The Twilight Zone being rebooted by Bryan Singer and CBS

[Admiral2]

Christopher wrote:

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Every so often, someone wants to bring anthologies back. But anthologies are a tough sell these days, so it makes sense to go with an established, successful name. And the most successful SF/fantasy anthologies, the ones that are best remembered today, were The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, with the former tending more toward fantasy and the latter more toward SF. So those are the names it's natural to gravitate toward.

Unfortunately, it's also completely natural to take that concept and brutally rape it repeatedly with each remake.

Leave it the hell alone.

[Sindatur]

Admiral2 wrote:

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Unfortunately, it's also completely natural to take that concept and brutally rape it repeatedly with each remake.

Leave it the hell alone.

I'm sure Bill Shakes with fear of his Peers laughing at him over West Side Story or Tromeo and Julie Ate or Rome0 and Julie8 or Zeffireli's Whiting/Hussey 1967 Romeo and Juliet

[Christopher]

It's in very poor taste to use something as horrible and traumatizing as rape as a metaphor for something as fundamentally harmless as reinterpreting a work of fiction in an unsatisfying way. We really need to wipe out that idiom.

And really, what concept? It's an anthology! It's a different concept every week! What is there for a purist to get up in arms about? There are no lead characters to be reinterpreted, no continuity to be rewritten. It's just a format, a genre, a title, and a theme tune. How do you "leave alone" an entire format or an entire genre? Sure, you could try doing a fantasy/SF anthology under a different name, but when it's been tried in recent years, it's always flopped quickly. (Anyone remember Welcome to Paradox or Masters of Science Fiction?) Any fantasy anthology is going to be likened to TZ anyway, so why not actually make it TZ? If it works, if the name recognition helps a worthwhile anthology series (since one of them is bound to be worthwhile one of these days, and Bryan Singer's as likely to make it work as anyone) get a better chance of success, then I say go for it!

[sidious618]

Neat. I look forward to seeing what they do with it. I can't see it being a ratings successful 22 episode show but a summer show might work.

[JD]

They need to bring in some of the writers from The X-Files.

I absolutely love the idea of Michael Emerson hosting, that would be perfect.

[Gaith]

Ditching the whole host role would be a good first step.

[Emh]

Vorta Claus wrote:

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If the writing is up to snuff, this could be worthwhile. It's not like there's a glut of anthology series out there.

Of course, that's a big if...

This pretty much sums up my feelings.

A host with a strong presence is also very necessary. I also think the Michael Emerson suggestion is inspired. Someone with his level of gravitas is needed.

[JD]

Gaith wrote:

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Ditching the whole host role would be a good first step.

That is one of the biggest things that makes The Twilight Zone what it is. If they get rid of the host, they might as well just use a whole new title.

[Gotham Central]

JD wrote:

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That is one of the biggest things that makes The Twilight Zone what it is. If they get rid of the host, they might as well just use a whole new title.

The 80's version ditched the host in favor of a voice over. But they also showed Rod Serling in the opening so they probably did not want to try and fill his shoes.

The thing is that the 80's version was actually really well received and had a number of neat ideas.

On some level the revamped Outer Limits largely mined the same well as TZ. The original Outer Limits was more about creature features and weird Monsters/aliens where as TZ had the twist endings. Revamped OL borrowed alot of its ideas from TZ and took them to the next level. That the Outer Limits took the same route and ended up on TV for so long probably made it harder or the 3rd TZ to find its place.

[RJDiogenes]

Christopher wrote:

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It's in very poor taste to use something as horrible and traumatizing as rape as a metaphor for something as fundamentally harmless as reinterpreting a work of fiction in an unsatisfying way. We really need to wipe out that idiom.

Okay. They usually murder the concept. Is that better?

And really, what concept? It's an anthology! It's a different concept every week! What is there for a purist to get up in arms about?

Odd question for you to ask, since you already know the answer. You're already on record as saying you didn't feel that the 80s network revival captured the original TZ vibe. As you've also mentioned, there have been many anthologies over the years-- Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Thriller, Tales From The Darkside, Tales From The Crypt, even Serling's own Night Gallery, to name a few-- and they've all had their own themes and aesthetics. And, while there are certainly some areas of overlap, a story or approach that's appropriate for one would generally not be appropriate for the other. The Crypt-Keeper rocks, but should not be considered as a substitute for Rod Serling.

[Venardhi]

Elfin Mischievous Humbug wrote:

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This pretty much sums up my feelings.

A host with a strong presence is also very necessary. I also think the Michael Emerson suggestion is inspired. Someone with his level of gravitas is needed.

If not him, Nestor Carbonell would suit nicely as well.

[mos6507]

The most famous TZ episode in the 80s was the Danny Kaye one, which was one of if not his actual last role, written by Harlan Ellison.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InhOmdFTx0I

So don't write off the revivals. It's all about who they get to write for it.

[Christopher]

Gotham Central wrote:

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The 80's version ditched the host in favor of a voice over.

