Here we go.

A massive list, every episode from the original run of The Twilight Zone ranked from #156 to #1.

I started this journey at the end of May and it took just about two months to complete viewing the 156 episodes, watching at least one a day, usually more.

As I watched, I kept a running tally of the episodes so I did not have to rank them all at one time. I flipped some around as I went, but the list is now complete. This is, of course, my opinion and my list. Yours may be completely different and that is okay.

And we are off…

#156. “The Bard” (S4 E18). The worst episode of the series was the use of black magic to bring William Shakespeare back to life. The Twilight Zone could never handle comedy and this was a prefect example of that.

#155. “Cavander is Coming” (S3 E36). Another attempt at comedy that failed, even with EYG Hall of Famer Carol Burnett in it. This was a It’s A Wonderful Life rip off.

#154. “The Brain Center at Whipple’s” (S5 E33). One of the last episodes of the series and one of the worst. The replacement of workers with computers was an issue and Wallace Whipple was a horrible person.

#153. “Showdown with Rance McGrew” (S3 E20). An actor playing a Western hero is a jerk. He winds up face-to-face with the real Jesse James. Seriously, this was so bad.

#152. “The Gift” (S3 E32). One of the worst acted episodes of the series and a thinly veiled religious parable.

#151. I Dream of Genie” (S4 E12). The second use of the genie legend was used in another poor comedic attempt. George P. Hanley had multiple dream sequences showing what his one wish would be like. Hanley was a terrible character that I hated watching.

#150. “The Mind and the Matter” (S2 E27). Archibald Beechcroft is able to use a book to focus his attention and get rid of all the other humans on the earth. Then he got bored. I was already bored.

#149. “The Mighty Casey” (S1 E35). A robot playing baseball? Isn’t that cheating?

#148. “Mr. Dingle, the Strong” (S2 E19). The absolutely worst appearance by Burgess Meredith in any Twilight Zone episode. Also included Don Rickles. Another bad comedy episode.

#147. “From Agnes-With Love” (S5 E20). The super computer named Agnes becomes jealous of the geeky programmer she had fallen for. Agnes sabotaged his date.

#146. “The Chaser” (S1 E31). A love potion makes a woman fall in love with a man… or controls her mind so she does not mind being a love slave. The idea borders on sexual assault. It also has the theme of being careful what you wish for.

#145. “Mr. Bevis” (S1 E33). More Guardian Angel stuff. Mr. Bevis is given everything that he wanted, but the changes did not make him happy. Orson Bean did what he could here, but he could only do so much.

#144. “Jess-Belle” (S4 E7). Jess-Belle, in order to gain the love of a man, became a witch and would change into a leopard at midnight. The ending was worse than that.

#143. “Sounds and Silences” (S5 E27). Roswell G. Flemington liked to listen to his military battles loudly. He was disruptive, until he couldn’t any more. Then he couldn’t hear. It was a mess.

#142. “A Thing About Machines.” (S2 E4). Bartlet Finchley hated machines and he treated them badly, going as far as to destroy them. They would turn on him. We don’t know why it happened. It just did.

#141. “The Jungle” (S3 E12). African curses come to the big city. So does a giant lion in an apartment building…somehow.

#140. “The Prime Mover” (S2 E21). Ace’s friend Jimbo had telekinesis powers and Ace made him go to Vegas so they could cheat and win by gambling. It got worse from there.

#139. “The Whole Truth” (S2 E14). This episode was the Jim Carrey movie Liar Liar episode based in a used car lot. A used car salesman who could not lie? What is the world coming to?

#138. “Mr. Garrity and the Graves” (S5 E32). A con man convinces an old western town that he could bring people back from the dead. He gets them to pay him to leave them dead. The twist at the end was as stupid of a twist as the show had come up with.

#137. “Black Leather Jackets” (S5 E18). Aliens are invading the earth and are doing so in black leather jackets. This one was dumb.

#136. “One More Pallbearer” (S3 E17). Paul Radin tried to get vengeance on a bunch of people from his past by pretending that the world was coming to an end. Didn’t work out for him.

#135. “The Last Rites of Jeff Mytlebank” (S3 E23). Jeff Mytlebank was dead. Then he sat up alive at his funeral. How did that happen? He was a demon, I guess.

#134. “The Incredible World of Horace Ford” (S4 E15). Horace Ford was a toy maker who went back to his childhood to a certain moment. This episode was just too long and Pat Dingle choices as the lead actor was questionable.

#133. “The Mirror” (S3 E6). Peter Falk played a Fidel Castro-type character who saw traitors in his mirror. Peter Falk was certainly miscast in this role.

#132. “The Bewitchin’ Pool” (S5 E36). Last episode of the series ending on a thud. The unfortunate situation with the outdoor sound doomed this episode.

#131. “Steel” (S5 E2). Robot boxing? Well, except for one human who boxed a robot. It ended as you would think.

#130. “A Nice Place to Visit” (S1 E28). A low level crook winds up getting killed by the police, only to wind up in a place where all his needs are met. Except this life of unfettered success became dull.

#129. “A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain” (S5 E11). An older man who had been married to a young woman looked to use a potion made by a friend to make him young again. Boy did it work!

#128. “Dead Man’s Shoes” (S3 E18). The ghost of a mobster possesses people in an attempt to get revenge on the mobster that killed him. He possessed the people who would wear his shoes.

#127. “A World of his Own.” (S1 E36). A writer is able to write characters that come to life and he uses it to cheat on his wife. Rod Serling makes an appearance in the actual story as well.

#126. “Still Valley” (S3 E11). A Confederate soldier finds a whole troop of Union soldiers who were frozen in place and finds out that it was because of a book of witchcraft.

#125. “Uncle Simon” (S5 E8). Uncle Simon was a rotten man and I was cheering for his murder by his niece. However, Uncle Simon had something in his will that would continue his cruelty.

#124. “Judgment Night” (S1 E10). Carl Lanser found himself on board of the S.S. Queen of Glasgow during WWII with a terrible feeling of what was going to happen.

#123. “The Four of Us are Dying” (S1 E13). A shapeshifter makes some mistakes and winds up getting killed because of it.

#122. “A Kind of Stopwatch” (S5 E13). Patrick McNalty gets a stopwatch that can stop time. The annoying McNalty does not use it well.

#121. “Two” (S3 E1). A love story? Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery are the only two people in the world. Well acted but the story was lacking.

#120. “Execution” (S1 E26). A man who is going to be hanged in the old west winds up in present day. It’s a weird ending too.

#119. “Come Wander with Me” (S5 E34). A Rock-a-Billy singer goes into a time loop and finds a woman with a song. The musical episode was strange.

#118. “The Last Night of a Jockey” (S5 E5). Mickey Rooney was a down on his luck jockey who is able to grow. The new height actually ruins his life.

#117. “People are Alike All Over” (S1 E25) Roddy McDowell is an astronaut who crashes on Mars and finds out that the friendly Martians have something more sinister in mind. He winds up as an exhibit in a zoo.

#116. “The Fugitive” (S3 E25). A king form another planet has been hiding out on earth, making friends with a little girl. The story was cute, but there was a lot of creepiness factor to it if you actually think about it.

#115. “You Drive” (S5 E14). My least favorite character Oliver pope is here and his car is looking for revenge after a hit and run killed a kid.

#114. “Probe 7, Over and Out” (S5 E9). This is the Adam and Eve episode where we find out that they actually crashed on earth and found the Garden of Eden.

#113. “The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross”(S5 E16). Sal was a guy who could make deals with people and have it magically happen. He was a rotten person that was just after everything he wanted.

#112. “Mute” (S4 E5). A girl, whose family decided that they would only speak via telepathy, winds up with a speaking family when her parents die in a fire.

#111. “Ninety Years Without Slumbering” (S5 E12).  Sam Forstmann thinks that he has to be able to keep a grandfather clock running or else he would die.

#110. “A Piano in the House” (S3 E22). Fitzgerald Fortune bought a player piano for his young wife’s birthday and he discovered that the piano had the ability to make people act in unexpected ways.

#109. “No Time Like the Past” (S4 E10). A time travel episode where Paul Driscoll tried to go into the past to stop horrible historical events but failed each time. He then decided to go back to a simpler time, only that did not go well either.

#108. “The Big Tall Wish” (S1 E27). A little boy’s wish gave a failing boxer a chance to win it all. Nice performance from Ivan Dixon of Hogan’s Heroes fame.

#107. “Static” (S2 E20). An old man finds a radio and starts hearing stations from the past. He winds up back in the past with his wife.

#106. “Elegy” (S1 E20). A threesome of astronauts land on a planet where everybody is frozen still. This is one of those episodes that started off strong but does not wrap up effectively.

#105. “What’s in the Box?” (S5 E24). A TV shows the future to a man who spends all the time arguing and fighting with his wife. He then finds out that he is going to kill her.

#104. “I Sing the Body Electric” (S3 E35). A family gets a robotic nanny that they dub “Grandma Robot” and there is a lot of sentimentality.

#103. “A Quality of Mercy” (S3 E15). Dean Stockwell is an army Lieutenant who orders his men to attack a group of Japanese soldiers who are cornered in a cave. However, before he could give the order, he winds up in the Japanese army changing his POV.

#102. “The Lonely” (S1 E7). This episode is usually considered higher by others but I found the man in love with a robot on a prison planet a bit hokey. I did not like the ending of the episode either.

#101. “The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine” (S1 E4). An old time actress isolates herself by watching her old time films and dreams of the old days.

#100. “Young Man’s Fancy” (S13 E34). Alex Walker is preparing to sell the home of his deceased overbearing mother after he was married. However, his mother had something to say about that.

#99. “A Most Unusual Camera” (S2 E10). A group of small time crooks find a camera that takes pictures of things that are going to happen in the future. Sadly everything goes tragic for them.

