new/unknown technologies; as well as the desire to go back to a simpler time when everything was easier. The past always looks so simple and nice, it's the hindsight principle.

Earlier in the week, on American Masters, they did a retrospective on Rod Serling. It was fascinating, especially the way he fought against the TV censors. His first episode of Twilight Zone, "Where Is Everybody?" was specifically designed so they sponsors and censors would buy the show, figuring it would not be controversial, or taking up 'dangerous topics.' Serling had even said in an interview with Mike Wallace just before the show debuted, that he would not tackle any taboo topics again. Basically, he lied. I love it!

He also said, in different interviews, that at a time when pressure from sponsors and network censors made it very hard to use the social issues he wanted to explore, the sci/fi-fantasy element gave him that freedom. Instead of talking about black/white relations, he used Martians, or something.

Wow. I hadn't even thought about the fact that it was guys during the 50's wanting the simpler life! It is a bit mind-boggling. I do love how TZ tackled prejudice by using aliens. A classic episode was Eye of the Beholder where the lady trying to have facial surgery to fit in was the beautiful Donna Douglas!

The episode that had a lasting impact on me, though, was Time Enough At Last. It was the Burgess Meredith episode where he was a bank clerk that loved to read. His wife would never let him read at home, so he went down to the bank vault to read during his lunchtime. He got shut in the vault during an apocalyptic war and was the sole survivor. He took every book out of the library, piled them on the steps, exclaimed, "Time Enough At Last!" and then broke his glasses so he couldn't see to read. I thought it would start raining or something and ruin the books. That episode horrified me and I have a life-long fear of going blind and not being able to read!

Rod Serling was truly a genius. He also penned the screenplay for Planet of the Apes (original) which was absolutely brilliant.

My personal favorite which happens to stand the test of time and no matter when I see it, it always represents an allegory for current events is "To Serve Man". Beware of Greeks bearing gifts...

Sci Fi Girl you're my hero! Thanks. I guess that's a lot of episodes (certainly more than can be aired in a 24 hour marathon so if you account for that, plus my memory fading as an adult (surely I couldn't remember them all from my childhood) I guess it makes sense that I keep coming across ones I've never seen before.



Oh man! No matter who I talk to about TZ (true TZ fans of course), they always mention this episode as being one of the best or the one that they remember (or that moved them). I feel the same way. That episode affected so many people. That has to say something about us as a species (and about our perceptions and fears about time.... there's a discussion).

Hey, you know what would be cool? Having a Twilight Zone monthly club. Kind of like a book club but instead of books, the group chooses a TZ episode (or maybe a couple) to view and then meet and discuss the philosphy/science, etc. about the episode. Okay, do I sound like a super geek or like I should get a life? I'll end my post now. (but I might start a TZ group in my hometown some day)

Has anyone checked out Rod Serling: Submitted for your Approval, a PBS special that recently aired? I caught glimpses of it late last night and it waspretty insightful with interviews from his kids and friends.

Although my only real experience with the Twilight Zone has been through the Sci-Fi marathon (and the script to that episode about the lights going out in a neighborhood except for one house and everyone was getting paranoid that was in my 11th grade English textbook), prejudice was dealt with head-on in at least one episode. I can't remember the name of it, but it was the one where Dennis Hopper played the power-hungry American nazi who was taking orders from a mysterious, shadowy figure who turned out to be the ghost of Adolf Hitler. That was one of the best episodes of TZ as far as I am concerned; Dennis Hopper is a really kick-ass actor. He turned the character into an emotionally-conflicted love-starved figure that you actually felt sorry for, even in his most dispicable moments.

It was called "He Lives". Hopper's performance, and that of Ludwig Donath as the elderly Jewish man who has befriended him from childhood on, were the highlights of the episode.

The Sci-fi TZ marathon has become a tradition in my house. My sons always want to tell them which are the good ones. Usually the ones that interest them the most are the ones the have been spoofed on The Simpsons. They love "To Serve Man" or as the Simpsons portrayed it " How to Serve Forty Humans"
The Simpsins also did a great spoof on "Time Enough at Last"

Thanks for the name to the episode TudorQueen; and Ludwig Donath played his role excellently as well. cbe, Family Guy actually did a great parody of "Time Enough At Last". Not only do the guys glasses break, his eyes fall out right after he says that his eyesight isn't that bad, his fingers fall off right after he says it's a good thing he knows braille; then his whole body falls apart.

