"
Time Enough at Last" is an episode of the American
televisionTelevision is a widely used telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images, either monochromatic or color, usually accompanied by sound. "Television" may also refer specifically to a television set, television programming or television transmission...
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 adapted from a short story by Lyn Venable, which had been published in the January 1953 edition of the
science fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction. It differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically-established or scientifically-postulated laws of nature...
magazineMagazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles, generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
If: Worlds of Science FictionIf was an American science fiction magazine launched in March 1952 by Quinn Publications, owned by James L. Quinn. Quinn hired Paul W. Fairman to be the first editor, but early circulation figures were disappointing, and Quinn fired Fairman after only three issues. Quinn then took over the...
. "Time Enough at Last" became one of the most famous episodes of the original
Twilight Zone, and has been frequently parodied since. It is "the story of a man who seeks salvation in the rubble of a ruined world" and tells of Henry Bemis, played by
Burgess MeredithOliver Burgess Meredith , known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor. He was best-known for portraying Rocky Balboa's trainer Mickey Goldmill in the Rocky films and The Penguin in the television series Batman...
, who loves
bookA book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of paper, parchment, or other material, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf, and each side of a leaf is called a page...
s, yet is surrounded by those who would prevent him from reading them. The episode follows Bemis through
the end of the worldApocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization either through nuclear war, plague, or some other general disaster. Post-apocalyptic fiction is set in a world or civilization after such a disaster...
, touching on such social issues as
anti-intellectualismAnti-intellectualism describes a sentiment of hostility towards, or mistrust of, intellectuals and intellectual pursuits. This may be expressed in various ways, such as attacks on the merits of science, education, art, or literature....
, the dangers of reliance upon
technologyTechnology is a broad concept that deals with human as well as other animal species' usage and knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt to its environment...
, and the difference between aloneness (solitude) and loneliness.
Synopsis
The episode opens on Meredith's character, a
bank tellerA bank teller is an employee of a bank who deals directly with most customers. In some places this employee is known as a cashier.Tellers are considered a "front line" in the banking business. This is because they are the first people that a customer sees at the bank and are also the people most...
who loves reading books more than almost anything else. :
As Bemis's day progresses, both his boss and his wife are shown to think his reading of "doggerel", as they call it, is a waste of time. At one point, his wife, as a cruel joke, asks him to read her
poetryPoetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
from a book. He eagerly obliges, only to find that she has defaced all the pages.
The next day, Henry takes his lunch (and reading) break in the bank's
vaultA bank vault is a secure space where money, valuables, records, and documents can be stored. It is intended to protect their contents from theft, unauthorized use, fire, natural disasters, and other threats, just like a safe...
, where he won't be disturbed. The camera shows the newspaper's foretelling headline: "
H-BombThe Teller–Ulam design is a nuclear weapon design that is used in multi-megaton-range thermonuclear weapons, and is more colloquially referred to as "the secret of the hydrogen bomb." It is named after two of its chief contributors, Hungarian-born physicist Edward Teller and Polish-born...
Capable of Total Destruction". Moments later, loud explosions can be heard from outside, violently shaking the vault and knocking Bemis unconscious. In the aftermath of the apparent war, he regains consciousness and emerges to find he is the last person alive on Earth, everybody else having been killed by the bomb. Bemis searches desperately for his wife as :
Bemis finds himself in a world of both abundance and emptiness, with food to last him a lifetime and sheer loneliness taking its toll on his sanity. As he loses hope and is about to commit
suicideSuicide is the intentional killing of one's self. Many dictionaries also note the metaphorical sense of "willful destruction of one's self-interest"...
with a gun, he sees the ruins of the public
libraryA library is a collection of sources, resources, and services, and the structure in which it is housed; it is organized for use and maintained by a public body, an institution, or a private individual. In the more traditional sense, a library is a collection of books. It can mean the collection,...
. He examines them more closely to find all its books still intact and readable. All the books he could ever hope for are his for the taking, and he finally has all the time in the world to read—with no one to stop him.
Bemis contently sorts the books he intends to read for the next several years. Just as he reaches to pick up his first book, he stumbles and his glasses fall off and shatter. In tears, he picks up the remains of his glasses and sobs, "That's not fair. That's not fair at all. There was time now. There was all the time I needed... !
It's not fair!" :
Preview to the next episode
Announcer: "And now, Mr. Serling."