#98. “Hocus Pocus and Frisby” (S3 E30). Frisby tells tale tales and none of his friends believe him, even though they enjoy listening to his BS. So when Frisby is being abducted by aliens, who’s going to believe it?

#97. “The Night of the Meek” (S2 E11). An alcoholic department store Santa is fired, but he stumbles upon a bag that allows him to pull out whatever present he needs to. It’s Christmas cheer in the Twilight Zone.

#96. “Passage on the Lady Anne” (S4 E17). It is the final voyage of the Lady Anne and the passengers are upset that a couple trying to make their marriage work booked a trip on the ship.

#95. “Kick the Can” (S3 E21). A well known episode, where members of an old folks home find their youth again by playing a children’s game of kick the can.

#94. “The Lateness of the Hour” (S2 E8). A daughter decides that she wants her parents to deactivate all the robots that her father had created because she was a selfish and jealous girl (who turned out to be a robot herself).

#93. “Mirror Image” (S 1 E21). This is another episode that some consider better than I do. It is the story of a woman at a bus station whose alternate universe doppelganger switches places with her.

#92. “The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms” (S5 E10). A ghost story featuring the Battle of Little Big Horn and General Custer’s Last Stand. A couple of present day army officers wind up fighting with Custer in a weird time travel twist.

#91. “The Fever” (S1 E17). The fever of this episode is the gambling bug that can grip a person until their life is completely changed.

#90. “Number 12 Looks Just Like You” (S5 E17). A sci-fi episode where a young girl was turning the right age for her to be transformed into one of the acceptable beautiful bodies, just like everybody else is…even though she does not want to do it.

#89. “The Parallel” (S4 E11). An astronaut winds up shifting into a parallel universe where everything is just about the same, but a few details are different.

#88. “Person or Persons Unknown” (S3 E27). David Gurney wakes up one day and his wife, co-workers and friends do not recognize him. He remembers everything, but no one knows who he is.

#87. “The Hunt” (S3 E19). A man dies trying to save his dog from drowning, and he heads off to heaven… or does he?

#86. “The Arrival ” (S3 E2). A mysterious plane arrives without any crew or passengers. How did it happen? This is another episode where the set up was a banger only for the conclusion to be underwhelming.

#85. “A Penny for your Thoughts” (S2 E16). By flipping a penny into a wishing box and having it land on its side, a man gains the ability to hear people’s thoughts.

#84. “Back There” (S2 E13). Another time travel episode where the Professor from Gilligan’s Island goes back in time and tries to stop the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

#83. “A Passage for Trumpet” (S1 E32). Jack Klugman portrayed a man who played the trumpet. He was down and attempts to kill himself by stepping in front of a truck. He winds up in a land where no one could see or interact with him.

#82. “Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room” (S2 E3). A man is supposed to kill a bar owner for a local criminal, but his conscience was getting to him and his reflection begins to talk to him.

#81. “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville” (S4 E14). A businessman makes a deal with the devil to go back in time and recreate his fortune with the knowledge of the future that he had. Did not work well for him. Julie Newmar guest starred as the Devil.

#80. “What You Need” (S1 E12). There is a peddler going around providing exactly what people need, even if they do not understand why they need it.

#79. “The Encounter” (S5 E31). Neville Brand and George Takei face off in an attic of a house dealing with ghosts of their past and facing prejudice and stereotypes. One episode that was never shown in reruns or syndication for years.

#78. “Queen of the Nile” (S5 E23). An actress seems to never age and a reporter is looking into the story. Little did he know that the story had a very Egyptian answer to it.

#77. “The Jeopardy Room” (S5 E29). A defector is trapped in a room and spies have set up a bomb. He is given a length of time to discover where the bomb is or he will be killed.

#76. “The Trade-Ins” (S3 E31). Looking to stay together after so many years, a pair of elderly people look to trade in their bodies for younger ones.

#75. “The Trouble with Templeton” (S2 E9). An aging Broadway actor winds up traveling back in time to see that he old days were not as awesome as he remembered.

#74. “The After Hours” (S1 E34). A woman is confused by the mysterious floor at the department store. Turns out she was a mannequin that had received a time in the real world and she was having a hard time coming back.

#73. “Ring-a-Ding Girl” (S5 E13). This was an episode that was not working that well for me, but the ending really was an awesome twist that I did not see coming and it shot this one up the ratings.

#72. “The Rip Van Winkle Caper” (S2 E24). Three criminals plan to escape with their gold by going into suspended animation for 100 years. Not a good idea.

#71. “Dust”. A man is the cause for an accidental death of a little girl and is scheduled to be hanged. His father buys some ‘magic’ dust to help save his son.

#70. “A World of Difference” (S1 E23). A businessman finds himself as an actor in a show. He still remembered being the character that he was playing, not the actor that everyone seems to think he is.