Some of my favorites are "Where is Everybody", "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You" and "To Serve Man". Now episodes that creep me out... "The Masks", "Little Girl Lost" and "Time enough at last". But these are just a few.

You too? We actually "acted" this thing out in 8th grade and it was only years later watching TZ did I realise that it was an episode.

Another classic ep. was "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" featuring William Shatner, though John Lithgow did a pretty convincing remake of it too.

FWIW, there is a syndicated Twilight Zone radio series, with one hour episodes. It is a remake of the original series, with apparently the blessing of the Serling estate. Check the website for local broadcast details.

I compiled a list of my favorites and I realized that most of them weren't shown this marathon. Like others, every time I see a marathon, I see an episode I'd never seen before. The marathons are always a new discovery for me. Anyway, here's my favorites, Rod Serling penned most of them for me.

To Serve Man: Classic, powerful allegory. I wrote college essays about this one.

People are alike all over: Another classic w/ Roddy McDowell playing the paranoid astronaut. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get ya!

On Thursday we Leave for Home: James Whitmore is wonderful portraying a man who is so warped by his control over others, he won't save himself. When it comes to power, don't get high on your own supply. A very poignant ep.

A World of His Own: Another classic where the main character dictates the people around him to a tape recorder and they come to life. Funny and very clever.

The Midnight Sun: Really good science fiction tale of a woman who imagines that the earth is moving closer to the sun. The reality is quite the opposite.

The Purple Testament: The best of the war themed eps (IMO) where a Lieutenant can see who's going to die before a battle.

The Little People: A great episode in which an astronaut discovers lilliputionlike people who worship him. A lesson in meglomania.

Mr Dingle the Strong: The best (IMO) of the Burgess Meridith eps. Fun episode, no real lessons here.

The Howling Man: Another things are never what they seem type of episode where a compassionate man inadvertantly unleashes the devil upon the masses. Another good allegory.

There are many other episodes that I really like, but these are the ones that stay with me.

I saw the movie Paycheck yesterday, and it made me think of the TZ episode where William Shatner's car breaks down in some town, so he and his wife go to a diner where Shatner becomes obsessed with a fortune-telling machine to the point that he starts basing his actions on what the machine tells him. Spoiler tags used because this could "spoil" Paycheck. Anyway, I thought it was a similar theme being explored.

That was William Shatner in that episode too? Cool! Never realised that, and I would say that it was a classic episode as well (and one that I always seem to catch during the marathon - spooky!).

Does anyone know where and when TZ airs in New York City? I find it occasionally on Sci-Fi during the day but not on the regular schedule (and it's a damn shame they air it during the day -- any respectable network would show it late at night -- TZ is a dark tunnel to go in, showing it at night accentuates that)

They also air it at 1:30am on the Sci Fi Channel - I'm usually up watching it and creeping myself out before bed, lol.

God Bless TiVo--we have a season pass and watch them on the weekends. My favorite so far is "Number 12 Looks Just Like You," because of the unhappy ending. But I do love "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street." Rod is practically biting the words at the end, about how prejudice is a universal phenomenon, never just confined to the Twilight Zone.

I do also love "A World of His Own," simply for how the fourth wall is broken for the only time in the series at the end.

And of course, the episode where Robert Redford is...well, death, is pretty great.

I adore this show. You can see how it is one of the bedrocks of modern SF--so many writers have borrowed or been inspired by ideas on these shows.

Absolutely. And what's so fascinating is that, while many shows have obviously used it as inspiration, no show has actually been able to duplicate it's sheer brilliance and originality (or ability to capture the "essence of man"). I know this is subjective, but this is the TZ thread! Hee.



Thanks ChinkyGirl! You have made me a happy person! When I was twelve (and living in Brooklyn), my cousins and I would be hanging out late at night (only in the summer and only right outside the house of course), but at 1:00am, no matter what was going on outside, we'd haul ass back into the house, watch TZ and then afterwards go back outside. It was our BIBLE. Hee.

Was anyone here a fan of the UPN remake? I was. I loved it and was intrigued nearly every episode. However, I hear it got horrible ratings. I still catch the old black and white ones on Sci-fi whenever I can.