Production information
"Time Enough at Last" was one of the first episodes written for
The Twilight Zone. It introduced
Burgess MeredithOliver Burgess Meredith , known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor. He was best-known for portraying Rocky Balboa's trainer Mickey Goldmill in the Rocky films and The Penguin in the television series Batman...
to the series; he went on to star in three more episodes, being introduced as "no stranger to
The Twilight Zone" in promotional spots for season four's "
Printer's Devil"Printer's Devil" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. The title comes from the profession printer's devil, an apprentice in the industry....
". He also narrated for the 1983 film
Twilight Zone: The MovieTwilight Zone: The Movie is a 1983 film 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, Scatman Crothers, Kathleen Quinlan, and John Lithgow...
, which made reference to "Time" during its opening sequence, with the characters discussing the episode in detail.
Footage of the exterior steps of the library was filmed several months after production had been completed. These steps can also be seen on the exterior of an
EloiThe Eloi are one of the two post-human races in H. G. Wells' 1895 novel The Time Machine.-In The Time Machine:In the year AD 802,701 humanity has evolved into two separate species: the Eloi and the Morlocks...
public building in MGM's 1960 version of
The Time MachineThe Time Machine is a 1960 science fiction film based on H. G. Wells's 1895 novel of the same name about a man from Victorian England who constructs a time travelling machine and uses it to travel to the future. It starred Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux...
.
John BrahmJohn Brahm was a film and television director possibly best known today for directing a dozen of the original Twilight Zone episodes including the now classic "Time Enough at Last"...
was awarded a
Directors GuildDirectors Guild of America is the labor union which represents the interests of film and television directors in the United States motion picture industry...
award for his work on the episode.
The Twilight Zone Tower of TerrorThe Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, more commonly known as Tower of Terror, is a drop tower thrill ride at Disney's Hollywood Studios, Disney's California Adventure Park, Tokyo DisneySea and Walt Disney Studios Park. It is based upon the television show The Twilight Zone...
, a theme park ride at
Disney's Hollywood StudiosDisney's Hollywood Studios is a theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort. Spanning 135 acres in size, its theme is show business, drawing inspiration from the heyday of Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s...
and
Disney's California AdventureDisney's California Adventure Park is a theme park in Anaheim, California, adjacent to Disneyland Park and part of the larger Disneyland Resort. It opened on February 8, 2001...
, has a replica of Henry Bemis's broken glasses in the lobby. It is noted that, while they are indeed reading glasses, Bemis wears them the entire episode to make him look more bookish.
Themes
Although the overriding message may seem to be "careful what you wish for", there are other themes throughout the episode as well. Paramount among these is the question of aloneness versus loneliness, as embodied by Bemis's moment of near-suicide; the portrayal of societal attitudes towards books also speaks to the contemporary decline of traditional literature and how, given enough time, reading may become a relic of the past. At the same time, the ending "punishes Bemis for his antisocial behavior, and his greatest desire is thwarted."
Rod SerlingRodman Edward "Rod" Serling was an American screenwriter and television producer, best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his science fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone. He was known in the more secular community as being an atheist despite converting to Unitarianism...
's conclusion alludes to the
Scots languageScots or Lowland Scots is the variety of Germanic language traditionally spoken in lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster. It is not to be confused with Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language varieties traditionally spoken in the Highlands and Hebrides....
poem "
To a Mouse"To A Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest, with the Plough" is a Scots poem written by Robert Burns in 1785, and was included in the Kilmarnock volume. As the legend goes, Burns wrote the poem after, as the poem suggests, turning up the winter nest of a mouse on his farm...
" (for which
Of Mice and MenOf Mice and Men is a novella written by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it tells the tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers during the Great Depression in California....
was also named) in the conclusion. The original quote is, "The best-laid schemes o' mice an men /
Gang aft agley" (translation: "Often go awry"). Thus, as Serling says, Bemis has become "just a fragment of what man has deeded himself". Adds Jason Warren of Scifilm.org, "[M]ight there be a hint here that it's such men [as Henry Bemis], men who bury themselves in books, who unwittingly create weapons that can destroy us all?"
Although it is implied that
nuclear warfareNuclear warfare, or atomic warfare, is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weapons are used. Compared to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare is vastly more destructive in range and extent of damage...
has destroyed humanity,
film criticFilm criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films, individually and collectively. In general, this can be divided into journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, and other popular, mass-media outlets and academic criticism by film scholars that is informed by film theory and...
