The Twilight Zone

Tag Area: TV Series
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s01e05)

Walking Distance


Stopped at a gas station outside of his boyhood hometown, burnt-out executive Martin Sloan decides to explore the town, which surprisingly has not changed at all in twenty-some years. —Michael Main
I know you’ve come from a long way from here . . . a long way and a long time.
Michael Montgomery (as young Marty) carves his name into a post on a bandstand,
                while Gig Young (as old Martin) looks on.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s01e10)

Judgment Night


Carl Lanser finds himself on a transatlantic voyage of the cargo liner S.S. Queen of Glasgow, in 1942, not knowing much about himself or how he got there, but knowing volumes about submarine warfare. —Michael Main
There’d be no wolf packs converging on a single ship, Major Devereaux. The principle of the submarine pack is based on the convoy attack.
Patrick Macnee (as First Officer McLeod) stands behind a disoriented Nehemiah
                Persoff (as Carl Lanser) in the bar of the S.S. Queen of Glasgow.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s01e12)

What You Need


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 Also, the science fiction aspect has been replaced by psychic precognition, solidly in the realm of fantasy, but not quite into weird fiction.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.
On a city sidewalk at night, Steve Cochran (as Fred Renard) menacingly
                approaches Ernest Truex (as the street vendor Pedott).
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Time Phenomena
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s01e18)

The Last Flight


World War I pilot Terry Decker flies through a white cloud and emerges 42 years later, landing at an American Air Force Base in France, at which point he proves that a Nieuport 28 biplane is capable of doing a causal loop just as well as he can do an Immelmann Turn. —Michael Main
Kenneth Haigh (as Leftenant Terry Decker) stands in his Royal Flight Corps
                uniform in front of his Nieuport 28 biplane.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Fantasy
  • War
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s01e26)

Execution


Back in the 1880s, just after a man without conscience is dropped from a lone tree with a rope around his neck, a scientist pulls him into 20th-century New York City.

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. —Michael Main
Caswell: I wanna see if there are things out there like you described to me. Carriages without horses and the buildings that rise to—

Professor Manion: They’re out there, Caswell. . . . Things you can’t imagine.
Dressed in a tie and black jacket, and holding his trademarked cigarette, Rod
                Serling stands in front of a time machine.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s01e30)

A Stop at Willoughby


On a snowy November evening during his train commute home from New York City, John Daly falls asleep and, perhaps in a dream, sees a simpler life with bands playing in the bandstand, people riding penny farthings through the park, and kids fishin’ at their fishin’ holes the 1888 summertime of idyllic Willoughby. —Michael Main
Willoughby, sir? That’s Willoughby right outside. Willoughby, July, summer. It’s 1888—really a lovely little village. You ought to try it sometime. Peaceful, restful, where a man can slow down to a walk and live his live full-measure.
A man cycles on a penny farthing in an idyllic city park beside James Daly (as
                38-year-old New York City executive Gart Williams).
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s02e09)

The Trouble with Templeton


The trouble with aging actor Booth Templeton is that he sees life as useless even decades after his young wife died. The answer to his trouble may lie in the people he meets—including his dead wife, Laura!—in what appears to be his hangouts from some thirty years ago. Actual time travel or something more fantastical? You be the judge. —Michael Main
Laura! The freshest, most radiant creature God ever created. Eighteen when I married her, Marty, . . . twenty-five when she died.
Dressed as a flapper, Pippa Scott (as young Laura Templeton), pushes aside a
                curtain and strikes a pose.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Debatable Time Travel
Short Story

The Twilight Zone [s1e30] (treatm.ent)

Execution


Back in the Old West, just after outlaw Jason Black is dropped from a lone tree with a rope around his neck, two scientists pull him into the 20th century. The story isn’t your typical short story; instead, it’s a treatment that Johnson presented to Rod Serling for a Twilight Zone episode that aired on 1 April 1960.
Listen to me. There is a strange world outside that door. Without us to help you, anything can happen to you. This is the twentieth century, don’t you understand?
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  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel