The Twilight Zone - The Complete Episode Guide E-Book

Nick Naughton

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 298

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Always wanted to get into Rod Serling's Twilight Zone but don't know where to start? Here is the indispensable episode guide to this classic anthology show. The Twilight Zone - The Complete Episode Guide offers a synopsis, trivia, and a review, evaluation, and ranking of all 156 stories. So, without further delay, let's take a deep dive into the mysterious, spine-tingling, fantastical, occasionally whimsical, and wonderful world of The Twilight Zone...

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The Twilight Zone - The Complete Episode Guide

Nick Naughton© Copyright 2021 Nick Naughton.All Rights Reserved

CONTENTSPrefaceThe Time ElementSeason OneSeason TwoSeason ThreeSeason FourSeason FiveFinal ListsReferencesPREFACEThe Twilight Zone was created by the great Rod Serling and ran from 1959 for 156 episodes. At its very best it was the gold standard by which other fantasy anthology shows are still judged. The following book offers a guide to every episode of The Twilight Zone - including a synopsis, trivia, and an evaluation and ranking. Hopefully this book will provide a valuable reference guide to all the episodes for anyone interested in this wonderful show. At the conclusion of this book I will offer a few lists of the best and the worst of the episodes. My rankings and opinions are of course subjective. You may enjoy some of these episodes more (or indeed less!) than I did but the book that follows will hopefully help to separate the wheat from the chaff and give you an indication which stories should be at the top (and bottom) of the pile for any prospective Twilight Zone marathon. So, without further delay, let's take a deep dive into the mysterious, spine-tingling, fantastical, occasionally whimsical, and wonderful world of The Twilight Zone...THE TIME ELEMENT (Director: Allen Reisner, Writer: Rod Serling) 1958"Once upon a time there was a psychiatrist named Arnold Gillespie and a patient whose name was Peter Jenson. Mr. Jenson walked into the office nine minutes ago. It is eleven o'clock, Saturday morning, October 4th, 1958. It is perhaps chronologically trite to be so specific about an hour and a date but involved in this story is a time element."The Time Element is what you might describe as the unofficial Twilight Zone pilot. This story was sold to CBS by Rod Serling and adapted for television as part of the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse. CBS were initially said to be rather unenthusiastic about the script (it could be that the story revolving around Pearl Harbour, which was still fairly recent history at the time, might explain some of their wariness) and didn't exactly trip over themselves to adapt it but this changed when Bert Granet became a producer at CBS and desired an original Rod Serling script to adapt for television. The Time Element, despite the apparent misgivings of CBS, happily generated a positive reception from viewers and led directly to The Twilight Zone. This is very much a blueprint for The Twilight Zone in that it has an outlandish premise and a haunting and memorable twist ending. The Time Element was broadcast on November 24, 1958, and was hosted and introduced by Desi Arnaz (who unnecessarily suggests a theory for the twist at the conclusion of the story). There are no opening and closing monologues by Rod Serling in The Time Element. The enjoyable tradition of the Serling monologues to frame the episodes would become a fundamental part of The Twilight Zone though. Despite feeling rather forgotten today, the Time Element is essentially like a bonus episode of The Twilight Zone for fans and very much a blood relative to the show that followed.  The premise of The Time Element concerns a man named Peter Jenson (William Bendix). Jenson, who seems exceptionally frazzled and agitated, visits psychoanalyst Dr Gillespie (Martin Balsam) to seek guidance on how to cope with the vivid and discombobulating dreams he has to endure night after night. More than anything Jenson simply wants to know if Dr Gillespie can provide any explanation for what is happening to him. In his dreams, Jenson find himself transported from the present day New York of 1958 to Honolulu in 1941. The specific date in 1941 is December the 6th - one day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. Jenson tries to warn the people he meets in 1941 - most saliently a young newly married naval ensign named Janoski (Darryl Hickman) - that an attack is imminent but naturally no one believes him. Jenson's claim that he is from 1958 predictably make people think he is completely crazy. Jenson tells a dubious Dr Gillespie that these are not mere dreams. He is