#69. “Miniature” (S4 E8). A lonely man finds companionship with a doll house inside a museum that he believes is coming to life.

#68. “Nightmare as a Child” (S1 E29). A teacher is visited by an odd little girl who has strange information to share that leads the teacher to remember something that happened when she was a child.

#67. “The Silence” (S2 E25). A man who is tired of hearing another man always talking bets him that he cannot go a year’s time without saying a word.

#66. “The Thirty Fathom Grave” (S4 E2). A ship comes across a sunken submarine that seems to be making sounds as if there are survivors aboard. Meanwhile one of the crew of the ship is going crazy.

#65. “One for the Angels” (S1 E2). Lou Bookman, a friendly street vendor, is visited by Mr. Death and told that his life will end at midnight. Bookman tries to deal with the problem only to find a more tragic circumstance.

#64. “The Long Morrow” (S5 E15). An astronaut on a trip to a distant planet falls in love with a beautiful woman just before departing. The problem? She would be 40 years older when he returned as he would be in a suspended animation. It is one of those couples destined to be apart stories.

#63. “Shadow Play” (S2 E26). Adam Grant is convicted of murder and sentenced to the electric chair. However, he is telling anyone that will listen that this had all happened before and that they were all just in his head and if he is killed, everything will just start again. Cool concept.

#62. “King Nine Will Not Return” (S2 E1). World War II B-25 Mitchell bomber pilot awakens and has no idea what has happened to his crew and he desperately tries to find them.

#61. “The Grave” (S3 E7). Lee Marvin starred in this Western where he is an old lawman who found out that a rival had been killed and buried with a threat to Marvin that if he went to the grave he would get revenge on him.

#60. “The Fear” (S5 E35). A woman in a cabin sees strange lights and a trooper comes to check on her. They wind up with a confusing mystery involving giant aliens? Good performances elevate this episode.

#59. “The Old Man in the Cave” (S5 E7). In an apocalyptic future, a group of people follow the instructions of a mysterious man in a cave. When a military troop come along, thye throw the groups belief system out of whack.

#58. “Four O’ Clock” (S3 E29). Oliver Crangle is a 1960s version of a ‘Karen,’ and he is trying to stop all that he believes is evil. He is going to turn all evil people 2 ft. tall. Crangle is one of the best villains of the series because he really believes that what he is doing is right.

#57. “Valley of the Shadow” (S4 E3). Reporter Phillip Redfield winds up in a small town called Peaceful Valley. Before he knew it, he was being held captive because the people of the town could not allow him to leave.

#56. “Spur of the Moment” (S5 E21). This is a weird story where a woman sees a vision of herself that chases her. The vision is trying to warn her not to make the choice that is going to ruin her life.

#55. “Little Lost Girl” (S3 E26). The episode that tell you that it is always a good thing to have a physicist on speed dial. A little girl gets lost in another dimension through a portal in her bedroom.

#54. “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” (S2 E28). Which of the eccentric group of people are actually a Martian? And why are they here?

#53. “Twenty-Two” (S2 E17). A dancer is in the hospital recovering from exhaustion when she has a reoccurring dream about visiting the Hospital’s morgue. The dream has a significance for the woman.

#52. “The Man in the Bottle” (S2 E2). The first example of a genie story in The Twilight Zone. You’ve got to be careful what you wish for because you may end up as Adolf Hitler.

#51. “In his Image” (S4 E1). A modern version of Frankenstein, a man is confused when his hometown seems to not know who he is.

#50. “The Midnight Sun” (S3 E10). A well constructed story that started off with the world moving too close to the sun and so the heat was getting terrible. The twist at the end was a really cool one. (Pun intended).

#49. “The Last Flight” (S1 E18). A pilot in WWI winds up landing at a base in 1960. He discovered that the pilot he had left had reached the rank of an air-vice marshal in the Royal Air Force.

#48. “Where is Everybody?” (S1 E1). The pilot episode where Earl Holliman arrives in a town where there are no people and he begins to feel paranoia and anxiety about what wa going on. A strong start to the series.

#47. “The Little People” (S3 E28). What would you do if you landed on a planet with a race of ant-sized people? Would you become their god? Would you pay for that eventually with your life? In The Twilight Zone you would.

#46. “Third from the Sun” (S1 E14). A family try to escape from their planet to avoid an upcoming nuclear war and they wind up heading for a planet they learn is called earth. One of the early twist like this that does happen a few times in the series.

#45. “Long Live Walter Jameson” (S1 E24). Professor Walter Jameson is ready to get married, but his future father-in-law has a doubt because it seems as if Walter Jameson does not age.

#44. “The Masks” (S5 E25). A father on his deathbed brings his family together and insists that they wear masks until midnight or they would receive nothing in the will. He has a surprise waiting for his rotten family.

#43. “Stopover in a Quiet Town” (S5 E30). A husband and wife wind up in a small town with no people and things that do not seem real. And they have no idea how they got here.

