New version of The Twilight Zone to be on CBS All Access

[Locutus of Bored]

I didn't like this latest episode at all. I don't believe for one second that our police in general are that racist. Do racist cops exist? Yes. But TV likes to make it seem like this is the majority. It isn't. It's a terrible stereotype that writers like to portray.

It wasn't intended to be taken literally. Real cops don't have Terminator-esque tracking abilities to hunt you down no matter where you go either. In this nightmare scenario all the police were racists out to kill the kid. It's representing a worst case scenario to amplify the very real dangers felt by black people when they are stopped by police, and the institutional racism that is a major problem in law enforcement. Not that all or even most cops are overtly racist, but enough are and enough react to personal bias to frequently make it a significant danger for black people to be pulled over.

You'll also notice that they deliberately chose an older style police uniform for the cops to reflect the 50s and 60s. There are still some state troopers that dress that way today, but I think it was deliberately intended to represent the past. The same reasoning probably went into the decision to have the key time looping camera be an older style camcorder from the 90s or so, probably to harken back to the Sony Handicam that recorded the Rodney King beating and ushered in the era of recording police misconduct toward captive subjects. Later it shows it transitioning into everyone recording on their smartphones to show the transition to everyone now having the means to document their abuse.

So don't take it like they're saying all cops are racist any more than they're saying camcorders can open up a time portal by hitting rewind. That's just the nature of The Twilight Zone where it plays up the worst aspects of something to make a point.

 

[JD]

Yeah, that can't possibly work, oh, wait.

OK, as much as I love The Orville, I have to admit I forgot about it when I made that post, but I don't know if it really works as a counter arguement. First of all, I don't think it's ever gotten that great of ratings from the beginning, and it's really struggling now, so it really hasn't worked. It's also nowhere near of noteworth as new Trek shows are. Discovery was meant to be a big prestige series that could compete with things like The Handmaid's Tale and Stranger Things, I don't believe The Orville has ever even attempted to operate at that level.

 

[Ghel]

The ep was just addressing a problem that is very real for a lot of african-americans. It was a big big problem a few decades ago, it's gotten better now but it clearly still persists. But I don't think the ep was suggesting in any way that all cops or even a majority of cops are racist and evil.

I would agree with you *except* for the scene in which the racist cop is pointing a live weapon at an unarmed woman and all the other police arrive and kind of mosy around like "oh well." The scene has multiple officers start leaving the scene even before the racist officer lowers his firearm. Although the overall theme of the episode may have been about racism in general, the fact that the script doesn't have even one officer try to talk their co-worker down struck me as an attack on police in general rather than racism as a concept.

That scene for me, not only wouldn't have been changed thematically, but would even have been improved if the crowd AND the other officers talked/forced the racist cop to stand down. Then it is clear that it is not about police specifically but racism in general that is creating the conflict. It would have also given more rationale/motivation to the final few moments of the episode and the ultimate implied resolution.

 

[gblews]

I also have found that in the last two episodes, good people who did nothing wrong got hurt by the Twilight Zone. In the pilot, while the comedian didn't ask for what happened, he knew what he was doing, and knowingly killed people he didn't like. In the second episode, the Twilight Zone forced this innocent man to cause a plane crash, and killed him. And in this one, it just implied that nothing could save this kid from being destroyed by a racist cop, no matter how long.

First time I’ve ever seen anyone believe that The Twilight Zone was an actual entity, present in the episodes.

 

[Guy Gardener]

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The narrator says that the Twilight Zone is a place.

I more like to think that the zone of twilight is a moving specificity like the gaze of the eye of Sauron.

The Writers Room, which we don't know isn't just a muppet checking Jordan's punctuation... But a Writers room is considered a single entity often enough, and that room is both the show and the group mind deciding what is happening to the characters.

 

[RJDiogenes]

People often refer to things that "the show" does, as shorthand for all the creative people involved in the production. In this case, the show is The Twilight Zone.

If the Twilight Zone is an actual entity, it would have to be either really big or a moving target, since not all the stories take place in the same universe. Maybe it's some kind of mad god. Perhaps its true name is Serling.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The hyper ridiculous nature of the first couple seasons of Glee was eventually explained by the Music Room being the victim of a gas leak.

The kids were super stoned for the first 60 episodes.

Maybe the Twilight Zone is also a gas leak?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

"A Nice Place Visit" where it's revealed that the guy is actually in hell, was a criminal who had robbed and murdered.

I would LOVE to see the 2019 TZ remake that episode.

