Rod Serling does an admirable job translating the original story by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore to the small screen. The story’s two main incidents (the scissors and the shoes) come through with little change. In this version, the curious shopkeeper has become a street vendor, and the man who’s interested in the vendor’s goods is now a darker lowlife than the original newspaperman. Also, the science fiction aspect has been replaced by psychic precognition, solidly in the realm of fantasy, but not quite into weird fiction.
—Michael Main
What have you got in there? Some sort of machine? Crystal ball? . . . You can see ahead, can’t you? You can look into the future.

Tags

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Variants

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  1. “What You Need” by Rod Serling, directed by Alvin Ganzer (CBS-TV, USA, 25 December 1959).
    2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Rod Serling
    Henry Kuttner as by Lewis Padgett (based on a work by)
    C. L. Moore as by Lewis Padgett (based on a work by)
    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . directed by Alvin Ganzer
    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . created by Rod Serling [uncredited]
    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . hosted by Rod Serling

Previous Works
based on “What You Need” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore

Indexer Notes

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  1. Cast—Can you spot Spock’s Vulcan bride from the second-season Star Trek episode “Amok Time”? The actress, Arlene Martel, also appeared in a two-part time travel episode of Bewitched, “How Not to Lose Your Head to Henry VIII.”