#42. “The Changing of the Guard” (S3 E37). A teacher being forced to retire, considers suicide until the spirits of some of his former students come back and tell him what a difference he had made in their lives. As a teacher myself, this one hit home.

#41. “Mr. Denton on Doomsday” (S1 E3). The first Western of the show, Mr. Denton finds a peddle who is selling a potion that will make him the fastest draw in the west.

#40. “Escape Clause” (S1 E6). A man makes a deal with the devil making himself immortal, but he winds up in prison.

#39. “He’s Alive” (S4 E4). A small time Neo-Nazi suddenly becomes the next major leader thanksto a shadowy figure that turns out to be Hitler!

#38. “Printer’s Devil” (S4 E9). Burgess Meredith played the devil in this episode focused on the newspaper business. Meredith is one of the best actors from the series.

#37. “The Passersby” (S4 E9). A Confederate soldier winds up at a Southern home where a widow watches the soldiers walk by, angry about the loss of her husband.

#36. “A Game of Pool” (S3 E5). Jack Klugman and Jonathan Winters engage in a game of pool to decide whom is the greatest of all time. Thing is, Winters was dead.

#35. “A Hundred Yards Over the Rim” (S2 E23). While traveling from St. Louis to the New Mexico Territory, Cliff Robertson must go off to try and find help for his sick son. He finds the help in the future.

#34. “The New Exhibit” (S4 E13). The curator Martin Lombard Senescu brings home the wax figures of the serial killer exhibit when the museum they were in closed. That led to some murders taking place in his home. It seemed as if the wax figure had committed the crimes but it was implied that Martin was the culprit.

#33. “I am the Night- Color Me Black” (S5 E26). There is a hanging scheduled. The criminal had killed a man. The town had been covered in a darkness, literally.

#32. “Once Upon a Time” (S3 E13). A cool tribute to Buster Keaton and silent movies as part of this episode was in silent movie format. Buster Keaton starred as a man lost in time.

#31. “It’s A Good Life” (S3 E8). Anthony has a fearful power that he uses to lord over the town and his family or he will send them to the ‘cornfield.’ Anthony is just a little kid. Creepy kid horror works really well in The Twilight Zone.

#30. Death Ship” (S4 E6). Jack Klugman captains a vessel that has crashed on a planet where there is another crashed ship with a crew identical to them. The episode does a cool job of keeping the audience guessing about what has happened.

#29. “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” (S3 E14). This is one of the most original twists at the end of an episode in the whole series. These people we are following are actually just dolls in a charity collection container. Mind blown.

#28. “The Odyssey of Flight 33” (S2 E18). Their airplane accelerates to an incredible speed and something unexpected happens- they travel time. Wild twist here too.

#27. “Perchance to Dream” (S1 E9). Edward Hall is afraid to go to sleep because there is a woman in his dream that is going to kill him. His psychiatrist does not seem to be much help in the matter.

#26. “I Shot an Arrow into the Air” (S1 E15). The Planet of the Apes twist. Three astronauts crash on a planet not knowing that it was earth all along.

#25. “Nothing in the Dark” (S3 E16). An amazing performance by Gladys Cooper as a fearful woman hiding form Death. Unfortunately death is played by Robert Redford and he finds her.

#24. “And When the Sky was Opened” (S1 E11). Three astronauts return to earth only to have one of them, Forbes, claim that there was supposed to be a fourth astronaut that nobody else remembers and is seemingly erased from existence.

#23. “Nick of Time” (S2 E7). William Shatner’s first appearance on The Twilight Zone. He played a newlywed who gets stuck in a little town and becomes obsessed with a fortune telling machine in a diner. Shatner does a wonderful job in this episode.

#22. “Walking Distance” (S1 E5). Martin Sloan went to his hometown and is suddenly back in his childhood, watching things happen that happened when he was a kid.

#21. “The Hitch-Hiker” (S1 E16). Nan Adams is on a road trip across the country when she sees a hitch-hiker along the road. No matter how fast she goes, he is always there, showing up at the worst times. Another big twist as it turned out that Nan had died in a car wreck.

#20. “The Purple Testament” (S1 E19). A soldier in war suddenly began to see in the faces of his troop mates who was going to die.

#19. “In Praise of Pip” (S5 E1). Jack Klugman gives a great performance teaming up with Billy Mumy in an emotional episode dealing with grief and loss.

#18. “On Thursday We Leave for Home” (S4 E16). A group of people were stranded on a different planet, but Captain Benteen took control. When a rescue team arrived years later, Benteen was not ready to give up his power and control.

#17. “Caesar and Me” (S5 E28). The talking dummy is back to torment poor Cliff Robertson into becoming a criminal. Then there is the most annoying little girl named Susan who will be Caesar’s next victim.

#16. “Night Call” (S5 E19). Another great performance by Gladys Cooper as an old woman who was receiving mysterious calls in the middle of the night by someone who would not identify themselves. She had two top tier performances in this show.