convinced that when he sleeps he REALLY is transported back to 1941...The Time Element is a fairly absorbing fantastical drama that always manages to hold one's attention with its time travel premise. The Twilight Zone would return to the theme of time travel more than once (with mixed results) but The Time Element is a solid enough first riff on this well worn fantasy story device. The twist at the end of The Time Element is terrific and brings the story to a satisfying and hauntingly atmospheric conclusion. The Time Element is not perfect though. The most obvious problem is that it is an hour long - as opposed to the classic half-hour format (the fourth season aside) of The Twilight Zone. One can't help feeling that The Time Element would have worked even better if edited down slightly. Though the scenes of Jenson and Dr Gillespie together are enjoyable it feels like there are a few too many of them. One might argue there are also a few too many scenes of a drunken Jenson becoming belligerent in the Honolulu bar he frequents. There is a very affecting scene though where Jenson - now desperate and at the end of his rope - breaks down in the bar and begins singing World War 2 songs that he assures the bewildered patrons they'll soon be all too familiar with. William Bendix is a trifle overwrought at times as Jenson and the actors playing the young naval couple are not the most natural in the world but Martin Balsam (who would of course appear in The Twilight Zone more than once) is very good and the other supporting parts are generally well cast. The Time Element's direction is a little on the flat side. The Twilight Zone itself was more stylish and inventive than The Time Element in terms of its production. These quibbles aside though, The Time Element is very compelling at its best and definitely worth watching. As far as time travel stories go, The Time Element is not bad at all and the twist alone makes this worthy of your time. You can't help thinking that a half-hour version of The Time Element with Jack Klugman as Jenson might well have been a classic Twilight Zone episode. BSeason One 1959/1960WHERE IS EVERYBODY? (Director: Robert Stevens, Writer: Rod Serling)"The place is here, the time is now, and the journey into the shadows that we're about to watch could be our journey." An amnesia stricken and confused man named Mike Ferris (Earl Holliman) wanders through a lonely, deserted landscape and seemingly abandoned town in an Air Force uniform with no memory of what may or may not have happened to present this mysterious state of affairs. As Mike becomes more and more spooked by his lonely and puzzling situation he begins to feel like someone is secretly watching him...Rod Serling got the idea for Where Is Everybody? after wandering through an empty studio lot and finding it rather creepy. All the evidence of a community but no people anywhere - just a sense of desolation and loneliness. It struck him how unsettling and nightmarish it would be to suddenly find yourself alone in a city with no people whatsoever. It's very apparent that much care and effort has gone into this pilot. It cost $75,000 (a lot of money for a 30 minute television pilot in 1959) and was shot at Universal Studios over nine days. When the pilot was first screened to the network and sponsors it was deemed so strong that a deal was cut within six hours for The Twilight Zone to become a series. Where Is Everybody? is a strong and intriguing start for what would soon become an iconic and justifiably famous series. The mystery device is perhaps not the most original but the premise works well and develops a surreal and strange atmosphere - especially in the scene where Ferris encounters an empty diner with recent evidence of activity and people having been there. Holliman's performance is effective enough to convince us of his desperate plight and this Twilight Zone's opener is well produced and committed to the premise it presents the viewer. This is a successful and interesting beginning for The Twilight Zone. Where Is Everybody? is certainly worthy of your time. You may well guess the twist before it arrives but it still serves as a fairly effective way to wrap up the story. One notable thing about Where Is Everybody? is that the (soon to be familiar) opening narration was originally by Westbrook Van Voorhis rather than Rod Serling. They decided on reflection that Van Voorhis sounded rather too one note and pompous and approached Orson Welles to replace him. After Welles asked for a preposterous amount of money for his famous vocal services a very reluctant Rod Serling decided to do The Twilight Zone narrations himself. A happy accident. He was perfect and his voice became an integral and iconic part of the series. B+ONE FOR THE ANGELS (Director: Robert Parrish, Writer: Rod