The Twilight Zone

Note, this page is about the television series and its two revivals. For other uses of The Twilight Zone see The Twilight Zone (disambiguation)

The Twilight Zone is the name of a television series created (and often written by) its narrator and host Rod Serling. Each episode was an individual fantasy or science fiction story, often concluding with an eerie or unexpected twist. A popular success, it introduced many Americans to serious science fiction ideas while still managing to attract overwhelmingly positive critical attention. The success of this original series led to the creation of two revival series, a feature film and various other spin-offs that would span five decades.

Writers for The Twilight Zone included leading genre authorities such as Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, Jerry Sohl, George Clayton Johnson, Earl Hamner Jr, Reginald Rose and Ray Bradbury. Many episodes featured adaptations of classic stories by such writers as Ambrose Bierce, Lewis Padgett, Jerome Bixby and Damon Knight. Episodes featured some of Hollywood's biggest celebrities, including Charles Bronson, Carol Burnett, Robert Duvall, a very young Ronnie Howard, Buster Keaton, Jack Klugman, Lee Marvin, Burgess Meredith, Elizabeth Montgomery, Agnes Moorehead, Suzy Parker, Robert Redford, Don Rickles, Mickey Rooney, William Shatner and Dick York. Rod Serling himself provided narration as well as on camera introductions to many episodes.

Television History

The Time Element (1958)

A time travel fantasy of sorts, the story involved a man visiting a therapist with complaints of a recurring dream in which he imagines waking up in Honolulu just prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. "I wake up in a hotel room in Honolulu and it's 1941, but I mean I really wake up and it's really 1941," he tells his therapist, having concluded that these are not mere dreams; he is actually travelling through time. Taking advantage of the situation he bets on all the winning horses, all the right teams and, eventually, tries unsuccessfully to warn others - anyone: the newspaper, the military, anyone - that the Japanese are planning a surprise attack.

and Martin Balsam in "The Time Element"

With this script Serling drafted the fundamental elements that would distinguish the series still to come: a science-fiction/fantasy theme, opening and closing narration and use of a trick ending. But what would prove popular with audiences and critics in 1959 did not meet network standards in 1957. “The Time Element” was purchased only to be shelved indefinitely, talks of making The Twilight Zone a series had ended.

This is where things stood when Bert Granet, the new producer for Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse discovered “The Time Element” in CBS’ vaults while searching for an original Serling script to add prestige to his show. “The Time Element” debuted on November 24, 1958 to an overwhelmingly delighted audience of television viewers and critics alike. “The humor and sincerity of Mr. Serling's dialogue made 'The Time Element' consistently entertaining,” offered Jack Gould of the New York Times as over six thousand letters of praise flooded Granet’s offices. Convinced that a series based on such stories could succeed, CBS again began talks with Serling about the possibilities of producing The Twilight Zone. Where Is Everybody was accepted as the pilot episode, and the project was officially announced to the public in early 1959.

Original series (1959-1964)

This is precisely the thesis he intended to prove when, in 1959, he set out to create a weekly television series that, while featuring stories peopled by robots, aliens and other fantastical beings would seek to offer dramatically incisive and involving looks into contemporary politics.

Twilight Zone’s writers frequently used science-fiction as a metaphor for social comment; networks and sponsors who had infamously censored all potentially "inflammatory” material from the then predominant live dramas were ignorant of the methods developed by writers such as Ray Bradbury for dealing with important issues through seemingly innocuous fantasy. Frequent themes include nuclear war, mass hysteria and McCarthyism, subjects that were strictly verboten on more "serious" prime-time drama. Episodes such as The Shelter or The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street offered specific commentary on current events while other stories (such as The Masks or The Howling Man) operated around a central allegory, parable, or fable that reflected the characters' moral or philosophical choices.

Despite his esteem in the writing community, Serling found The Twilight Zone a hard sell. Few critics felt that science-fiction could transcend empty escapism and enter the realm of adult drama. In a September 22, 1959 interview with Serling, Mike Wallace asked a question illustrative of the times: "..[Y]ou're going to be, obviously, working so hard on The Twilight Zone that, in essence, for the time being and for the foreseeable future, you've given up on writing anything important for television, right?"

Serling himself would later admit that to go "from writing an occassional drama for Playhouse 90, a distinguished and certainly important series to creating and writing a weekly, thirty-minute television film was like Stan Musial leaving St. Louis to coach third base in an American Legion little league." Ultimately The Twilight Zone would triumph over such skepticism, its five seasons winning over a relatively small but devoted audience that included many of the critics who had scoffed at the show's premise.

First Revival (1985-1988)

Despite lukewarm response to Twilight Zone: The Movie, Spielberg's theatrical homage to the original series, CBS gave The New Twilight Zone a greenlight in 1984 under the supervision of Carla Singer, then Vice President of Drama Development. "Twilight Zone was a series I always liked as a kid," said Singer, "...and at that point it sounded like an interesting challenge for me personally." These sentiments were seconded by a number of young filmmakers eager to make their mark on a series which had proved influential to their life and work -people like writers Harlan Ellison, J. Michael Straczynski, George R. R. Martin and Rockne S. O'Bannon and directors Wes Craven and William Friedkin. Casts featured such stars as Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Martin Landau, Jonathan Frakes and Fred Savage. New theme music was composed by Jerry Garcia and performed by The Grateful Dead. Filling in for Serling as narrator and host was Charles Aidman, himself the star of two classic Twilight Zone episodes. The New Twilight Zone ran for two seasons on CBS. An additional season was produced in 1988 to "pad" the series' syndication package.

Rod Serling's Lost Classics (1994)

Eager to capitalize on Serling’s celebrity status as a writer, CBS packaged “Where the Dead Are” with Matheson’s adaptation of “The Theatre”, debuting a two-hour feature the night of May 19, 1994 under the name Twilight Zone:Rod Serling’s Lost Classics. The title represents a misnomer, as both stories were conceived long after Twilight Zone’s cancellation. Written just months before Serling’s death, “Where the Dead Are” starred Jack Palance as a 19th century doctor who stumbles upon a mad scientist’s medical experiments with immortality. “The Theatre” starred Amy Irving and Gary Cole as a couple who visits a movie-plex only to discover that the feature presentation is their own lives. James Earl Jones provided opening and closing narrations.

Critical response was mixed. Gannett News Service described it as “taut and stylish, a reminder of what can happen when fine actors are given great words.” USA Today was less impressed, even suggesting that Carol Serling “should have left these two unproduced mediocrities in the garage where she found them.” Ultimately ratings proved insufficient to justify a proposed sequel featuring three Matheson-adapted scripts.

Second Revival (2002-2003)

Trivia