#15. “The Obsolete Man” (S2 E29). An excellent acted episode featuring Burgess Meredith as a librarian being killed off being obsolete and Fritz Weaver as the Chancellor who winds up obsolete as well.

#14. “Deaths-Head Revisited” (S3 E9). A former SS captain returned to the concentration camp at which he worked only to find the ghosts may not be as happy to see him. This was a powerful episode that needed a little more realness in the Nazi to make it great.

#13. “The Shelter” (S3 E3). The most realistic episode of The Twilight Zone. The announcement is made that there is some unidentified objects heading toward America and that people should take shelter with the chance that it was nuclear bombs, The neighborhood went crazy and tried to force their way into Bill Stockton’s bomb shelter. This showed the human reaction to panic perfectly.

#12. “The Invaders” (S2 E15). A brilliant performance from Agnes Morehead a she plays a woman, with almost no dialogue, who is being invaded by a group of small aliens. Of course, everything is not as it seems.

#11. “Long Distance Call” (S2 E22). A grandmother givers her beloved grandson a toy pone that allows him to talk to her after her death. As she was lonely, she tried to convince him to come be with her, by drowning himself. Another powerful episode.

#10. “The Howling Man” (S2 E5). A man arrives at a castle during a storm and finds another man held captive in a room. He is told that this man is evil, that he is the devil, but he does not believe it…until it is too late. Oh and there were so many Dutch angles.

#9. “The Dummy” (S3 E33). The first of the talking ventriloquist dummy episodes, with this dummy named Willie. It is actually the same physical dummy that they used in “Caesar and Me”. This uses the dummy to deal with mental illness.

#8. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (S5 E22). A French short film that the producers bought the right to and made an episode of the show. This own an Oscar as Best Short prior to its debut in The Twilight Zone.

#7. “Time Enough at Last” (S1 E8). Burgess Meredith just wanted to be able to read undisturbed. Sadly, even the end of the world, as the only man left, he can’t read. His glasses are broke. One of the all time classics.

#6. “Eye of the Beholder” (S2 E6). One of the creepiest episodes of the series as a woman has gone in for a treatment, trying to cure her ugliness. Her face is all wrapped up, but the audience realizes that something weird is going on as the cameras are avoiding showing anyone else. Another great twist at the end.

#5. “A Stop at Willoughby” (S1 E30). Gart Williams has been having trouble at work and has been dreaming about a peaceful town called Willoughby. He can go to Willoughby on the train and he finally does decided to do so. Only to find out that there is no Willoughby… outside of a funeral parlor.

#4. “Living Doll” (S5 E6). Telly Savalas gives a great performance as one of the worst characters on the show. He is an abusive father and husband who is confronted and eventually killed by Talky Tina, his step-daughter’s new doll.

#3. “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” (S5 E3). Probably the most iconic Twilight Zone episode ever. William Shatner is amazing as the man who sees a gremlin on the wing of his airplane. The tension and anxiety that built as no one believed Shatner was palatable. One of the best episode of the series, deserving its status.

#2. “To Serve Man” (S3 E24). “IT’S A COOKBOOK!” With those words, the helpful and friendly aliens known as the Kanamits become earth people eating monsters. To Serve Man is an epic episode with a great twist ending. Honestly, this could easily be considered 1B instead of #2 on this list. I debated between To Serve Men and the episode that actually did end up at number one…

#1. “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” (S1 E22). Who are the real monsters on Maple Street? Is it the aliens who are revealed to be messing with the residents or is it the paranoid and suss people who live on the street and turn on each other at a moments notice. This is a great episode that speaks to human nature.

That is it. A massive undertaking for this list. It took me hours to complete this.

This is different from villains. It’s is not even, necessarily, antagonists. In fact several of these are protagonists. These are characters that I did not want on my screen. Characters that I hated watching or were pressing on that final nerve.

In professional wrestling, there is a term called ‘go away heat.’ It is when an audience just does not want to watch this wrestler, not root against them or hope they get their comeuppance.

I noticed that in my Twilight Zone write-ups, I mentioned several times that there were characters that I couldn’t stand. If they were the main protagonist, they could have easily ruined episodes for me. Unlike a character such as Erich Streator (played by Telly Savalas) which was a character I hated, but I enjoyed watching because of his work in the story and Savalas’s top notch performance, these characters just rubbed me the wrong way.

Some are major characters and some are minor supporting characters, but the one thing they had in common was that I just hated watching them. Understand, it is nothing against any of the actors involved, but these characters just did not do it for me.

#25. Cora (Mute). This was the mother in the episode, who was meant to be portrayed in a positive light, I believe, but she lied about the circumstances and manipulated her husband in order to keep the little mute girl. And she succeeds without having to pay for any of her transgressions.

#24. Aunt Agnes (The Fugitive). Played by Nancy Kulp (Ms. Hathaway from Beverly Hillbillies), she was the mean-spirited aunt of Jenny, who would choose to leave the earth instead of staying with her.