Serling)"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."Amiable low-rent salesman Lew Bookman (Ed Wynn) is visited by Death (Murray Hamilton) and told that his time is up. Lew (with slight shades of Bergman's then recent The Seventh Seal) manages to delay the inevitable by proposing that first he must first make his final masterpiece pitch as a salesman. The "one for the angels". When Lew fails to complete the pitch (for rather obvious reasons), Death reveals that he will take a young girl named Maggie (Dana Dillway) in his place. Lew must use all of his street smarts and cunning to outhink Death and save Maggie...This was based on a teleplay Rod Serling wrote out of college about a sidewalk salesman who must save his brother from being whacked by some hoods by delivering such a brilliant series of sales pitches that he and his brother are always surrounded by crowds and so therefore safe. He juggled the plot details around, gave it an injection of fantasy and fashioned it as a Twilight Zone story and vehicle for the comedian Ed Wynn. Wynn is far too deliberate and laid back to ever be terribly convincing as a salesman with fast persuasive patter but he delivers a likeable and sweet performance at the heart of the story. Wynn's warm hearted performance manages to wring a lot of charm from what is a relatively straight forward screenplay. What Serling does most successfully is make a grand noble hero out of what appears on the surface to be a most ordinary figure though - of course - Lew is no ordinary man. Children love Lew and in Serling's eyes this makes him a "very important" man. One For the Angels is not the most memorable Twilight Zone of this or any other era and fades in the memory fairly soon compared to the classic episodes but it's watchable enough with Wynn's loveable character negating the slightly over familiar premise. Far from a classic but a likeable little episode. B-MR DENTON ON DOOMSDAY (Director: Allen Reisner, Writer: Rod Serling)"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."Al Denton (Dan Duryea) is a drunken cowboy in the Old West who was once famed for his sharpshooting and reflexes. His insatiable desire for alcohol has now made him a humiliated, mocked and broken man. An enigmatic stranger by the name of Henry J Fate (Malcolm Atterbury) restores Al's dignity through supernatural sleight of hand but our troubled hero faces a severe test of nerve and confidence when an up and coming gunslinger called Grant (Doug McClure) arrives for a duel...The first of Twilight Zone's western stories, Mr Denton on Doomsday is an above average drama boosted by the sympathetic performance of Dan Duryea as Denton. Duryea (who was apparently usually cast as villains) is especially strong in the scenes where he confesses that being the fastest draw in town - and so inevitably attracting constant challenges from the new kid on the block - is what drove him to drink in the first place. This life of violence and death has taken a heavy toll. Look out for a wonderfully slimy turn by a young Martin Landau as a bully who delights in humiliating Al at the start of the story and also a baby faced Doug McClure in an early role as the sharpshooter intent on knocking Al off of his perch. While Mr Denton on Doomsday is not quite gold standard Twilight Zone the strong dialogue by Serling and sincere performances make it very worthwhile. Mr Denton on Doomsday is a successful first foray into the western genre for The Twilight Zone. You may guess the ending before we get there but this is a poignant tale with a good atmosphere and given a big boost by the cast. BTHE SIXTEEN-MILLIMETER SHRINE (Director: Mitchell Leisen, Writer: Rod Serling)"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."Barbara Jean Trenton (Ida Lupino) is an old movie star from the 1930s who now lives as a recluse in her mansion, idling her days away watching her old films with nostalgic bittersweet enchantment. Her agent Danny (Martin Balsam) must somehow get her to face up to reality and live for today - not yearn hopelessly for yesterday...The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine is a poignant episode about the passing of time and how this unavoidable part of human existence is harder for some than others. Barbara Jean was the talk of the town twenty-five years ago but growing older and seeing her star and beauty wane has not been easy. The fantastical ending doesn't make any sense but works in no small part thanks to the haunting music by Frank Waxman - which gives The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine a dreamy atmosphere. What lifts the story are the rich performances from Lupino and Martin Balsam, the pair given some good dialogue by Serling. Jerome Cowan of The Maltese Falcon makes a cameo as a former leading man of Barbara - the scene conveying everything about Barbara's character. She can barely face being in the same room with him because he simply reminds her that they are all older now. Not a great episode but the score and the performances are superb. This is sort of Sunset Boulevard meets The Purple Rose of Cairo and a very dreamlike half hour of television. B-WALKING DISTANCE (Director: Robert Stevens, Writer: Rod Serling)"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."Martin Sloan (Gig Young) is an unhappy executive suffering from a life crisis and dreaming of the innocent, carefree days of his childhood. One day, he leaves his car and decides to walk to the small town where he spent his youth. When he arrives Martin is shocked to discover that nothing seems to have changed at all...Walking Distance is the first truly great Twilight Zone episode and one of the most affecting in the long history of the series. Serling taps into his own life, the stresses and strains of his workload and desire to return to a simpler way of life and the romanticised memories of childhood and youth. This is a wistful, nostalgic fantasy rather than overt science fiction, a touching story about the burdens of adulthood and altogether one of the most poignant ever written for the Twilight Zone. Walking Distance was inspired by Rod Serling walking through the MGM set in the 1950s and being struck by how much it reminded him of the town he grew up in. It occurred to him how people have a longing to go home - but to the misty, romantic notion of home they remember from their childhood. A place you can never actually go back to (except of course in the Twilight Zone). It was a familiar Serling theme, a man having a personal crisis and yearning to escape from the dog eat dog modern world with all of its stresses and strains. Serling's incredible workload often left him shattered and on the verge of a nervous breakdown himself and he incorporated this into several moving stories. The central character here, Martin Sloan is overworked, stressed out and at the end of his tether. In an allusion to Alice in Wonderland (and maybe The Wizard of Oz too presumably) he abandons his car and heads down a quiet road on foot towards the small town he grew up in. Bernard Herrmann's beautiful score is a perfect backdrop for the moving scenes of Martin reconnecting with a world he thought was gone forever. The simple act of buying an ice cream in his old home town is wonderfully played. There is of course a bittersweet edge to the fantasy with Martin realising - as everyone must - that you can't go home again but Serling's meditation on this theme is consistently interesting and poignant. His closing narration is one of his most memorable. A classic Twilight Zone episode. AESCAPE CLAUSE (Director: Mitchell Leisen, Writer: Rod Serling)"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 hypochondriac named Walter Bedeker (David Wayne) makes a deal with the Devilish Mr Cadwallader (Thomas Gomez) for immortality in exchange for his soul. The escape clause? If Walter ever becomes weary of immortality a peaceful death will be his for the asking...Escape Clause makes for a decent black comedy with David Wayne enjoying himself as the misanthropic Walter - our anti-hero prone to increasingly self destructive behaviour as the burdens of immortality begin to hit home. The moral of the story is relatively simple - how can you truly appreciate life as a precious thing if nothing can harm you and you know it will last forever? - and while Escape Clause is Rod Serling coasting to an extent he wrings enough laughs and food for thought to make this one breeze past in likeable enough fashion. This is a fairly entertaining little episode with lashings of black humour and a wonderful performance by David Wayne as the cantankerous Bedeker. His increasing boredom with immortality is fun as he becomes increasingly immoral and prone to doing things like throwing himself in front of a train! This an effective sequence with copious use of dry ice. While the budget for these shows is clearly not astronomical they are inventive in terms of their production. There's a nice twist in the tale here too. Escape Clause is decent fun on the whole but not one of the very best or most ambitious episodes in season one. B-THE LONELY (Director: Jack Smight, Writer: Rod Serling)"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."In the year 2046, a convicted murderer named Corry (Jack Warden) is banished to live alone on a desert like asteroid for fifty years - though he seems a gentle soul and maintains that it was an act of self defence. When the supply ship from Earth arrives for a brief stop, the Captain ((John Dehner) has sympathy for the lonely plight of Corry and leaves him a lifelike female robot for company...A classic episode, The Lonely is a haunting meditation on the effect isolation