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General Twilight Zone Thread (all four series, and Night Gallery for good measure)

I

I am not Herbert

Lieutenant Commander
Red Shirt
To Whom It May Concern,

A Star Trek thread was in danger of being overrun by Twilight Zone comments, so I'm creating this thread (surprisingly, there seems only to have been a Twilight Zone 1985 thread ever created). As the name suggests, it's open to all four series and Night Gallery, even though Serling wasn't really the driving force behind the latter. I guess the movie as well, although the production history behind that one bums me out so much I try to avoid thinking about it.

If we manage to get about 7 or 8 comments, we will already have more life than the sad-sack TZ subreddit, so that's something.

To get things moving, I'll suggest a very open-ended rewatch thread (if anyone's interested), starting with "Where Is Everybody?", the first episode of the original series.

Regards,

I am Not Herbert Talky Tina
 
Ive only seen Where Is Everybody? with Earl Holliman once, but it was a worthy start to the series. It made me wonder how I'd deal with being by myself in space.

The closing narrative:

The barrier of loneliness: The palpable, desperate need of the human animal to be with his fellow man. Up there, up there in the vastness of space, in the void that is sky, up there is an enemy known as isolation. It sits there in the stars waiting, waiting with the patience of eons, forever waiting... in The Twilight Zone.
 
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I appreciate this thread. Just a quick note.... I felt like the latest series really missed some of the cool things of the original / not understanding what's actually an innovation that would be helpful. As I recall, there was some swearing and such in it... one appeal of the original was that such things were NOT needed nor was "missing" (as opposed to special effects)
 
So I watched "Where Is Everybody?" last night. It, along with what appears to be the entire run of the original series, is available without charge on demand from Pluto TV. (In the US, and presumably some other places as well). My main takeaway was a reminder of how beautifully shot TZ was-- even if it hadn't had anything else going for it, it was very pleasant to just follow the main character around the exterior (faux-downtown) sets and the interior sets. My other takeaway was to marvel at how extraordinary it is, from the perspective of 2026, that a premiere episode of a major network television program would be the story of single person walking around an otherwise empty town, talking only to himself (between fairly long stretches of not talking at all) and not having any particular goal in mind besides figuring out who and where he is. It feels far closer to Jim Jarmusch than to standard network television.
 
I am not Herbert said:
So I watched "Where Is Everybody?" last night. It, along with what appears to be the entire run of the original series, is available without charge on demand from Pluto TV. (In the US, and presumably some other places as well). My main takeaway was a reminder of how beautifully shot TZ was-- even if it hadn't had anything else going for it, it was very pleasant to just follow the main character around the exterior (faux-downtown) sets and the interior sets. My other takeaway was to marvel at how extraordinary it is, from the perspective of 2026, that a premiere episode of a major network television program would be the story of single person walking around an otherwise empty town, talking only to himself (between fairly long stretches of not talking at all) and not having any particular goal in mind besides figuring out who and where he is. It feels far closer to Jim Jarmusch than to standard network television.
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I'd never heard of Jarmusch. His wiki lists some good influences tho.
 
I've actually only just finished the '50s series for the very first time, I'd never seen it before, and I was struck by a number of things:

1. I loved seeing all the old American cars. I loved seeing '50s/'60s America in general, as it was like time travelling to an alien world I could never visit in person, and the cinematography was often beautiful. Aside for the handful of episodes shot on video which looked like classic Doctor Who.

2. It's crazy how relevant the series still is. It was all about people losing themselves in nostalgia, businesses replacing employees with automation, kids getting raised by AI, trolls speaking misinformation about people they dislike to support their own agendas, people forced into plastic surgery to match society's ideals of beauty, young people getting drawn into fascism... but mostly people losing themselves in nostalgia. Now I get why westerns were so popular at the time, if people wanted to escape to a past that never quite existed.

3. Burgess Meredith and Jack Klugman were great. William Shatner too, though he had fewer appearances. The series really gave actors a chance to show off and I appreciated it.

