The Twilight Zone in 10 Episodes: Rod Serling’s Best Hits

This characteristic initially ran in April forward of Jordan Peele’s reboot, and is being republished for the present’s 60th anniversary.

The Twilight Zone was one of many biggest case research for the wide-reaching scope of science fiction. Rod Serling’s seminal anthology present supplied up a assassin’s row of numerous tales that explored completely different sides of the human situation.

Between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his information, The Twilight Zone homed in on Chilly Struggle-era fears in regards to the Different, Nuclear Age issues in regards to the extent of man’s grasp, and postwar interrogations about our personal sense of morality and ethics.

Be it Jordan Peele’s reboot, our present political local weather, October being spooky season, or the present’s 60th anniversary, there are many causes to revisit the long-lasting sequence. Although, seeing how there are 156 episodes to kind by means of, we thought we’d provide a lightweight.

So, enable us to stalk in from the nook of the display, cigarette in hand, to interrupt down a number of the most acquainted and intriguing parables the sequence needed to provide – and probably the most iconic episodes to serve up these classes. Simply don’t lose your footing, as you step into…

T H E T W I L I G H T Z O N E

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BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

“Time Sufficient at Final” (Season 1, Episode eight)

Henry Bemis (Burgess Meredith) is a bookish man who loves the written phrase, however everybody from his spouse to his boss derides his love of studying. In fact, when the nuclear apocalypse hits and takes out everybody however him (having hidden in a financial institution vault), he’s momentarily thrilled on the prospect of getting on a regular basis on this planet to sink into his favourite books, solely to tragically break his glasses.

“Time” is possibly one of the crucial well-known episodes of Twilight Zone, and for good cause – it’s a scintillating parable about an delinquent man who would somewhat see the world go away than regulate to dwell in it. Even when he’s given precisely what he wished, destiny intervenes to punish him for his presumption.

Additionally Think about, If You Will: “A Sort of a Stopwatch”, “A Good Place to Go to”

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IT’S COMING FOR YOU

“Nightmare at 20,00zero Toes” (Season 5, Episode three)

“There’s a person on the wing of the aircraft!” cries William Shatner in one other considered one of Serling’s classics, a claustrophobic story of a person pushed to insanity both by the stresses of their job or the true specter of a monster trapping you the place you may’t escape. It’s an ideal showcase for the terrifying paranoia of not with the ability to cease your inevitable destiny, a recurring concern for Twilight Zone protagonists (and one Peele just lately remade for the brand new present).

Additionally Think about, If You Will: “The Concern”, “The Dummy”

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WE’RE NOT THE TOP OF THE FOOD CHAIN

“To Serve Man” (Season three, Episode 24)

The xenophobia of the Chilly Struggle was typically a priority for Serling’s sequence (see beneath), however even when outsiders got here in peace, it nearly at all times got here with an asterisk. Take this traditional episode, by which the benevolent Kanamits arrive to resolve all our issues – however extract a lethal gastronomic price we uncover solely too late from a deciphered Kanamit textual content: “It’s a cookbook!” Serling beloved to discover the tenuous standing of man’s energy, implying that it wouldn’t take a lot to knock us off the pinnacle of the totem pole.

Additionally Think about, If You Will: “Stopover in a Quiet City”, “Black Leather-based Jackets”

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WE CAN’T BE TRUSTED

“The Monsters are Due on Maple Avenue” (Season 1, Episode 22)

Oftentimes, the destruction of mankind in The Twilight Zone got here by our personal hand, and by no means is that clearer than on this traditional episode, by which a small suburban city activates one another on the mere implication of infiltration by extraterrestrial forces. A harrowing reflection of Purple Scare paranoia and the fragility of our communities, Serling’s allegories have not often been extra pointed.