and alienation can have on the human spirit. Serling's thoughtful screenplay is done full justice by the inspired casting of Jack Warden as Corry and authentic location work that conveys the desperate circumstances of his punishment, sent to live on a world where he is the only inhabitant. Warden convincingly conveys the arc of Corry, appalled by the synthetic companion at first but then falling in love with "Alicia" because he has no one else to turn to. Jean Marsh gives a strong performance as Alicia and makes the ending all the more poignant. The sun baked kooky Death Valley location really does give one the impression of a far distant world. Cory's isolation is starkly conveyed by his metal shack home - the only blip on a vast barren landscape. This is another rumination by Serling on the need for human contact and one of his best on this theme. "Every morning when I get up I tell myself this is my last day of sanity. I can't stand this loneliness one more day, not one more day! I know when I can't keep my fingers still and the inside of my mouth feels like gunpowder and burnt copper. Down deep inside my gut I get an ache that's just pulling everything out. Then I force myself to hold on for one more day, just one more day. But I can't do that for another 46 years, Allenby. I'll go right out of my mind." The Lonely is classic Twilight Zone. A-TIME ENOUGH AT LAST (Director: John Brahm, Writer: Rod Serling)"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."Henry Bemis (Burgess Meredith) is a short-sighted bank clerk and compulsive book worm. Henry is constantly frustrated by his lack of quality reading time but soon he might have all the time in the world...This was based on a short story by Lynn Venable and expanded by Serling (while retaining the rather heartbreaking but delicious twist at the end). Burgess Meredith would star in four Twilight Zone episodes but this was by far the most famous and memorable. He makes Bemis a loveable misfit and an amusing and introspective man that we always feel sympathy for. One of the most fondly remembered stories in the history of the show, Time Enough at Last has one of the most famous (and heartbreaking) twist endings and a charming central performance by Twilight Zone regular Burgess Meredith as the weedy put upon Bemis. The story switches from a domestic comic tale of a man who just can't stand up for himself to an apocalyptic last act and the set designs (on what was a limited budget) are nicely inventive. Memorable images include Bemis bouncing around in the bank vault he sneaks in to read in peace and the library steps that still somehow stand despite the destruction all around them. The actual steps used in the production were still standing from a set on the MGM backlot and wonderfully atmospheric. Jacqueline deWitt and Vaughn Taylor lend solid support as Henry's disapproving wife and Scrooge like boss respectively. Time Enough at Last is a justifiably famous episode. A-PERCHANCE TO DREAM (Director: Robert Florey, Writer: Charles Beaumont)"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."Edward Hall (Richard Conte) is a man with a cardiac condition who tells his psychiatrist Dr Rathmann (John Larch) that if he falls asleep he thinks he will die. The reason? He has been trapped in a recurring dream that always features a sultry carnival dancer named Maya (Suzanne Lloyd) trying to entice him into a funfair and onto a roller coaster with the intention of frightening him to death. If he goes asleep and returns to the dream he believes he will have a heart attack in his sleep. But staying awake forever will be an impossible strain on his heart too. What can he do?Charles Beaumont's first Twilight Zone story is an engagingly strange fable with a neat premise (Edward must stay awake all the time or risk heart failure!) and makes the most of the recurring carnival nightmare with exotic dancer Maya (Suzanne Lloyd) forever trying to lure him into a funfair where the rides will surely be too much for his fragile heart. This is a highly inventive and energetic episode with a freaky creepy funfair carnival atmosphere and a breathless and perfect performance by Richard Conte as Hall. Conte was actually in The Godfather many years later. Beaumont's script is tightly conceived and presents the amusement park as a nightmare. He obviously had big issues with funfairs and dreams!It's the surreal dreamlike atmosphere which sustains this episode and holds your attention. As ever with The Twilight Zone the black and white photography enjoyably adds to the strange ambiance. You would not call Perchance To Dream a classic Twilight Zone episode but it is a unique and engagingly bonkers experience and certainly worthy of your time. This is a fun entry into the Twilght Zone for Charles Beaumont. BJUDGMENT NIGHT (Director: John Brahm, Writer: Rod Serling)"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."The Queen of Glasgow is sailing from Liverpool to New York in 1942 and onboard is a German man named Carl Lanser (Nehemiah Persoff) who has absolutely no idea how he got on a British ship. But Lanser has a strange feeling that he knows the passengers and crew and has seen them before. He also has an overwhelming premonition that the ship is doomed and that something terrible will happen at exactly 1.15 am...A recurring nightmare ghost story with a strong sense of atmosphere and some impressive sets (recycled from The Wreck of the Mary Deare), Judgment Night is a satisfying chiller with an appropriately frazzled performance by Nehemiah Persoff. Serling's clever script makes this a story that one can return to even with knowledge of the twist at the end and still find interesting - especially as we then piece the clues together. The crew of the ship soon begin to become suspicious of Lanser.Viewers of this episode will note an early role for Avengers star Patrick Macnee as the captain of the ship. Judgment Night is an enjoyable and compelling episode and another strong story for series one. The deja vu aspect to the story is something that has been done to death by now in fantasy and science fiction but it never feels too alarmingly rote or derivative here and the episode has a nice sense of atmosphere. Look out for the way some real U-boat footage is enjoyably incorporated into this episode. BAND WHEN THE SKY WAS OPENED (Director: Douglas Heyes, Writer: Richard Matheson)"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."Three astronauts - Gart (Jim Hutton), Forbes (Rod Taylor) and Harrington (Charles Aidmen) - return as heroes after the first space expedition but back on Earth they begin to have an overwhelming and unsettling feeling that they don't belong there anymore. Very soon their existence begins to come under threat...Richard Matheson's first Twilight Zone screenplay (based on his short story Disappearing Act) makes for a superior episode with strong direction by Douglas Heyes. Heyes would return for further classic episodes (The After Hours, Eye of the Beholder and The Howling Man) and he builds a great deal of suspense and fear as the astronauts begin to be erased from history one by one. Loss of identity and memory is a theme the series would examine in later stories but And When the Sky Was Opened rates as highly as most of them. Jim Hutton is sympathetic as the young central astronaut and Rod Taylor (of The Time Machine fame) and Charles Aidmen are believable as his colleagues. A memorable episode made all the more compelling by the uneasy sense of the inevitable that pervades the story. These men can't seem to escape from their mysterious fate and that is terrifying because the fate in question is essentially wiping them from existence! One might propose that a subtext of the story here is death - a fate that also erases all that one was. The fate of these astronauts is even worse than death though because because no one will remember they even existed in the first place. B+WHAT YOU NEED (Director: Alvin Ganzer, Writer: Rod Serling)"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."Pedott (Ernest Truex) is a mysterious but kind hearted salesman who seems to know exactly what people will need in the future. However, an intimidating crook named Renard (Steve Cochran) tries to exploit his ability...What You Need is lighter episode that doesn't bear too much close inspection but the uncanny gifts of the salesman are used to nice effect by Serling's script and Ernest Truex gives a likeable performance as the wise old hustler. He's matched by Steve Cochran as the obnoxious and frightening Renard and the battle of wills between the two very different men moves the story along in generally agreeable fashion. When the sour bully Renard notices the abilities of Pedott, he demands that he be given something that will help him too as he is something of a bitter loser in life. Pedott gives him a pair of scissors and Renard isn't too impressed. However, when he gets his tie caught in a lift the scissors save his life and he realises that Pedott has a truly remarkable ability. He goes back to the old man and keeps demanding more and more things. Pedott soon realises that he is going to have to come up with a plan to get this dangerous and immoral bully off his back and out of his life.This is the sort of story that would outstay its welcome in a longer format but the brief running time of Twilight Zone (save for one later season as we shall see later) means that it never threatens your patience. The fantastical concept of the story has some nice little pay-offs and this is all agreeable enough. It probably won't lodge in the memory as one of the most memorable Twilight Zone episodes but you