Andrew SarrisAndrew Sarris is a U.S. film critic and a leading proponent of the auteur theory of criticism. He is generally credited with popularizing this theory in the Americas and coining the term "auteur theory" in his essay, "Notes on the Auteur Theory," which was inspired by critics writing in Cahiers du...
notes that the episode's necessarily unrealistic format may have been what allowed its production to commence:
In the era of the
InternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
and eBooks, the irony depicted in "Time Enough at Last" has an
information ageThe Information Age, also commonly known as the Computer Age or Information Era, is an idea that the current age will be characterized by the ability of individuals to transfer information freely, and to have instant access to knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously...
counterpart according to Weston Ochse of
Storytellers Unplugged. As Ochse points out, when Bemis becomes the last person on Earth, he finally has time to read, with all his books at his fingertips and the only impediment is technology when his medium for accessing them—his glasses— breaks. In a hypothetical world where all books are published electronically, Ochse observes, readers would be "only a lightning strike, a faulty switch, a sleepy workman or a natural disaster away from becoming Henry Bemis at the end of the world"—that is, a
power outageA power outage is a short- or long-term loss of the electric power to an area.There are many causes of power failures in an electricity network...
has the potential to give them time to read, yet like Bemis, they too would lose their medium for accessing their books—namely the
computerA computer is a machine that manipulates data according to a set of instructions.Although mechanical examples of computers have existed through much of recorded human history, the first electronic computers were developed in the mid-20th century . These were the size of a large room, consuming as...
. This analogy has been taken further by those who suggest that today's technology-dependent world, where books have become passé (cf.
Bradbury'sRay Douglas Bradbury is an American mainstream, fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer.Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, Bradbury is widely considered one of the greatest and most popular American writers of speculative fiction of the...
"
The Pedestrian"The Pedestrian" is a short story by author Ray Bradbury. This story was originally published in 1951 by The Fortnightly Publishing Company. It is included in the collection The Golden Apples of the Sun .-Plot:...
"), could render an outage both a liberator and an executioner: As the gateway to both work and entertainment (be it a
computerA computer is a machine that manipulates data according to a set of instructions.Although mechanical examples of computers have existed through much of recorded human history, the first electronic computers were developed in the mid-20th century . These were the size of a large room, consuming as...
, video games or
televisionTelevision is a widely used telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images, either monochromatic or color, usually accompanied by sound. "Television" may also refer specifically to a television set, television programming or television transmission...
), removing electricity from the equation presents Henry Bemis' heaven but modern society's hell.
Similar episodes
The Twilight Zone often explored similar themes throughout its run. "Time Enough at Last" has strong thematic ties to a number of other episodes in the series, starting with that of isolation, first explored in the series
pilotA television pilot is a test episode of an intended television series. It is an early step in the development of a television series, much like pilot lights or pilot studies serve as precursors to the start of larger activity, or pilot holes prepare the way for larger holes. Networks use pilots to...
, "
Where Is Everybody?"Where is Everybody?" is the first episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.-Opening narration:-Plot summary:...
". In a plot very similar to that of "Time", "
The Mind and the Matter"The Mind and the Matter" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.-Opening narration:-Synopsis:Mr. Archibald Beechcroft, who has had an insufferable time just trying to get to work, becomes annoyed when an errand boy named Henry spills coffee all over his suit....
" tells of a man who uses his mind to erase humanity, only to find that existence without other people is unbearable. The notion of being an
outsider-Film:* Outsider , a 1997 Slovenian film* Outsiders , a 2004 Singaporean film-Literature:* Outsider , a fictional species in Larry Niven's Known Space universe* Outsiders , a superhero series published by DC Comics...
, lost in a sea of
conformityConformity may refer to:Psychology* Conformity, a process by which people's beliefs or behaviors are influenced by others within a group* The Asch conformity experiments, a series of studies that demonstrated the power of conformity in groupsIndustry...
, was one of the most common themes of the series.
Other thematic elements can be found throughout the series, as well. "
The Obsolete Man"The Obsolete Man" is an episode of the television series The Twilight Zone.- Opening narration :-Synopsis:In a future totalitarian state, Romney Wordsworth is a man put on trial for the crime of being "obsolete." His occupation, to the shock of everyone, is being that of a librarian and he also...
