TWILITE ZONE's legacy

[RobertScorpio]

Can you name a science fiction movie, or scifi series, that has a theme or plot that someone couldn't trace back to a TWILITE ZONE episode?? I know it may be over simplification, but many themes we see, or plot twists they throw out, seem right out of Sterling's play book..

Rob
Scorpio

 

[Mistral]

Greatest American Hero?

 

[Kryton]

Greatest American Hero?

"Mr. Dingle The Strong" starring Burgess Meredith.

 

[Mistral]

Greatest American Hero?

"Mr. Dingle The Strong" starring Burgess Meredith.

Dang you!

 

[Garibaldi O'brien]

Terminator... as it traces back to the Outer Limits.

 

[Kryton]

Greatest American Hero?

"Mr. Dingle The Strong" starring Burgess Meredith.

Dang you!

I just got Volume 1 of The Twilight Zone DVD collection so that was an easy one. Nary a single dud out of 35 episodes ... and it was on sale for just $20.

 

[Garibaldi O'brien]

^ It took me a while to get the complete Twilight Zone on DVD, but I think it is one of the finest investments I have made. It is one show that I find awesomely re-watchable.

 

[RobertScorpio]

^ It took me a while to get the complete Twilight Zone on DVD, but I think it is one of the finest investments I have made. It is one show that I find awesomely re-watchable.

Yep..i second that!

Rob Scorpio

 

[DWF]

Red Dwarf's Backwards
Dr. Who's Enlightenment
Lexx's Brigadoom

Among others Twilight Zone was an excellent show but there are things they couldn't and didn't do.

 

[Ryan]

I'm not sure if it's amazing or depressing that so many Twilight Zone episodes are timely 40+ years after the series ended.

 

[RobertScorpio]

Good point...more of a statement that SCIFI, in terms of tv and movies, keeps borrowing from the past instead of pushing the envelope more..

Rob

 

[Mistral]

Good point...more of a statement that SCIFI, in terms of tv and movies, keeps borrowing from the past instead of pushing the envelope more..

Rob

I've always said that Hollywood needs to rely on Trufans when creating scifi shows or movies. If you aint a fan you just don't get what aspects are important.

 

[sojourner]

Is a trufan one of those expensive french mushrooms?

 

[Christopher]

Can you name a science fiction movie, or scifi series, that has a theme or plot that someone couldn't trace back to a TWILITE ZONE episode?? I know it may be over simplification, but many themes we see, or plot twists they throw out, seem right out of Sterling's play book..

Well, many episodes of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone were themselves adaptations of pre-existing short stories or variations on themes that had been part of fantasy and science fiction for generations. Since it ran for five years and had an anthology format, it's not surprising that it touched on pretty much the whole gamut of SF/fantasy tropes and concepts. And let's not deny credit to the other authors who contributed heavily to TZ, often by adapting their own previously published stories -- Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson being the two most prolific TZ writers other than Serling, with George Clayton Johnson a distant fourth.

It's the nature of creativity that every creation builds on what's been established before. Most stories find new variations or twists on recognized ideas rather than coming up with something entirely new. So while TZ was certainly influential on later works, it was influenced in turn by earlier works, and so on -- just one more link in the ongoing, ever-evolving chain of human culture.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I can tell you, from my experience as a slush-pile reader, just what "Twilight Zone's" legacy to the sf short story market was:

The evident belief, on the part of many first-time authors who had clearly read little science fiction, that successful storytelling in the genre consisted mainly of coming up with a twist ending that the reader could see a mile away. Even better if the twist was that the male and female protagonists of said story, unidentified until the final paragraph, were named "Adam" and "Eve."

Not Rod Serling's fault, of course, since he was a brilliant writer.

 

[Mistral]

Is a trufan one of those expensive french mushrooms?

No, it's one of those expensive Italian air-circulating devices.

Its a dumb phrase I saw once in a Spider Robinson commentary about scifi convention attendees. Makes for a nice shorthand, though.

Bottom line is that when a fan makes a show you get Babylon 5 and when some idiot non-fan exec in Hollywood tries the same thing you get the re-imagined Bionic Woman. One makes for classic TV in the genre and the other is the expository equivalent of wet Kleenex-it just doesn't hold up.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Bottom line is that when a fan makes a show you get Babylon 5 and when some idiot non-fan exec in Hollywood tries the same thing you get the re-imagined Bionic Woman. One makes for classic TV in the genre and the other is the expository equivalent of wet Kleenex-it just doesn't hold up.

Which of course overlooks entirely the sticky fact that the original "Bionic Woman" was made by non-fan Hollywood types and not only held an audience many times the size of B5's but remains better-known and more widely admired to this day than any such TV entertainment engineered by fans.

Not that I like "Bionic Woman;" never did. But facts is stubborn things.

Hell, even Roddenberry came to whatever genre fandom he evinced second-hand, regardless of his revisionist statements later. He relied enormously on Samuel Peebles for genre research while putting "Star Trek" together.

Bottom line.

 

[Mistral]

At least Rod had the sense to use a proper resource. BW was well-received in its time-but wasn't there a bionic dog at one point? I mean, c,mon, utter tripe. I'm not saying crappy, inexpert scifi can't become popular-I'm saying that police procedurals that are successful and somewhat accurate utilize professional consultants but when it comes to scifi*sigh* they usually just go, "Well, we got a spaceship and guys in funny make-up, a good-looking hero, a science-type nerd and a chic for window dressing. How can we miss?" And then when you scan the credits at the end of the show after wiping the vomit from your lips you notice that names like Harlan Ellison, David Brin, Robert Sawyer, etc are noticeably missing.

 

[A beaker full of death]

I can tell you, from my experience as a slush-pile reader, just what "Twilight Zone's" legacy to the sf short story market was:

The evident belief, on the part of many first-time authors who had clearly read little science fiction, that successful storytelling in the genre consisted mainly of coming up with a twist ending that the reader could see a mile away. Even better if the twist was that the male and female protagonists of said story, unidentified until the final paragraph, were named "Adam" and "Eve."

Not Rod Serling's fault, of course, since he was a brilliant writer.

Hear, hear. The tragic part, though, is that such people do in fact get published (produced, etc.)