4. The series is obsessed with mirrors. If you're doing a rewatch, keep an eye out for all the clever camera tricks it does with mirrors, as there are some really great ones in there.
 
I mentioned over in the thread devoted to it that for the last month or so I've been watching the '80s series on MeTV+, and I've been really enjoying it. It really had some great writers involved, like George RR Martin, J. Michael Straczynski, Rockne S. O'Bannon and Michael Reeves. And some great actors were on it too, like James Cromwell, Terry O'Quinn, Richard Mulligan, Louise Fletcher, William Sanderson, Esai Morales, and one episode I watched that had Brent Spiner and John Delancie in it.
 
THE TWILIGHT ZONE (1959) is one of the greatest shows ever made. It's timeless. One of the key things that make it timeless is how a vast majority of episodes are relevant in every decade. Coming up on 70 years old, and you can get just as much from each episode today as people did when it initially aired, and all the years in between.

Definitely excellent at getting into what makes people tick.


The 80s version was also damn good. Underrated version of the series.

I love NIGHT GALLERY! Particularly as a fan of horror and creepy things, this show could chill you to the bone.
 
I've seen a lot of the original episodes here and there over the years. A few years ago I picked up the complete box set for the original TZ and have very slowly been making my way through in order. Considering how long it took me to get through my original Outer Limits DVDs, this could take some time. But it'll be a good journey. I bought the Night Gallery DVDs for the heck of it; they can wait until I'm done with TZ.

I've seen some of the other incarnations of the Twilight Zone and none of them grabbed me. Maybe part of the charm for me is that the original is from another era, and that modern takes just don't feel right. Just like how I have no interest in watching a modern romantic comedy, but tell me about one I haven't seen with, say, Jean Arthur or Barbara Stanwyck and I'm there. I'm only 62, so I'm not from that era, but I like it.
 
JD said:
I mentioned over in the thread devoted to it that for the last month or so I've been watching the '80s series on MeTV+, and I've been really enjoying it. It really had some great writers involved, like George RR Martin, J. Michael Straczynski, Rockne S. O'Bannon and Michael Reeves. And some great actors were on it too, like James Cromwell, Terry O'Quinn, Richard Mulligan, Louise Fletcher, William Sanderson, Esai Morales, and one episode I watched that had Brent Spiner and John Delancie in it.
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And a baby-faced Robert Duncan McNeill in "A Message from Charity," one of the better entries in the 1980s series.
 
Then there was the one where Katherine Heigl went back in time to dispose of Baby Hitler, only for a servant girl from the Hitler household to go into town and steal a homeless woman's baby to replace him, who then became the actual Adolph known to history... hey, they can't all be winners. :rommie:
 
Gaith said:
Then there was the one where Katherine Heigl went back in time to dispose of Baby Hitler, only for a servant girl from the Hitler household to go into town and steal a homeless woman's baby to replace him, who then became the actual Adolph known to history... hey, they can't all be winners. :rommie:
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I haven't seen that one, but that's a good variation on going back in time to kill Hitler.


This also makes me think we'll never have actual time travel, because that certainly would have happened by now if it were possiblr, leaving us in this timeline with knowledge of a person who no longer affected history.
 
JD said:
I mentioned over in the thread devoted to it that for the last month or so I've been watching the '80s series on MeTV+, and I've been really enjoying it. It really had some great writers involved, like George RR Martin, J. Michael Straczynski, Rockne S. O'Bannon and Michael Reeves. And some great actors were on it too, like James Cromwell, Terry O'Quinn, Richard Mulligan, Louise Fletcher, William Sanderson, Esai Morales, and one episode I watched that had Brent Spiner and John Delancie in it.
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I bought the DVD a number of years ago and was impressed with just how good the show was. At times, I think it held up well to the original TZ, which is my all-time favorite show.
 
I've only seen a handful of episodes of the original, it's been slowly moving up on my To Watch List for a little while now. It's on Paramount+, so I've got easy access to it.
 
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