" takes the episode's literary subtext — the notion that reading may eventually be considered "obsolete" — to an extreme: The state has declared books obsolete and a librarian (also played by Meredith) finds himself on trial for his own
obsolescenceObsolescence is the state of being which occurs when a person, object, or service is no longer wanted even though it may still be in good working order...
. This notion, akin to
Bradbury'sRay Douglas Bradbury is an American mainstream, fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer.Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, Bradbury is widely considered one of the greatest and most popular American writers of speculative fiction of the...
"
The Pedestrian"The Pedestrian" is a short story by author Ray Bradbury. This story was originally published in 1951 by The Fortnightly Publishing Company. It is included in the collection The Golden Apples of the Sun .-Plot:...
", is also alluded to in "
Number 12 Looks Just Like You"Number 12 Looks Just Like You" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.-Opening narration:-Synopsis:...
", in which a perfect and equal world contradictorily considers works like those of
ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
"smut".
Impact
"Time Enough at Last" was a ratings success in its initial airing and "became an instant classic". It "remains one of the best-remembered and best-loved episodes of
The Twilight Zone" according to Marc Zicree, author of
The Twilight Zone Companion. When a poll asked readers of
Twilight Zone Magazine which episode of the series they remembered the most, "Time Enough at Last" was the most frequent response, with "
To Serve Man"To Serve Man" is an episode of the television series The Twilight Zone.The story is based on a short story To Serve Man written by Damon Knight. The title is a play on the word serve having the dual meanings "assist" and "provide as a meal"...
" coming in a distant second. Indeed, in
TV LandTV Land is an American cable television network launched April 29, 1996. It is owned by MTV Networks, a division of Viacom, which also owns Paramount Pictures, and networks such as MTV and Nickelodeon....
's presentation of
TV GuideTV Guide is a North American weekly magazine about television programming.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews. Some issues have also featured horoscope listings and crossword puzzles.-Annenberg/Triangle era: The...
s "100 Most Memorable Moments in Television", "Time Enough at Last" was ranked at #25.
Elements of American
popular culturePopular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture...
frequently pay homage to "Time Enough at Last". In The Twilight Zone: The Movie, Albert Brooks recounts the episode to Dan Akroyd as they drive along an empty stretch of highway. "This thing freaked me out when I was 7 years old," says Brooks' character adding, "I bought another pair of glasses just in case that would happen." There are also notable
televisionTelevision is a widely used telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images, either monochromatic or color, usually accompanied by sound. "Television" may also refer specifically to a television set, television programming or television transmission...
spoofs of the episode. These include
The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy GeniusThe Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius is an American animated television series, and spin-off of the Academy Award nominated computer-animated movie, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius...
("Return of the NanobotsReturn of the Nanobots is a season 2 episode from The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.-Plot:Jimmy upgrades his nanobots to correct errors for his poem to beat Cindy's and the nanobots get a new spacecraft. But they are still out of control, and destroys Jimmy's poem, and Jimmy locks them...
"); Spongebob SquarepantsSpongeBob SquarePants is an American animated television series and media franchise. It is currently Nickelodeon's highest rated show, the most distributed property of MTV Networks, and among Nicktoons Network's most-watched shows...
; The Drew Carey ShowThe Drew Carey Show is an American sitcom that aired on ABC from 1995 to 2004 and was known for its "everyman" characters and themes...
("Y2K You're OK"); Family GuyFamily Guy is an American animated television sitcom, created by Seth MacFarlane, for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series centers on the Griffins, a dysfunctional family which consists of Peter, Lois, Meg, Chris, Stewie, and their pet dog Brian...
(at the end of the season 2 episode "Wasted Talent"Wasted Talent" is an episode, from the second season of the FOX animated series Family Guy, guest starring Adam Carolla as Death. It is the 27th episode of Family Guy.- Plot summary :...
"); FuturamaFuturama is an animated American sci-fi sitcom created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening and David X. Cohen for the Fox network. The series follows the adventures of a late 20th-century New York City pizza delivery boy, Philip J...
(during an episode of "The Scary Door" [a Twilight Zone
-style TV show that airs in the year 3000] on "A Head in the Polls"A Head in the Polls" is the third episode in the second production season of Futurama. It originally aired in North America on December 12, 1999 as episode seven in the second broadcast season. The episode was written by J. Stewart Burns and directed by Bret Haaland. Claudia Schiffer makes a guest...