I liked the UPN version, not as much as the classic, and not as much as the early 80's revival, which is heretically my favorite, but I did like it. I thought the one about the time traveller sent to keep Hitler from growing up was brilliantly in tune with Serling and his original ideas and philosophies. I also liked the sequel to "It's a Good Life" [and I'd approached that with some trepidation] and the one with Eriq LaSalle as the dying man who gets sent back to Memphis just before Martin Luther King's assassination, because I was sure it would go in one direction and it fooled me completely and happily.

Meady: Oooo, The Midnight Sun! Excellent twist, without really changing the outcome, was great!!!

Robert Redford as death was most noteworthy because, well, Robert Redford was death. And a very calm, reassuring death, at that!

One for the Angels always makes me tear up. Death comes for an elderly man that isn’t ready to go. He finds a loophole: he hasn’t completed a driving desire on Earth: to make a “pitch for the angels”. Death tries to take an alternative: a little girl. The elderly man keeps Death from getting to the girl on time by making the ultimate pitch [he sold trinkets from a suitcase] then tells Death that he’s ready to go. That one was always a tearjerker for me.

Another episode that kind of got boring and annoying in the rewatching over the years, but when you think about the fact that absolutely no words are spoken until the very end makes you realize how good it really is: The Invaders with Agnes Moorehead. A classic Serling twist at the end, too.

I always liked the one with Elizabeth Montgomery as the Russian and Charles Bronson as the American as the sole surviving soldiers of the Apocalyptic war. I believe it was called Two.

So many great episodes! I'm sure more will come to me as I sit at work, not working...

I actually created this thread as "Twilight Zone: The original" because I hated the remakes so much and I personally believe the original series deserves a thread all its own (because nothing done since can ever measure up or be considered comparable to the original). The original was just a unique stroke of genius that defined an entire sci-fi generation (and continues to do so). Also, they have the original Star Trek thread and then the spin-off threads. But I guess the moderator thought it best to put it all together. I personally think discussing the TZ remakes in the same thread as discussing the original series is like putting a chunck of dog shit in a bouquet of roses. Sorry, but I hated those remakes THAT much. Oh well.

TZ was great at death. The one with Robert Redford - "Nothing In The Dark" -had a powerful and reassuring message to deliver and did so with a minimum of preaching. And while yes, Redford was very good, not to mention beautiful to look at, Gladys Cooper, the elegant British actress who played the old woman was absolutely wonderful, an essential component in the episode's success. And she doesn't get mentioned much.

"One For The Angels" was lovely, and had a great message, too, about friendship, and the way one generation will try to protect another, and about understanding when one's time has come... and then there was the element of wish fulfilment. Yes, it's hard not to wipe away tears when Ed Wynn makes his greatest pitch on behalf of something greater than himself, really, and understands and accepts what has happened.

You are right, TudorQueen, I was wrong not to mention Gladys Cooper. The episode was centered around her and her character's fears and she conveyed them beautifully. Her acting made her character's acceptance of her fate completely believable.

Another overlooked "character" is the voice of Maxine Stuart as the bandaged Janet Tyler in Eye of the Beholder. Ms Stuart was selected for the emotions she could convey with her voice, [I believe she was a broadway actress, not from films or TV] even though it was the lovely Donna Douglas that played the "revealed" Janet Tyler.

I went to a site that had short synopses of all the episodes and was reminded of another one. It wasn't a classic episode, widely remembered, but I think it started my love for the "sentient computers" theme. [Before I was reminded of this ep, I had thought it was Colossus: The Forbin Project that started it, and War Games that cemented it!] The TZ ep was called From Agnes - With Love and starred Wally Cox as the programmer that the computer fell in love with.

The SciFi channel marathons give you a chance to see how the same actors would pop up again and again. I believe Gladys Cooper was also in the episode where she keeps getting strange phone calls, later to discover they originated from a phone line that had fallen in a cemetery onto the grave of her long-deceased fiancé.

"Number 12 Looks Just Like You" always makes me cry bitter, angry tears.

I was reminded of "Agnes" when I read Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Epicac", in which a computer programmer, rejected by the girl he loves because he's 'unromantic', gets the super-computer he's working with to ghost-write poems for him, which are successful - and then he finds out that the computer has fallen in love with the girl! Vonnegut manages to pull out a pretty happy ending.



It's a powerful episode with a strong statement to make about conformity. I read somewhere that they went all out to convince model/actress Suzy Parker to do the episode because she was widely considered to be one of the most beautiful women alive at the time.

