Encyclopedia
The Twilight Zone was a
television anthology series created 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. Although advertised as science fiction, the show rarely offered scientific explanations for its fantastic happenings and often had a moral lesson that pertained to everyday life. A popular and critical success, it introduced many
Americans to serious science fiction ideas through television and also through a wide variety of Twilight Zone literature.
The success of this original series led to the creation of two revival series , a
feature film, a radio series, a comic book, a magazine and various other spinoffs 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.
Television history
"The Time Element"
In 1957,
CBS purchased a
teleplay that writer
Rod Serling hoped to produce as the pilot of a weekly anthology series.
The Twilight Zone: "The Time Element" marked Serling’s first entry in the field of science fiction.
The story is a
time travel fantasy of sorts, involving a man visiting a psychoanalyst 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 explains, concluding that these are not mere dreams; he actually
is 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.
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, and talks of making
The Twilight Zone a series 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 is a newspaper [i] published in New York City [i] by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. [i] ...
. 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
Throughout the
1950s, Rod Serling had established himself as one of the hottest names in television, equally famous for his success in writing televised drama as he was for criticizing the medium's limitations. His most vocal complaints concerned the censorship frequently practiced by sponsors and networks. "I was not permitted to have my Senators discuss any current or pressing problem," he said of his 1957 production "The Arena", intended to be an involving look into contemporary politics. "To talk of tariff was to align oneself with the Republicans; to talk of labor was to suggest control by the Democrats. To say a single thing germane to the current political scene was absolutely prohibited... In retrospect, I probably would have had a much more adult play had I made it science fiction, put it in the year 2057, and peopled the
Senate with robots. That would probably have been more reasonable and no less dramatically incisive."
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 vehicle 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 forbidden 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. 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 these means of veiling the show's potentially controversial ideas, Serling still battled a certain amount of censorship over such mundane matters as the phrase "I can feel it in my guts" . The sponsors were also sometimes difficult to deal with; a tobacco company objected to the negative portrayal of pipe-smoking in the episode "Uncle Simon", and it was changed to hot chocolate instead.
In addition to the show's more dramatic episodes, there were plenty of comedic stories. These were almost all somewhat dark comedies, although some were much more upbeat and sentimental. One — "Cavender Is Coming", starring
Carol Burnett — actually featured a laugh track.
Despite his esteem in the writing community, Serling found
The Twilight Zone difficult to 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 occasional 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 as its multiple
Emmy Awards would suggest.
For four of the seasons,
The Twilight Zone was in a half-hour format, but in the 1962–63 season its name was shortened to
Twilight Zone as its time slot was expanded to an hour in length . Twice in its initial run
Twilight Zone was cancelled, only to be revived when its replacement failed in the same time slot.
While Serling's appearances on the show became one of its most distinctive features, with his clipped delivery still widely imitated today, he was reportedly nervous about it and had to be persuaded to appear on camera. Serling often steps into the middle of the action and the characters remain seemingly oblivious to him, but on one notable occasion they are aware he's there: in the episode "A World of His Own", a writer with the power to alter reality objects to Serling's unflattering narration, and promptly erases Serling from the show.
The original show now airs regularly in the U.S. on the
cable channel Sci Fi Channel.