@Kirk Prime: I agree that sometimes TZ tends to treat genuinely good people like shit, but as far as "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet" goes...remember what I said about Joe (the crazy pilot). He's the Tyler Durden of that episode. Now think about that for a minute...

 

[Trekkin]

Number 12 Looks Just Like You, To Serve Man, The Silence, Time Enough At Last (though it’s possible to interpret Meredith as an antisocial dick, which leaves us in a position of having no likeable characters for that ep) Eye of the Beholder, He’s Alive, The Invaders, The Monsters Are Due..., It’s A Good Life, The Sky Opened... Turns out social commentary (and horror) hits harder, when people are reminded that bad things don’t just happen to bad people.

Although ‘Nightmare at 30,000...’ came across more like the Meredith example to me. Our lead is sympathetic and his fate might be a bit harsh, but karma was certainly at play there.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Just got done watching Replay and A Traveler. My only question is this:

What the HELL is up with the constant repetition of the number 1015? It's been in the last three episodes:

Nightmare at 30,000 Feet: The flight number is 1015, it takes off at 10:15 PM, on October 15, and the code to get into the flight deck is 1015.

Replay: The license plate number of the state trooper's car.

A Traveler: The code to get into the jail cell complex.

What are they building up to here? Something like Bad Wolf in DW? No previous iteration of TZ has ever had a continuing arc (in fact I'm not aware of any groups of TZ episodes taking place in the same 'universe').

Oh, and about A Traveler...

Spoiler

What a lame-ass ending.

Not because the Traveler is an alien - his ultra-futuristic phone kinda gave that away, as did the one scene where he dislocates his own neck in his cell. But his people's entire invasion plan depends on sabotaging the power grid of one Air Force station in the middle of nowhere? Give me a fucking BREAK.

Planet Canada alert:

Jill Teed from nuBSG appears during the Christmas party at the police station. I don't know who she plays, though.

 

[kitik]

Yeah, I really noticed the 1015 on the keypad at jail. Gonna have to keep my eye out for it now. I'm assuming it was in the Comedian episode somewhere. (Perhaps even somewhere blatantly obvious, I just didn't know I was looking for it yet.) Might not necessarily mean anything. For example, I was usually hopeless at spotting the pineapple on Psych.

I liked the Traveler episode. That's some quintessential Twilight Zone stuff right there. Paranoia in a small police station on a holiday. I'm not in the least bit worried about the silly or convoluted nature of the Traveler's plan. That's not at all what the episode was about. Drunk brother knew what was up, it's all about the pie.

 

[Starbreaker]

I don't understand how a show with such great everything else can have such bad writing.

I was pretty riveted for the first half but then I couldn't wait for this episode to end. And then I had no idea what was even going on.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The army base was monitoring the skies.

Taking out that shed, which somehow was so well hidden, the telepaths with super tech, needed to trick the humans into locating it for them, so that the aliens could sneak in and take over.

Drunk brother couldn't tell the difference from this new bunch of alien overlords, compared to the last bunch of alien overlords that showed up in 1492.

Personally, I think the aliens were already in charge, so they were just fucking with the humans for shits and giggles.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Just watched second episode. Not impressed by that one. Just very predictable and not very interesting. I don't see it as "The Twilight Zone making an innocent man do a bad thing". I see it as another metaphor, for the kind of paranoia that occurred after 9/11.

The issue with cops being racist isn't as simple as "A cop is either all racist or all not racist". It often gets simplified that way in the national debate. The much more common case is "Cop isn't a classic racist, but instinctually perceives things done by black people as more life threatening as the same thing done by a white person, and thus reacts more violently".

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The army base was monitoring the skies.

I'm sure there are dozens of others doing the same thing...

The issue with cops being racist isn't as simple as "A cop is either all racist or all not racist". It often gets simplified that way in the national debate. The much more common case is "Cop isn't a classic racist, but instinctually perceives things done by black people as more life threatening as the same thing done by a white person, and thus reacts more violently".

Lasky isn't necessarily racist towards all black people. IIRC, Mabel (the owner of the diner) is black, and he clearly has no problem with her.

Then again, Lasky only ever encounters Mabel in the diner, where he obviously could not ever regard her as threatening. If she was driving and he pulled HER over, I wonder how he'd react then.

Oh, and I was kinda flummoxed by 1) how easily Nina's brother accepted her story that her camcorder could turn back time, and 2) the EXTREMELY CONVENIENT appearance of an underground tunnel that led from the house right to the campus.

