The Twilight Zone

Whatever incantation, whatever form, whatever decade, this show has managed to intrigue and defy logic with its use of imaginary story lines and ideas, mixing a palate of intrigue and genius to allow the common viewer to become engrossed in the weirdest television has to offer. While the original series was cheesy at some points, this show was always different, always something to look forward to in regards to the eeriness it created. Rod Serling helped usher in a generation of paranoia and science fiction thanks to this groundbreaking show, and I'm thankful for this. I could only imagine what the world would be like if all we had were terrible dramas and average sitcoms filling the airwaves. This show will rank as one of the best in my book, no matter what people say.

I would assume that everyone knows "The Twilight Zone"'s theme song, and recognizes Rod Serling's monotone explanations of how the given character has just crossed over into the Twilight Zone. I'm not sure which episode is my favorite. There's "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet", in which William Shatner sees a monster tearing at an airplane wing, and there's also "Time Enough at Last", where Burgess Meredith plays a bookworm who gets enough time to read as much as he wants...or does he? Or, it might be another episode. But no matter. "The Twilight Zone" never ceases to impress me. Even the 1983 movie was pretty interesting, not something that many movies based on TV shows accomplish. You should try to see the show.

Wow! Where should I start? "The Twilight Zone" is arguably the greatest science fiction television show ever! Almost every single episode is a masterpiece of modern Sci-Fi. I feel "The Twilight Zone" is responsible for the way we view science fiction today...provocative, strangely eerie, and wildly entertaining. The shows creator and writer, Rod Sterling, was a master of creating a show that caused you to stop and think, re-examine reality, consider the impossible, check the closet before going to bed, and sleep with the lights on! I watched this program religiously as a child. Every Saturday night I had to bribe my little brother to stay up and watch "The Twilight Zone" with me because I was afraid to watch it alone. It came on at 11:00 p.m. By 10:45 my little brother was sound asleep with chocolate smeared around his mouth, and I would be alone, curled in a blanket, awaiting the next spine tingling episode. I was never disappointed. By the time it went off, I would usually be sitting there alone...in a comatose-like daze, staring at the static on the television screen, too afraid to turn it off because to do so would ensure that you met with some hideous fate similar to the one you just saw earlier. "The Twilight Zone" was also a spring board for many young and talented actors/actresses during its run from the late 50's well into the 60's.

Thanks to mail order companies, I have ordered and received every single episode of "The Twilight Zone"! It would be impossible for me to say which episode is my absolute favorite because I loved so many. But a couple do stick out in my mind. They are "Time Enough At Last" and "Eye Of The Beholder". If you've never watched this wonderful example of television at it's best, I plead with you to check it out. It can be found on the Sci-Fi channel as well as various other stations via cable T.V. There's no sex, no foul language, and no graphic violence. But you will find a solid plot, famous actors/actresses years before before they became famous, and a story with a very surprising twist at the end that will leave a smile on your face, or, a cringe as you wake up your someone else in the house to turn off the T.V.

Rod Serling's distinctive approach gave "The Twilight Zone" a unique character that will always keep it among the best-remembered of all classic television shows. Not only that, but it set high goals for itself, and it took a lot of chances - and not chances in the phony, trivial sense in which a lot of more recent series "take chances" by resorting to unnecessarily provocative or indecent material that actually guarantees them attention and acclaim.

"The Twilight Zone" took chances by experimenting with many different kinds of stories and material, and by aiming to provide high-quality entertainment while simultaneously giving you something to think about. As a result, there were a few episodes that didn't quite click, and that seem odd or even dull. But when it worked - as it did a great deal of the time - no television show then or now was more imaginative.

In a short review, it would be impossible to list all of the memorable episodes, or even to cover the full range of the kinds of material that it used. There were chilling episodes like "To Serve Man", which is often remembered by those who saw it decades ago, and there were thought-provoking episodes like "In the Eye of the Beholder", which was also imaginatively filmed.

Many episodes relied primarily on a well-written and well-conceived story, while others, like "The Invaders", relied heavily on excellent acting performances (in that case, by Agnes Moorehead). There were occasional light-hearted episodes like "Once Upon a Time", which was also a nice showcase for the great Buster Keaton.

It's too bad that these anthology-style series went out of fashion, because a number of them were of high quality. This one, in particular, stands well above its subsequent imitators. The best science fiction, like the best of any genre or art form, appeals to the imagination, not to the senses, and imagination is what "The Twilight Zone" was all about.

"The Twilight Zone" brought a complexity and maturity to television that had never existed before and probably hasn't been seen since. The stories were always ironic, briliant, and fascinating, and they often came with a moral lesson. Episodes like "A Kind of a Stopwatch", with Richard Erdmann, "Time Enough At Last", with Burgess Meredith, "Nightmare at 20,00 Feet", with William Shatner, and "Where is Everybody," with Earl Holliman, dove into concepts and situations no other show would have even touched. The entertainment brought on by "The Twilight Zone" was as vast as the Zone itself. Its principal writers, Sterling, Beaumont, and Matheson, were the best of their era. For sheer television entertainment, nothing compares to the brilliant, heavyweight stories of "The Twilight Zone." TO be frank, "The Twilight Zone" was the first show that didn't insult the viewer's intelligence.