Notable Guest StarsEpisodes featured some of Hollywood's most familiar faces, including Philip Abbott , Casey Adams, Stanley Adams , Jay Adler ,
Luther Adler, Brian Aherne,
Claude Akins ,
Jack Albertson ,
Denise Alexander, John Anderson ,
Dana Andrews,
Edward Andrews , R.G. Armstrong,
John Astin,
Barry Atwater,
Eleanor Audley,
Mary Badham, Raymond Bailey , Martin Balsam , Trevor Bardette, Barbara Barrie,
Richard Basehart,
Orson Bean,
Bill Bixby,
Joan Blondell,
Neville Brand, a young Morgan Brittany [billed as Suzanne Cupito] ,
Charles Bronson,
Edgar Buchanan,
Carol Burnett, Sebastian Cabot,
Art Carney,
John Carradine, Jack Carson,
Dane Clark,
Fred Clark,
James Coburn,
Steve Cochran,
Richard Conte, Gladys Cooper ,
Bob Crane ,
Jackie Cooper,
Wally Cox, Gary Crosby, Patricia Crowley,
Robert Cummings,
James Daly, Richard Deacon, John Dehner ,
William Demarest,
Andy Devine, Ivan Dixon ,
James Doohan, Donna Douglas ,
Howard Duff,
Dan Duryea,
Robert Duvall,
Buddy Ebsen,
Jack Elam,
Shelley Fabares,
Peter Falk,
John Fiedler , Paul Fix, Joe Flynn, June Foray ,
Constance Ford,
Byron Foulger,
Anne Francis , James Franciscus, Harold Gould ,
Mariette Hartley,
Charles Herbert,
Earl Holliman,
Dennis Hopper, Jim Hutton, a young Ann Jillian, Arte Johnson,
Russell Johnson ,
Buster Keaton,
Jack Klugman ,
Martin Landau,
Cloris Leachman,
Ida Lupino,
Lee Marvin, Kevin McCarthy,
Roddy McDowall,
Burgess Meredith , Elizabeth Montgomery,
Agnes Moorehead, a very young
Billy Mumy and an even younger
Ronny Howard,
Alan Napier,
Julie Newmar,
Leonard Nimoy, Suzy Parker,
Donald Pleasance,
Robert Redford,
Burt Reynolds,
Don Rickles,
Cliff Robertson,
Mickey Rooney,
Albert Salmi ,
Telly Savalas, Joseph Schildkraut ,
William Shatner ,
George Takei, Rod Taylor, Jack Warden, David Wayne,
Dennis Weaver,
Fritz Weaver,
James Whitmore,
Jonathan Winters,
Ed Wynn,
Keenan Wynn,
Dick York and
Gig Young. Rod Serling himself provided the opening and closing commentary for all episodes as well as appearing on-camera starting with the final episode of the first season.
First revival
It was Serling's decision to sell his share of the series back to the network that eventually allowed for a
Twilight Zone revival. As an in-house production, CBS stood to earn more money producing
The Twilight Zone than it could by purchasing a new series produced by an outside company. Even so, the network was slow to consider a revival, shooting down offers from the original production team of Rod Serling and Buck Houghton and later from
American filmmaker
Francis Ford Coppola. Their hesitation stemmed from concerns familiar to the original series:
Twilight Zone had never been the breakaway hit CBS wanted, why should they expect it to do better in a second run?
The answers to this question began to surface in the early
1980s, as a new generation of writers and directors emerged from the very teenagers who formed the core of
Twilight Zone's original audience. First came
The Twilight Zone Companion by Marc Scott Zicree, an in-depth look into the history of the series that won critical accolade, a 1983 nomination for the American Book Award and a place on bestseller lists across the nation. Also encouraging were the new numbers from Nielsen and the
box office alike. "We were looking at the success of the [original series] in syndication and the enormous popularity of the
Steven Spielberg films," said CBS program chief Harvey Shepard. "Many of them [such as
E.T. is an Academy Award [i]-winning 1982 [i] science fiction [i] ...
or
Poltergeist] deal with elements of the show. Perhaps the public is ready for it again."
Despite lukewarm response to
, 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 and more established talents 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, Robert Klein,
Jonathan Frakes, and
Fred Savage. New theme music, evocative of the original theme but with a more contemporary quality, 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 of half-hour programs was produced in 1988 to "pad" the series' syndication package. Robin Ward replaced Aidman as the narrator of these Canadian-produced episodes.
While the show didn't match the enduring popularity of the original, it did develop its own cult following and some episodes - such as the love story "Her Pilgrim Soul" - were widely acclaimed.
Rod Serling's Lost Classics
In the early
1990s,
Richard Matheson and Carol Serling produced an outline for a two-hour made-for-TV movie which would feature Matheson adaptations of three yet-unfilmed Rod Serling short stories. Outlines for such a production were rejected by CBS until early 1994, when the widow of Serling discovered a complete shooting script authored by her late husband while rummaging through their garage. Serling showed the forgotten script to producers Michael O’Hara and Laurence Horowitz, who were significantly impressed by it. "I had a pile of scripts, which I usually procrastinate about reading. But I read this one right away and, after 30 pages, called my partner and said, 'I love it,'” recalled O’Hara. “This is pure imagination, a period piece, literate—some might say wordy. If Rod Serling's name weren't on it, it wouldn't have a chance at getting made."