In fact, in the first season of the original show, Serling only did voiceovers intros and closings in the episode proper, only appearing on-camera at the end to deliver the preview for the next week's episode. The first time he appeared in the body of an episode was in a closing gag appended to the first-season finale, usually missing in syndication. The episode, "A World of His Own,"

featured Keenan Wynn as a writer whose characters came to life and vanished when he destroyed the dictaphone recordings that described them. At the end, Serling came on and apologized for the "ridiculous nonsense" of the story, and Wynn's character reacts in outrage, pulling out an envelope marked "Rod Serling" and tossing it in the fire, whereupon Serling shrugged, said "Well, that's the way it goes," and vanished.

Twilight Zone: The Movie also had voiceovers only, delivered by frequent TZ player Burgess Meredith.

On some level the revamped Outer Limits largely mined the same well as TZ. The original Outer Limits was more about creature features and weird Monsters/aliens where as TZ had the twist endings. Revamped OL borrowed alot of its ideas from TZ and took them to the next level. That the Outer Limits took the same route and ended up on TV for so long probably made it harder or the 3rd TZ to find its place.

Except that the OL revival was still more SF-oriented rather than fantasy. Basically the driving idea behind the Showtime OL, besides putting in lots of sexual content for pay cable, was a rather ferocious Luddism -- most of the stories were about the eeeevills of technology and the punishment of people who dared to Dabble in Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. Basically its philosophy was that we should never, ever try to learn anything new or improve our lives or do anything scientific at all because it will damn us. I hated that about it.

RJDonner&Blitzen wrote:

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Okay. They usually murder the concept. Is that better?

Not really, because it's still trivializing a horrific act. In general, it's an obnoxious hypberbole to talk about being disappointed in a work of fiction as if it were in any way comparable to a life-changing violent crime.

Odd question for you to ask, since you already know the answer. You're already on record as saying you didn't feel that the 80s network revival captured the original TZ vibe.

And I'm on record as saying that the following syndicated season did recapture that original vibe pretty well. Just because I didn't care for one or two specific attempts to revive it, that doesn't mean I think it's valid to say that it should never be tried again. Sure, by Sturgeon's Law, most attempts to revive an old series, like most attempts to do anything else in entertainment, will be disappointing -- but sooner or later there will be one that works. So if one or two attempts are disappointing, that's a reason to keep trying, not to stop trying.

[stj]

There were actually quite a few OL episodes that weren't Luddite, although there were quite too many. I can see getting turned off by that. There was a period of time when the ostentatious antitechnology messages in some Star Trek episodes got on my nerves, until I realized that the show was covertly identifying "technology" with, not just new inventions and knowledge, but social repression. It would have been better writing if they'd realized this of course.

The first season of the second Outer Limits series had a capstone finale that referenced most of the seemingly standalone episodes as part of an overall arc. Alien invasion I think it was. The punch line is that the hardnosed guy that seemed to be the alien mole suppressing the information was in fact the guy who, upon being convinced, was necessarily eliminated by the aliens (or whatever.) I don't think season two has been put out as a set, (at least it's not on Netflix,) but I have no desire to follow this arc. I do wish the whole series was available though.

Anthologies have a profound structural advantage over series. Namely, the story told can be the most important story (leading to the biggest changes) of the protagonist's life. Regular series, which tend to keep the characters the same, may depict the slow changes of real life more faithfullly. But that tends to be less dramatic.

Serialized stories are generally stuck with open-ended lack of structure, cheating the stories of dramatic resolution. Worse, since they still focus on a limited set of protagonists they tend to either repeat the same story for each character (Apollo keeps reconciling with his father, for instance,) Or they end up undoing what plot resolutions they manage to achieve just to continue the plot (the Scarrans are still a giant threat even though Crichton & Co. destroyed the space flowers that made them intelligent, for instance.)

The drawback of course is that the viewer must invest in new characters every week. Movies of course tend to try to overcome this by casting stars, leading audiences to invest in the characters because they're invested in the actor. From a production standpoint, new sets and new stars (loosely speaking, TV stars don't have the massive popularity of movie stars usually,) for less reliable ratings is a losing proposition. Hence, the lower proportion of anthology series, despite the on average artistic superiority.

[Gaith]

stj wrote:

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Anthologies have a profound structural advantage over series. Namely, the story told can be the most important story (leading to the biggest changes) of the protagonist's life. Regular series, which tend to keep the characters the same, may depict the slow changes of real life more faithfullly. But that tends to be less dramatic.

Maybe, but half-hour anthologies also have vastly smaller shares of their running time to devote to setting scenes/establishing characters. That doesn't leave much room for plot, but if one jumps straight into the plot in media res, it can be hard to make the characters feel authentic. Also, a focus on a particular theme/tone/mood can stifle creativity as much as encourage it. I'm not discounting the points you do make about anthologies, but I don't think they're wildly comparatively blessed against standard series, either.