"); and The SimpsonsThe Simpsons is an American animated television sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its eponymous family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie...
(on the season 14 episode "Strong Arms of the Ma"Strong Arms of the Ma" is the ninth episode of The Simpsons
' fourteenth season which aired on February 2, 2003. It is the 300th episode in production order and 298th in broadcast order.-Plot:...
"). In a more subtle homage, the PC game Fallout Tactics
includes a librarian in a desolate world who wants the player to find his missing glasses so he can read his books. The Pixar movie WALL-EWALL-E is a 2008 computer-animated science fiction film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and directed by Andrew Stanton. It follows the story of a robot named WALL-E who is designed to clean up a waste-covered Earth far in the future...
, which takes place in a desolate future, also contains a scene in which a pair of broken glasses can be seen in the foreground. The TV sitcom Two and a Half MenTwo and a Half Men is an Emmy Award-winning and Golden Globe Award-nominated American television comedy series, which premiered on CBS on September 22, 2003. The sitcom stars Charlie Sheen, Jon Cryer and Angus T. Jones. The show is about a hedonistic jingle writer, Charlie; his uptight brother,...
made references to it when the character Alan head a nervous breakdown in a bookstore.
The episode's title was borrowed by a song on The Fall's 1992 album Code: SelfishCode: Selfish is a 1992 LP by British rock band The Fall which entered the chart at number 21. It is characterised by its harsher sound, in relation to the previous year's Shift-Work, and draws influence from techno music. This was probably due to the addition of techno fan Dave Bush to the line-up...
, and a 2004
independent filmAn independent film, or indie film, is a film that is produced outside of any major film studio. Originally, this term denoted independence from Paramount Pictures, MGM, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Bros., RKO, Universal Pictures, United Artists, and Columbia Pictures, the 8 major studio entities...
about a man who tries to escape an office building. The film's naming was quite intentional; its official website even listed the
webmasterA webmaster , also called a web architect, web developer, site author, website administrator, or webmeister, is a person responsible for maintaining a website...
's e-mail alias as "
rodserling".
Other media
"Time Enough at Last" has been released in numerous formats over the years. In 1988 it was available on
VHSVideo Home System, better known by its abbreviation VHS, was a video tape recording standard developed during the 1970s. It was released to the public during the latter half of the decade. During the late part of the 1970s and the early 1980s it formed one-half of the VHS vs Betamax war, which it...
as part of a Twilight Zone
collector's edition. Two releases were made in 1998 and 1999, as part of a more widely available two-episodes-per-tape release scheme. Although similar individual multi-episode DVDDVD, also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc,is an optical disc storage media format, and was founded in 1995. Its main uses are video and data storage...
s were released, it is now exclusively available as part of The Twilight Zone - The Definitive Edition
, the first volume of which was released December 24, 2004. Included is an audio-only interview with Burgess MeredithOliver Burgess Meredith , known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor. He was best-known for portraying Rocky Balboa's trainer Mickey Goldmill in the Rocky films and The Penguin in the television series Batman...
as well as the clip of The Drew Carey ShowThe Drew Carey Show is an American sitcom that aired on ABC from 1995 to 2004 and was known for its "everyman" characters and themes...
s parody of the episode.
The episode has also been released on non-traditional media. For instance, the story which inspired it has been released in eBook and
MP3MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression. It is a common audio format for consumer audio storage, as well as a de facto standard of digital audio compression for the transfer and playback of music on...
form, capitalizing on the success of the episode. In 2005, "Time" became one of the first
Twilight Zone episodes offered for download via
Google VideoGoogle Video is a free video sharing website and also a video search engine from Google. Google Video allows select videos to be remotely embedded on other websites and provides the necessary HTML code alongside the media, similar to YouTube. This allows for websites to host large amounts of video...
, and later on sites such as
Amazon.comAmazon.com, Inc. is an American-based multinational electronic commerce company. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, it is America's largest online retailer, with nearly three times the Internet sales revenue of the runner up, Staples, Inc....
.
Along with other
Twilight Zone episodes, "Time Enough at Last" has been adapted to formats other than television since its original publishing and broadcast. In 2003, the Falcon Picture Group produced a series of
radio dramaRadio Drama is a form of audio storytelling broadcast on radio. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the story....
s based on the series—stating, "In the 1950s many radio series were turned into television series – so why not the reverse?"—which were broadcast on about 200 stations through the USA; "Time" was included in volume six.
External links