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 as a two-hour feature on 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
Patrick Bergin 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 visit a
movieplex, 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 is a national American [i] newspaper [i] published by the Gannett Corporation [i] ...
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
In 2002, a second revival was attempted by
UPN, with narration provided by
Forest Whitaker and theme music by
Jonathan Davis . Broadcast in an hour format with two half-hour stories, it was cancelled after one season. The critical and audience reaction to this revival was generally not very good, although reruns continue to air in syndication.
Noteworthy episodes featured
Jason Alexander as
death wanting to retire from harvesting souls,
Lou Diamond Phillips as a
swimming pool cleaner being shot repeatedly in his dreams,
Susanna Thompson as a woman whose stated wish results in an "upgrading" of her family,
Usher as a policeman being bothered by telephone calls from beyond the grave... and a handful of remakes and updates of stories presented in the original
Twilight Zone series, including the famous "Eye of the Beholder". One of the updates was "The Monsters Are on Maple Street", a modernized version of the classic episode similarly called "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street". The original show was about the paranoia surrounding a neighbourhood-wide blackout. In the course of the episode, somebody suggests an alien invasion being the cause of the blackouts, and that one of the neighbours may be an alien. The anti-alien hysteria is an allegory for the anti-communist paranoia of the time, and the 2003 remake, starring Andrew McCarthy, replaces aliens with terrorists. The show also contains a follow-up episode to the events of the original episode "It's a Good Life". Bill Mumy returned as an adult version of Anthony, the demonic child he played in the original story, with Mumy's young daughter appearing as Anthony's daughter, a more benoevolent but even more powerful child.
Cloris Leachman also returned as Anthony's mother. Mumy went on to serve as screenwriter for other episodes in the revival.
The second revival show featured many stars making guest appearances, including
Jessica Simpson,
Eriq La Salle,
Jason Bateman,
Method Man,
Linda Cardellini,
Jaime Pressly,
Jeremy Sisto, Molly Sims,
Katherine Heigl,
Portia de Rossi, Jeremy Piven,
Ethan Embry,
Shannon Elizabeth, Jonathan Jackson,
Amber Tamblyn and
Elizabeth Berkley, among others.
In comparison with the
Outer Limits is an American [i] television series [i]. ...
revival, this short lived
Twilight Zone revival series was more likely to address contemporary issues head-on; i.e. terrorism, racism, gender roles and sexuality, whereas the
Outer Limits tended to focus on more general themes.
Other media
Comic books
Western Publishing published a
Twilight Zone comic book, first from
Dell Comics for 4 issues , then from
Gold Key Comics for 92 issues from 1962 to 1979 .
Several of the stories would be reprinted in their
Mystery Comics Digest, which mentioned the title on the covers. A wide range of artists worked on the title, including Reed Crandall, Lee Elias, George Evans,
Russ Jones,
Joe Orlando,
Jerry Robinson,
Mike Sekowsky, Jack Sparling, Dan Spiegle, Frank Thorne and
Alex Toth.
In the late 1980s, NOW Comics published a new comic series with using the title logo from the 1984 revival. The publisher made great efforts to sign established sci-fi/fantasy writers, including
Harlan Ellison, adapting his story "
Crazy as a Soup Sandwich."
Movie
Twilight Zone: The Movie was a 1983 movie produced by Steven Spielberg as a theatrical version of The Twilight Zone, a 1950s and 60s TV series created by Rod Serling. It starred Dan Aykroyd, Albert Brooks, Vic Morrow, John Lithgow, and others.
The film remade three classic episodes of the original series and included one original story. John Landis directed the prologue and the first segment, Spielberg directed the second, Joe Dante the third, and George Miller directed the final segment.
The Landis-directed episode will forever infamously be remembered for the fact that Morrow and two child actors were killed during filming. Their deaths resulted from an on-set mishap, triggered by a helicopter accident which caused an explosion and fire. In his segment, Morrow played as a racist endlessly trapped via time travel in nightmarish situations transporting him to places like Vietnam and Nazi Germany. Landis was eventually acquitted of manslaughter charges stemming from the accident.
Radio
Beginning in the summer of 2002, episodes of the original
The Twilight Zone began to be adapted for radio.
See: Twilight Zone .
