The Twilight Zone (r1s01e26)
Execution
by Rod Serling, directed by David Orrick McDearmon
Serling wrote this script based on a George Clayton Johnson’s bare bones, present-tense
treatment for a TV script, complete with an indication of where the commercial break
should go. For this episode, Serling filled in the flesh and
cut the fat from a bare bones, present-tense treatment by George Clayton Johnson. The treatment appeared in Johnson’s 1977 retrospective collection of
scripts and stories, and in Volume 9 of Serling’s
collected Twilight Zone scripts, Johnson commented that “Rod took my idea
and went off to the races with it. He had a remarkable knowledge of what would and
wouldn’t work on television, and he took everything that wouldn’t work out of
‘Execution’. He worked like a surgeon; a little snip here, a complete amputation over
there, move this bone into place, graft over that one. When he was done, my little story
had grown into a television script that lived and breathed on its own.” Serling also
added a nice twist at the end that, for us, warranted the TV episode an Eloi Honorable
Mention.
Rod Serling wrote this script based on a 1960 Twilight Zone episode of the same name, but I’m uncertain
whether the story was published before Johnson’s 1977 retrospective collection.
Professor Manion: They’re out there, Caswell. . . . Things you can’t imagine.