Additionally Think about, If You Will: “It’s a Good Life”, “The Masks”

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LAUGHING AT THE UNIVERSE

“Hocus-Pocus and Frisby” (Season three, Episode 30)

The Twilight Zone wasn’t all doom and gloom although – the sequence ceaselessly took the time to let unfastened with some goofier fare. Take this pleasant farce a couple of fuel station attendant (Andy Devine) vulnerable to tall tales, who instantly will get greater than he bargained for when aliens abduct him, believing his boasts to be true. There’s a little bit of the opposite classes on this listing in Ol’ Archimedes Frisby’s adventures, however it’s value noting that The Twilight Zone performed with tone as freely because it did its topics.

Additionally Think about, If You Will: “Mr. Dingle, the Sturdy,” “A World of His Personal”

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DANCE WITH THE DEVIL

“A Sport of Pool” (Season three, Episode 5)

Man has at all times wrestled together with his mortality, and The Twilight Zone supplied up loads of possibilities for its characters to fulfill their makers – or discount for his or her lives. This episode, as an example, locked Jonathan Winters and Jack Klugman in a surprisingly high-stakes pool recreation with Klugman’s life on the road. If he gained, he lived; if he misplaced, he died. Distilling our personal drive for survival with the ego and technique of gamesmanship looks like an ideal metaphor for the best way we dwell our personal lives.

Additionally Think about, If You Will: “One for the Angels,” “Nothing within the Darkish”

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A WOMAN SCORNED

“Eye of the Beholder” (Season 2, Episode 6)

Most Twilight Zone episodes have been male-heavy tales, coping with the form of masculine anxieties about dying, failure or lack of energy – however Serling discovered time to comment upon points of ladies’s place in American society on the time as effectively. “Eye of the Beholder”, a couple of bandaged lady hoping to underneath go beauty surgical procedure, just for us to see that she seems lovely in a world full of grotesque pig faces, allowed us to mirror on the subjective requirements of magnificence, and the restrictive packing containers girls are oft-forced to squeeze into.

Additionally Think about, If You Will: “Elegy,” “The Hitch-Hiker”

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WAR IS HELL

“A High quality of Mercy” (Season three, Episode 15)

Serling was a World Struggle II vet, getting a front-row seat to the best way conflict makes monsters of us all and struggling no small quantity of psychological trauma consequently. His must exorcise these demons are actually clear on this traditional episode, by which a gung-ho American infantryman (Dean Stockwell) finds himself within the physique of a Japanese soldier on the eve of a shock assault on wounded American forces. Immediately struck with a wave of empathy and perspective, he urges them to cease, Stockwell’s character getting a chilly, exhausting lesson on what occurs when conflict stops us from seeing the humanity of others.

Additionally Think about, If You Will: “Two,” “The Final Flight”

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IT’S COME TO LIFE

“The Residing Doll” (Season 5, Episode 6)

For the entire present’s ruminations on the character of society and mankind, typically The Twilight Zone is simply content material to scare up some creepy dolls and allow them to unfastened. That’s actually the case within the harrowing “The Residing Doll,” starring Telly Savalas as a violent, temperamental man besieged by the doll belonging to his girlfriend’s daughter, whom he neglects and verbally abuses. There’s a lesson in there in regards to the hazards of poisonous masculinity, and the facility of a kid’s creativeness, however largely it’s only a hella creepy half hour of tv.

Additionally Think about, If You Will: “5 Characters in Search of An Exit”, “Miniature”

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THIS ISLAND EARTH

“The Invaders” (Season 2, Episode 15)

Generally, Serling’s tales would ask us to de-center our personal existence from the topics of his episodes, and The Twilight Zone typically delighted in revealing the characters we have been requested to empathize with weren’t from Earth in any respect. The nifty one-woman present “The Invaders,” as an example, noticed an remoted older lady (Agnes Moorhead) defending her cabin from unusual, tiny invaders – solely to divulge to the viewers that they have been astronauts from Earth investigating a planet of giants. It’s a quintessential Twilight Zone reveal, one which permitted us to acknowledge that we aren’t the one recreation within the universe. Generally, we’re the supporting characters in one other particular person’s story.

Additionally Think about, If You Will: “Third from the Solar,” “Probe 7, Over and Out”