Pinball
In 1993,
Midway released a widebody
pinball game,
The Twilight Zone . After his huge success with
The Addams Family pinball, Midway gave
Pat Lawlor creative control over the design of the game. This game uses
Golden Earring's 1982 hit song, "Twilight Zone", as its theme song . It would go on to sell 15,235 units.
The Twilight Zone was originally supposed to be the first game to use Williams/Midway's DCS Sound System, but due to time constraints, it instead used the Yamaha YM2151/Harris CVSD audio board.
The table features several strange and unique features, including an analog clock that tells time until a game begins , a gumball machine that dispenses balls, the Powerfield , and the Powerball, a special white ceramic ball that is lighter and faster than a normal pinball.
This game was part of WMS'
SuperPin series .
Theater
Live productions of the original episodes can be seen in Los Angeles, California and Seattle, Washington. In Los Angeles,
, produced
Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up? in the Fall of 2005.
Theme park rides
The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is a theme park attraction at the
Disney-MGM Studios in
Lake Buena Vista,
Florida, and
Disney's California Adventure in
Anaheim,
California. Two new Tower of Terror attractions are currently being built at
Walt Disney Studios Paris and
Tokyo DisneySea, although the version in
Japan will not carry on the Twilight Zone theme.
Tributes
Rod Serling's image can be seen in the opening credits of both revival series. In the 1980s version, he appears as a ghostly image just before the title comes on screen, while he can be seen among other images during the opening credits of the 2002 version.
The vocal group Manhattan Transfer had a hit-single named
Twilight Zone in 1979. In live performance, they used special costumes and lighting-effects appropriate to the theme.
The hardcore band
The Number Twelve Looks Like You took their name from an episode of the show.
The Dutch rock group
Golden Earring had a top 10 U.S. hit in 1983 with the song "Twilight Zone" about a double-crossed assassin.
In
Iron Maiden's 1981 U.S. release of the album
Killers and the subsequent 1998 remastered version, the song "Twilight Zone" is about a ghost who "is imprisoned in the Twilight Zone," - somewhere between this world and the next.
On the album
2112 by Rush, there is a song called "The Twilight Zone", a tribute to the show. Lyrics include imagery that would be consistent with the show - e.g. a pleasant-faced man removes his hat and he has three eyes; you wake up in a town to find that you're the pet of a giant boy. Other references include the line "You have entered the Twilight Zone", and lines used in the opening of the show
The Cadets Drum and Bugle Corps's 2005 and 2006 programs, "The Zone " and "Volume 2: Through the Looking Glass," portrayed an episode of the Twilight Zone. The character walks through a door and finds herself in several situaions that could have happened on the Twilight Zone, including a game of human chess. At the end of the "The Zone," she finds her way back through the door back into the real world, but in the beginning of "Volume 2," she has instead found herself in
Alice in Wonderland is a work of children's literature [i] by the English [i] m ...
and needs to return through the looking glass to truly return to the real world. The beginning of "The Zone" included the opening monologue from Twilight Zone, and the music for the two shows included the theme to Twilight Zone, as well as music from the movies
Dancer in the Dark is a Golden Palm [i] winning musical film [i] released in the year 2000 [i] ...
,
Pollock, and
, music by
Propellerheads, original music by Chief Arranger Jay Bocook, and the song "White Rabbit" by
Jefferson Airplane.
Popular culture
- An episode of [Third Rock From The Sun] featured a guest appearance by [William Shatner]. In the scene with [John Lithgow], Lithgow's character asked Shatner's character "How was your flight?", to which Shatner said there was something on the wing of the plane. Lithgow responded with "The same thing happened to me!" Both men played the same character in [Nightmare at 20,000 Feet] - Shater in the classic episode, Lithgow in the 1985 film.
- When Butch and Fabienne ride away on Zed's chopper in Pulp Fiction, the song playing is "Out of Limits" by The Marketts, which features an homage to the TW theme.
- An episode of Garfield and Friends was an American [i] animated television series [i] based on the p ...
has Garfield being accidentally trapped within TV set-with Twilight Zone ending. - An episode of Saturday Night Live is a weekly late night 90-minute American [i] comedy [i]-variety show [i] ...
had a spoof of The Twilight Zone in which Ricky Nelson stars as himself caught in an endless loop of walking home to The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, an American [i] radio [i] and television series [i] ...
. - Three episodes of Johnny Bravo in 1997 has Johnny in The Zone Where Norm
