Adam and Eve Plot: "Two", and more literally "Probe 7 - Over and Out.”.Acquired Poison Immunity: "The Jeopardy Room".The original Twilight Zone provides examples of: Or with the band on the Earth's surface that's on the far side of the sun but close enough to the lit side to receive some light. Many television shows have borrowed liberally from the Twilight Zone, especially The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror and Futurama's " The Scary Door" and "Anthology of Interest".ĭo not confuse with the part of the ocean from 200 to 1000 meters below the surface. But "To Serve Man" has all of humanity accepting and tolerant of aliens, which turns out to be a bad thing. "The Gift" tells you not to be bigots toward aliens, because they might just be bringing you the cure for cancer. Other times, aesops conflict with one another. Other notorious examples are episodes that use recycled scripting employing a family unfriendly Aesop version of the original episode's end in order to force a (rather disturbing, especially in the context of the original episode) twist. Perhaps the most notorious example was the episode "Time Enough At Last," which starred Burgess Meredith and seemed to tell the viewer, "Even if you are a good and decent man, you can still have horrible things continually happen to you and end up with no hope at all", and became one of the most famous episodes of the original series. Occasionally, however, you'd get a Family-Unfriendly Aesop. (Those last two work better on screen than they do in print, really). William Shatner hams it up and yells about the monster on the wing of the plane ("Nightmare at 20,000 Feet")? It works.Īlmost all episodes ended with Aesops "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," "Be tolerant," "Democracy is good," "Nazis are bad," etc. A former concentration camp commander travels back to Dachau after World War Two and is put on trial by the ghosts of his victims ("Death's Head Revisited")? It works. (Seriously, you think The West Wing was heavy-handed? Take a gander at one of the original TZ episodes.) The ghost of Adolf Hitler travels to the United States and teaches Dennis Hopper to become an effective demagogue ("He's Alive")? It works. The Twilight Zone had a rather remarkable ability to take silly story concepts, combine them with preachy, moralistic writing, and produce some truly outstanding episodes. Another recently ran on UPN, which reunited Bill Mumy and Cloris Leachman in a sequel to the classic TZ chiller "It's a Good Life." But it's the daring original series that shows every sign of lasting the ages as the literature that it is. Tragically, the movie is better remembered for a horrible accident in which three actors (two of them children) were killed during shooting of an action scene in Landis' segment.Īn often worthy revival series ran on CBS from 1985-87, and in first-run syndication in 1988. Twilight Zone: The Movie, a big-screen adaptation that featured individual segments produced by Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, John Landis and George Miller was released in 1983. The series featured such soon-to-be-famous actors as Robert Redford, William Shatner, Burt Reynolds, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper, Carol Burnett, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, Peter Falk, Donald Pleasence and Bill Mumy, as well as such established stars as silent-film giant Buster Keaton, Art Carney, Mickey Rooney, Ida Lupino, and John Carradine. Its trenchant sci-fi/fantasy parables explore humanity's hopes, despairs, prides, and prejudices in metaphoric ways conventional drama cannot.Ĭreator Rod Serling wrote the majority of the scripts, and produced those of such now-legendary writers as Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont. One of television's most revered series, The Twilight Zone ( CBS, 1959-64) stands as the role model for TV anthologies.
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