I love that one. It creeps my out every time I see it, as well as gives me a happy when she shows up at the end in the dress, ready to go on with a man she can’t even communicate with.

RE the UPN version:

I rarely watched the UPN version, but I did see the one with baby Hitler. It was well done and left me with some serious “Hmms” and “Wows.” I don’t think the newest version compares well with the original, but the few of them I saw were enjoyable.


I loved Redford as Death.


In defense of the Treks, the spin-offs lasted many more seasons than the TZ remakes did and there was a lot more going on that would be too much to discuss in a forum where the subject was bouncing from TOS to TNG to DS9 to Voyager.
Where as with TZ, the remakes, while not always to the high standard as the original, make sense when spoken about at the same time. Especially when considering the social changes that had taken place (and therefore reflected) during the times between the original, the 1980s version and the most recent.


When she ends up in the operating room while trying to escape... oh boy, I still scream "No, don't go in that door" and "No, run away!" Then at the end, when she's all happy and looks just like her friend and doesn't even seem to remember why she didn't want the surgery in the first place; it just gets me. Every time.

Yeah, I definately agree (and this little voice in the back of my head knew that too -- and would you believe that, while I love the original Sar Trek, I don't like any of the spinoffs either). In all fairness I actually only saw one episode of the recent remake (I'm just a grumpy ol' gal who worships the original - hee).

Does anyone know which came first? Twilight Zone or Outer Limits (and which inspired the other?).

Actually, I think she looks just like the nurse...and her mother. Man, what a dark, brilliant ending.

The man from the colony of "ugly" people who shows up at the end of "Eye of the Beholder" to take Donna Douglas away is really, really hot in my opinion.

For me that is especially true of the Burgess Meredith episodes. I love all of his eps, but I especially liked the one where he is the last person of religious faith sentenced to death in an authoritarian world. I love the ep!

My old favorites were the Agnes Morehead v. the tiny space invaders in "The Invaders", and the scary little kid Bill Mumy in "It's A Good Life" episodes. Now, as I'm older I love the sweet and sentimental Ed Wynn in "One for the Angles", and the drunken and broken, sad and caring department store santa in "Night of the Meek." Oh, and the funny and folksy Andy dvine in "Hocus Pocas and Frisby." No great social messages in those so much as a kindness and sweetness, and a love of humanity.

Is "Little Girl Lost" the one where the girl falls into an invisible portal under the bed that keeps moving and they're trying to get her out but all they can do is hear her?

That's the one, karatekate. It's a good episode, but the girl's voice annoys the hell out of me.

Outer Limits started in 1963 and originally ran for, I think, two seasons with 49 original episodes. The second incarnation of OL started in 1995 and ran for 7 seasons with 154 hour long segments. The original TZ started in mid- to late-1959. I think TZ inspired OL.


Yea, I think you're right. Everyone started looking the same to me after a while... wonder why.


Word. But I think that was one of the best things... these disgustingly ugly people by there standards were (and are still) considered really really hot by ours.

btw, wasn't the "colony" of ugly people really a "planet" of ugly people??? i.e., Earth?

Haven't seen that episode in a while, but I remember it as they were sending their ugly people here and that is how life began [or was augmented] on Earth. Simplistic and certainly arguable based on even our known evolution, but a pretty cool story, nonetheless.

I can't say for sure, but I got the feeling that "Eye of the Beholder" was supposed to take place in the future. I'm pretty sure that they don't mention where this "colony" is, or if it's an entire planet or what.
There are definitely at least two other "origin of life on Earth" episodes -- "Third From the Sun" and "Probe 7 - Over and Out".

The way I remember it, the "colony" of "ugly" people was a community separate from the rest of the people, a "ghetto" as the woman called it. I don't think it was another planet.

She calls it a ghetto, and I don't remember another planet being mentioned.

Either way--dude was really hot.

Another episode with a great ending--"Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up" or something like that.

That was Edson Stroll. What a name, huh? ;)

Yeah, those are really sweet episodes. I find that some of the harder-edged ones are more painful to watch now than when I was a young pup, all impressed by their incisive social commentary. I'm less detached from that stuff now, I guess.

"Edson Stroll" sounds like a 1920s dance craze.

I read somewhere that the little girl's voice was dubbed by a grown woman who also played the voice of Rocky the Squirrel in the Bullwinkle cartoons. So that could explain why the little girl's voice was annoying--she sounded like a flying squirrel.