should have a decent enough time while you are watching. Far from a classic but a likeable enough episode. B-THE FOUR OF US ARE DYING (Director: John Brahm, Writer: Rod Serling)"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..."A shady man named Arch Hammer (Robert Townes) can alter his appearance to mimic other people. As you might imagine this leads to all manner of complicated - and also dangerous - shenanigans. He checks into a motel and impersonates a trumpet player named Johnny (Ross Martin) to get Johnny's girlfriend Maggie (Beverly Garland) and then later a murdered gangster named Strerig (Phillip Pine) to exhort some money from the hood who thought he had killed Strerig. This is only the start of his face changing capers though and as this is the Twilight Zone Hammer is probably going to get more than he bargained for...An interesting episode (taken from an unpublished story by George Clayton Johnson), The Four of Us Are Dying doesn't threaten the Twilight Zone top table but still has much going for it. Hammer's ability is conveyed with some clever optical effects and directorial sleight of hand and the smoke hazed jazz world of gangsters and night strobed alleyways gives The Four of Us Are Dying a strong sense of atmosphere. Townes is an interesting presence as Hammer and Jerry Goldsmith's score makes a fine backdrop to the action. You might describe this as an inventive second tier Twilight Zone entry. There's a risk here that the concept is more interesting than the story (and so doesn't do the concept full justice) but this is a fairly compelling experience once the plot gets going and it's all engaging enough. Despite the absurd premise, this is played straight and beautifully directed with some excellent performances. Love the shot of Hammer shaving early on where his face changes twice in the mirror. The Four of Us Are Dying is no classic but it is clever and competent. B-THIRD FROM THE SUN (Director: Richard L Bare, Writer: Rod Serling)"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."Fearful of an impending nuclear war, scientist William Sturka (Fritz Weaver) plans to steal a secret government flying saucer so his family can escape into space. The only problem is the obstinately suspicious government agent named Carling (Harry Andrews)... A great episode, Third from the Sun has a memorable twist at the end but is most successful in building suspense as Sturka's painstaking plans to steal the saucer craft are threatened by the sweaty and forever prying attentions of Carling. Andrews and Weaver are both superb in their roles with good support by Joe Maross as Sturka's co-conspirator Jerry. The extended card game sequence where Andrews arrives at the house is wonderfully tense. The flying saucer is fun in this story too and was used in Forbidden Planet. Third from the Sun works really well because of the tension and paranoia it laces into the story and it helps of course that this is all played by a terrific cast. This is a really good episode and the sort of thing that Serling and The Twilight Zone always did so well. One thing that really helps this episode is that we are rooting for the central characters to escape because we know they've spent months planning their mission. Because we are invested in the plight of these characters this means Carling works even better as a villain. A-I SHOT AN ARROW INTO THE AIR (Director: Stuart Rosenberg, Writer: Rod Serling)"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."Three astronauts are stranded on rocky asteroid with a limited supply of water. Colonel Donlin (Edward Binns) soon has his hands full though with the scheming and potentially mutinous Corey (Dewey Martin)...I Shot an Arrow into the Air was written by Rod Serling from an idea by Madelon Champion. Champion suggested the idea for the story to Serling during a conversation and was paid $500 for it. Although Serling always encouraged ideas and screenplays from "outsiders" this was the only time he ever deemed one of them interesting enough to use. I Shot an Arrow into the Air is best remembered for the twist ending (which you may well see coming anyway - thus potentially negating its impact) and probably deserves a slightly better reputation than it has in the Twilight Zone pantheon. Serling's extra narration over the third act seems somewhat gratuitous (Serling does some narration during the episode over rocky desert vistas in addition to his usual vocal duties at the beginning and end) and the twist unavoidably makes the characters look rather stupid in retrospect but the story is always sufficiently gripping and Dewey Martin makes a good stock Twilight Zone villain as the increasingly unhinged Corey. I'm always a sucker for these types of stories where they have astronauts trapped somewhere strange and getting on each other's nerves.