"
And When the Sky Was Opened" is an episode of the American television anthology series
The Twilight ZoneThe Twilight Zone is an American anthology television series created by Rod Serling, which ran for five seasons on CBS from 1959 to 1964 and remains syndicated to this day. The show consisted of unrelated vignettes depicting paranormal, futuristic, dystopian, or simply disturbing events, usually...
. It was first aired on December 11, 1959.
Part one
Part two
Synopsis
Three
astronautAn astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....
s flying the X-20 DynaSoar into space for the first time disappear from radar on a test flight, then reappear. Rod Serling's voiceover is spoken showing the ship represented in a hangar by a canvas-covered form.
However, all is not as it seems upon their return to Earth. After they land, Gart is sent to the hospital with a broken leg. During the evening, the other two, Forbes and Harrington, go to a bar. There, Harrington suddenly gets a strange feeling. He immediately goes to a phone booth to call his parents, but they tell him
they have no son. Then Harrington mysteriously disappears, and no one but Forbes remembers his existence. Forbes tells his story to Gart, who says he does not know any person named Harrington. Then Forbes looks in the mirror and runs out of the room. By the time Gart gets up to run after him, Forbes has mysteriously disappeared too, and nobody remembers him. Then Gart himself mysteriously disappears, and the ship does too — wiping them off the face of the Earth.
Although there are no special effects showing the spacecraft in flight, the disappearances are emphasized by props. The headline on the newspaper first says "Three Men..." then "Two Men..." and finally "Lone Man..." There is one fewer bed in the hospital room when one man disappears. At the end, the hospital room is shown empty, and there's a sheet of canvas spread out on the floor of an empty hangar.
Also at the end, it is implied that the three astronauts were supposed to die when they crashed and the X-20 was meant to be destroyed. However, that would not explain why no one (such as Forbes' wife) remembered they ever existed in the first place.
Closing narration
Preview for next story
Announcer: "And now, Mr. Serling."
Episode notes
This episode is thinly based on the short story "Disappearing Act" by
Richard MathesonRichard Matheson , is an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres...
. The story was first published in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (March 1953).
See also
- "Remember Me", an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: The Next Generation is a science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry as part of the Star Trek franchise. Created about 21 years after the original Star Trek, and set in the 24th century about 80 years after the orginal series, the program features a new crew and a new...
in which a character undergoes a similar experience.
External links