#23. Gloria Shorewood (The Bewitchin’ Pool). Yet another bad mother. She is so bad that she drove her two kids into the magical tunnel inside their swimming pool and off to Aunt T (who I really think is the witch from Hansel & Gretel- making this all the more tragic).

#22. Patrick Thomas McNalty (A Kind of Stopwatch). Even the other people in th episode couldn’t stand McNalty. He was given the power to stop time with a stopwatch, but he was so insufferable that even a redemption arc couldn’t save him.

#21. Leila (The Chaser). The woman that Roger Shackleworth was in love with, but who had no time for him. Roger cast a love spell on her and things only got worse. He realized after a while that he had made a real mistake. It is telling that the man who took this woman’s choice away and basically engaged in sex with her was not the worst character of the episode.

#20. Fitzgerald Fortune (A Piano in the House). A cruel man who used this magical player piano to torment his wife and guests of his at a party. His mockery, particularly, of his guest Marge was terrible. He did not receive enough of a payback for my taste.

#19. Bartlet Finchley (A Thing About Machines). This guy had no redeeming qualities at all and his obsession with the machines around him only served to isolate him even more from the story. Another one whose comeuppance was lacking overall.

#18. Paul Radin (One More Pallbearer). The billionaire who brought a group of people from his past into a bomb shelter and told them that the world was coming to an end, and then proceeded to rip them down. The people who he brought in did not succumb to this manipulation and he wound up going mad.

#17. Jess-Belle (Jess-Belle). She turned into a leopard. It was silly. This character was also all over the place… some times considered a horrible witch, other times a victim. The leopard thing though cemented her place on this list.

#16. William Feathersmith (Of Late I Think of Cliffordville). An old businessman who was feeling nostalgic, made a deal with Julie Newmar to go back in time and he planned on remaking his fortune. He paid a price for his arrogance, but it came too late for me.

#15. Roswell G. Flemington (Sounds and Silences). Just keep it down, Roswell! This guy and his loud military records and his constant shouting made him one of the more annoying leads of an episode.

#14. Flora (A Short Distance from a Certain Fountain). Another wife who was just horrendous. She had married an older man and she was just terrible toward him, until he took a potion intended to de-age him, and it worked all too well.

#13. Major French (The Old Man in the Cave). James Coburn played this military man who came across this small town of people who did everything that an old man inside a cave told them to do. Major French’s bad choices led to the death of everyone involved.

#12. Ace (The Prime Mover). Ace manipulated his friend, Jimbo, taking advantage of his telekinesis power. He showed no concern for his friend and he was even worse to his girlfriend, Kitty. Making so much money, Ace had even tossed Kitty aside for another woman from the Las Vegas hotel. What was worse yet was that Ace wound up back with Kitty at the end. She never should have taken that ass back.

#11. Jana (The Lateness of the Hour). This selfish girl who was jealous of her parents’ robots, demanded to have them decommissioned and gotten rid of. She was annoying as could be and the fact that she turned out to be a robot too did not help the matter.

#10. Horace Ford (The Incredible World of Horace Ford). Horace Ford was a toy designer, but actor Pat Hingle played this character with such a childish nature that his fits of anger and his Autistic-like behaviors were too much to overlook.

#9. Rance McGrew (Showdown with Rance McGrew). An annoying actor from Western movies winds up face to face with the real Jesse James in one of the worst of the comedic episodes of the series. Rance was just obnoxious the entire time (and Jess James wasn’t much better to be honest).

#8. Sykes (Dust). Whoo-boy this guy was just horrible. He was a lowlife peddler who prayed on the sorrow of a man whose son was going to be hanged. He reminded me a lot of Mr. Haney from Green Acres but without a soul. Plus, his change of heart at the end of the episode came across as insincere.

#7. Wallace Whipple (The Brain Center of Whipple’s). The wicked businessman who was out looking to replace his workers with computers (really fitting with the current actors/writers strikes and AI). Whipple was just a horrendous person and his own downfall at the hands of the robots was not enough for me.

#6. Simon Polk (Uncle Simon). Sure he died. But in the end, this terrible man, who tormented his niece for years, winds up getting the upper hand as he is turned into Robby the Robot (which is actually the second character in a row with Robby the Robot involved).

#5. Joe & Phyllis Britt (What’s in the Box). This married couple were just a pain to watch and listen to their constant fights. I’m not sure which of the two of them were the worst, so that is why they share this spot on the list. Joe does wind up killing her (even after he saw himself do that very thing on the TV).

#4. Salvadore Ross (The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross). I do think Sal was meant to be seen as the hero realizing his errors, but I never got that. I only got the implication that this guy was a selfish prick who used a power of his to manipulate people and get things that he wants even if no one lese wanted it.

#3. Julius Moomer (The Bard). Moomer used dark magic to conjure up William Shakespeare to help him write TV shows. Moomer did not have an arc in the story and never learned his lesson. He did not pay for using dark magic. And he was such a blowhard. How could he be more pretentious than Shakespeare?

