La quatrième dimension

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.

There is probably no one who doesn't remember the Twilight Zone and have a favorite episode. I was 11 or 12 and so many of the episodes stick in my mind. Many friends and co-workers are similarly afflicted. When a group of us are discussing the woes of commuting, someone is sure to suggest that they get off at Willoughby. Stuck in a long line for whatever, with the beginning of the line no where in sight - someone might rant "It's a cookbook!". We laugh now but some episodes gave us cause for concern.

Did you ever notice how many 50's, 60's and even 70's tv shows are represented by the guest cast of TZ? Gilligan's Island, Bewitched, Star Trek, Lost In Space, Beverly Hillbillies, The Farmer's Daughter, Dobie Gillis, My Three Sons, Batman, Big Valley, The Bob Cummings Show, My Favorite Doll (or is that My Living Doll - Julie Newmar plays a robot), Honey West, Police Woman, The Odd Couple and who knows how many more!

What a series - serious actresses like Ida Lupino and Agnes Moorehead and clowns like Don Rickles. Big screen names like Mickey Rooney and Charles Bronson. Lost In Space is represented by Johnathan Harris, Billy Mumy (numerous appearances -and its a good thing you did,Anthony) and Angela Cartwright. Batman has Adam West, Julie Newmar and the great Burgess! You have a James Bond villain (Joseph Wiseman) and the first James Bond himself (for the really entrenched trivia fans - I'm not telling you who he is but it ain't Connery).

An earlier commenter put it best - this show bred most of today's horror, suspense and occult films.

This show never gets old. It ages extremely well. The psychological horror of this is SO much better than any CGI horror you'll see these days. Every episode (or at least all the good ones) have a spooky element or something out of the ordinary, a twist ending, and a moral or something to think about. There are so many of these that are just, SO GOOD. Rod serling is a greek god. tres bien.

"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.

In 1959, network TV was dominated by pretty-boy detective shows (77 Sunset Strip; Hawaiian Eye), law & order westerns (Gunsmoke; Have Gun, Will Travel), and innocuous sitcoms, (Ozzie & Harriet; Leave It to Beaver; The Donna Reed Show). If little else, most of these were entertaining in a blandly narcotizing way. TV producers may have wanted to experiment, but were hamstrung by a production code that was even more restrictive than the notorious motion picture code (crime must not be rewarded; moral transgressors must be punished; the sexes must not be shown in the same bed, etc.). Perhaps more important, producers were strait-jacketed by sponsors who insisted that programming should be as inclusive as possible so as not to risk offending or "confusing" any segment of the audience-- all the better, of course, to sell the sponsor's product, a not unreasonable requirement, given TV's commercial basis.

I mention this background, because it's hard to appreciate the cultural significance of Serling's Twilight Zone without it. For the above restrictions inevitably produced a product that was almost uniformly bland, superficial, and, by most accounts, boringly predictable-- (One near exception was the series from that sly old subversive, Alfred Hitchcock.) But pity the poor writers who week after week had to search for fresh water in the middle of this much traversed desert. Because of the conformist approach, two of the biggest casualties were, not unnaturally, Reality and Imagination. For rarely did any of these shows demonstrate even a nodding acquaintance with reality as most of us live it, while what imagination was shown was, of course, channeled into safe variations on the usual. I think many of us old enough and imaginative enough at the time, knew that network programming could be a lot better than what FCC Commissioner Newton Minnow characterized as TV's "vast cultural wasteland".

Obviously, it would be a great overstatement to view The Twilight Zone as a magic cure for this blighted situation. But, Serling did boldly and persistently set out to challenge the blandness, and in the process prepare the way for greater offbeat programming. Of course, TZ never claimed to introduce 'reality' into a weekly series-- that would come later with 1971's All in the Family. However, Serling did insist upon that other missing ingredient, 'imagination'-- and by the bucket loads. How well I remember that 1959 evening when I tuned in "Where Is Everybody?", the series' pilot and first installment-- Earl Holliman wandering through a mysteriously deserted town, running smack-dab into a mirror, and winding up in a plausibly topical outcome. I expect many others besides myself were bowled over by the novelty of what we had seen. A whole new world of what TV could be opened up, thanks to Serling, and his success in getting sponsors to take a chance on an innovative concept. Even more happily, was the promise of more to come.

Sure, few of the following episodes reached the riveting level of that first installment, at least in my book. But rarely did an entry completely disappoint. Then too, after the first couple of years, the quality dropped off as scripts began buckling under the weekly pressure by falling back on old material for new variations. However, such classics from the first year as "Walking Distance", "And When the Sky Opened", and "The Hitch-Hiker" are among the finest dramatizations of the supernatural ever to appear on TV, and hold up as well today as in that long ago black-and-white. Of course, Serling shouldn't get all the credit. As other reviewers point out, authors such as Charles Beaumont and the greatly under-rated Richard Matheson contributed much to the series' classic standing, as did the often overlooked producer Buck Houghton and director Douglas Heyes. Still and all, it was D-Day paratrooper Serling who exhausted himself in the struggle to deliver three key qualities always in short supply on public airways-- intelligence, innovation, and insight. And for that, those of us graybeards who still enjoy a re-run or two, will always be ready with a tip of the hat to the squinty-eyed gentleman with the cigarette and the powerful belief in the liberating role of imagination.