And in "A Traveler", they were way too eager to let that creepy guy out of his cell. I wonder if he was influencing them telepathically to do so. I mean, he just shows up there, with no explanation of how he GOT there, and there's an innocent man in the next cell (the only reason that guy was even there is because his sister the sergeant hauled him into jail on a false charge just so the captain would have somebody to "pardon")..so why do they let the Traveler out?

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I haven't watched that episode yet, but if the first two episodes are any indication, they are taking somebody's emotional feelings toward a situation and metaphorically manifesting it as a mystical threat, just like the first two episodes.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I'm sure there are dozens of others doing the same thing...



Lasky isn't necessarily racist towards all black people. IIRC, Mabel (the owner of the diner) is black, and he clearly has no problem with her.

Then again, Lasky only ever encounters Mabel in the diner, where he obviously could not ever regard her as threatening. If she was driving and he pulled HER over, I wonder how he'd react then.

Oh, and I was kinda flummoxed by 1) how easily Nina's brother accepted her story that her camcorder could turn back time, and 2) the EXTREMELY CONVENIENT appearance of an underground tunnel that led from the house right to the campus.

And in "A Traveler", they were way too eager to let that creepy guy out of his cell. I wonder if he was influencing them telepathically to do so. I mean, he just shows up there, with no explanation of how he GOT there, and there's an innocent man in the next cell (the only reason that guy was even there is because his sister the sergeant hauled him into jail on a false charge just so the captain would have somebody to "pardon")..so why do they let the Traveler out?

Sheriff is an elected position.

As a leader in the community (she controls all the pies), Mabel tells the little people who they should be voting for, and if the police man was super racist at her, even once in a while, it would not be him who gets back into office, come next election.

I was thinking that maybe the Sherrif is working for the university. If he sees an a complete family on the way to that school, then offing or derailing that family in a way that tuition would not need to be reimbursed, it could make the school board a few hundred thousand on the side annually, if their pet sheriff is shooting dozens of kids and taking them to jail for made up crimes.

It wasn't an underground tunnel literally. The underground is what during slavery they called the people who helped the slaves escape the south. The underground railroad is the path they took. There was no literal railroad, or train. Present day, it was a historical walking tour, that reinacted the route slaves would take through this city on their way north.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Sheriff is an elected position.

Lasky wasn't a sheriff. He was a Virginia state trooper. (In all U.S. states except Vermont, state police conduct law enforcement activities which are outside the jurisdiction of the county sheriff.)

It wasn't an underground tunnel literally. The underground is what during slavery they called the people who helped the slaves escape the south. The underground railroad is the path they took. There was no literal railroad, or train. Present day, it was a historical walking tour, that reinacted the route slaves would take through this city on their way north.

I didn't mean the real Underground Railroad, I mean the tunnel from this episode. It actually appeared onscreen. We see Nina, Dorian, and Uncle Neil take it from Neil's house directly to the campus.

 

[Romulan_spy]

"A traveller" didn't really work for me. For one, it was too long. If you are going to do a mystery, keep it short so that you keep the audience guessing and then surprise them before they figure it out. This episode dragged on too long. It was pretty obvious that he was an alien, especially since we saw that weird light hovering in the sky in the very beginning of the episode. Although I will admit that the futuristic phone and his talk about visiting places, did make me wonder a bit if maybe he was a time traveler from the future. But then we saw that he had antennas and later he changes in front of Jack making it super obvious that A.T was an alien. Moreover, the plan seemed way too convoluted. Why go through all the song and dance of asking for a pardon, taking selfies with the people, singing songs, etc.. I guess he was just wasting time until the invasion? But as others mentioned, why would the sheriff let him out so easily at first when A.T was so suspicious? Also, the whole premise was a bit weak. Are we really meant to believe that an entire fleet of alien spacecrafts can invade Earth just by slipping past one Air Force base undetected? Or maybe there were other aliens in other places doing the same thing to sabotage the power grids all around the world?

I feel like the ep could have been much better if it had been shorter and done something more inventive than the alien invasion thing. Maybe make A.T a Time Traveler instead wanting to check out this little town for some reason or maybe make A.T the devil come to mess people up? I don't know but the alien invasion thing seems cliche at this point.

I feel like the classic TZ basically did it better in the ep "Will the real martian please stand up?" That ep gave us a nice mystery and suspense about which traveler was the real alien, only to surprise us at the end with a nice twist. This is how you do a plot twist about an alien invasion:

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[Tosk]

I have to admit, I'm fairly unimpressed so far. Not to say that any of the previous versions of TZ haven't had their share of average episodes, but this is starting to feel like this is the level of quality we're stuck with on the new one. I really need a good episode (and soon!) to reassure me to keep coming back.