#2. Susan (Caesar & Me). Again, I feel slightly bad for including a kid this high, but this little girl was just a horror in this episode. I absolutely hated every second she was on screen and her whiny, snarly attitude truly inspired me to make this list. I almost put her at number one, but I dropped her to two because she was just a little girl.

#1. Oliver Pope (You Drive). Boy I hated this guy right away. He hits a kid on a bike and leaves him there to eventually die. Then he was more concerned with his position at his job than anything else. He was such a terrible person and the silly chase scene with him being pursued by his car and eventually turning himself in did not do it for me either. Maybe if he had been run over by the car that would have been satisfying. I think this is easily the worst protagonist ever on the show.

Next list that I am compiling for the Twilight Zone review is the Top 10 villains. Now, a lot of Twilight Zone episodes did not have what would be defined as a ‘villain’ and had more of an antagonist. Even then, a lot of the episode dealt with the protagonist causing the conflict themselves. I picked out the ten best villains, in my opinion, from the original run of the series from 1959-1964.

#10. Mr. Death (Nothing in the Dark). Honestly, this is a little questionable because Death is not necessarily a villain and the way Robert Redford played him was not truly villainous. Still, I put him on th ebottom of this list.

#9. Corey (I Shot an Arrow into the Air). Played by Dewey Martin, Corey was the one of the three surviving crewmen of a crash on an unknown planet and he started turning on his comrades by hording their water and, in the end, kills the others before he realized that they had crash landed on earth.

#8. The Gremlin (Nightmare at 20,000 Feet). The creature that tormented William Shatner and tried to tear off the wing of the plane, which could have killed everyone on it. This would have been higher if it hadn’t been such a silly looking costume.

#7. Anthony (It’s a Good Life). Best villains are the ones that think themselves the hero of their story. Anthony certainly believed that he was doing the best for the town as he was manipulating and tormenting these people.

#6. Oliver Crangle (Four O’ Clock). Theodore Bickel played this character as wanting to stop all the terrible people in the world. He would shrink the terrible people down to two feet tall. Again, he did not see himself as the villain even though he absolutely was.

#5. Peter Vollmer (He’s Alive). Dennis Hopper does a great job as the sniveling little runt who ascends to the head of the neo-Nazi Party thanks to the help from the ‘ghost?’ of Adolph Hitler.

#4. Mr. Smith (Printer’s Devil). Burgess Meredith gets a chance to play the Devil, who appears to help a struggling newspaper by breaking scoops that just happened, and that he may have cause himself. The Devil has been an antagonist in The Twilight Zone several times and this is the best version.

#3. Eric Streater (Living Doll). Telly Savalas is the step-father to a little girl who brings home a toy doll. he was mad about the doll, which then started talking back and threatening him. There was no doubt in my mind that Eric was an abusive husband and father, or at least, he was on the road to becoming one.

#2. Caesar (Caesar & Me). The talking ventriloquist dummy that got Cliff Robertson to break the law and it eventually drove him crazy. Caesar also started up with its next victim, the rotten little girl Susan.

#1. The Kanamit (To Serve Man). This alien race came to the planet earth under the guise of helping humankind, but, in truth, they were here simple to take them back to their planet, fatten them up and cook them up.

With the Daily Zone coming to a close yesterday after I completed the viewing of all 156 episodes of The Twilight Zone, I have started to compile some lists. Kicking off the posts are, in my opinion, the Top 20 performances from The Twilight Zone 1959-1964. There are three actors who appear in the top 20 twice.

#20. Neville Brand/George Takei (The Encounter). I put these two together because they were so important playing off the other that they were truly an acting team. And this episode falls apart with out these two elevating the material.

#19. Buster Keaton (Once Upon a Time). The special episode of The Twilight Zone honored Buster Keaton and his history in the films. The silent section highlighted Keaton’s slapstick mastery and was one of the few Twilight Zone episodes that were actually funny.

#18. Donald Pleasence (The Changing of the Guard). Donald Pleasence was a teacher at the end of his career, looking for a reason to make himself relevant. The potentially suicidal man is truly brought to life by Pleasence.

#17. Jack Klugman (A Game of Pool). Jack Klugman brought a lot of pathos to this role of a pool player determined to be known as the greatest ever, and the game that would make that so.

#16. Theodore Bikel (Four O’Clock). Bikel played the villain of the piece, Oliver Crangle, and he played him with a flair and with a ton of gusto. In what could have been just a mustache twirling villain, Bikel found the perfect balance in this man.

#15. Russ Martin (Death Ship). Give a shout out to Jack Klugman here too as the captain, but Russ Martin is the character providing all the conflict among this group of three men who crashed on an abandoned planet only to find another crashed ship with three bodies that looked just like them.

#14. Anne Francis (After Hours). Anne Francis does a great job as a confused customer of a department store that can not seem to find her way back to the floor she had purchased her gift from. One of the cool twists of the series and Francis does a great job of showing it.

#13. Earl Holliman (Where is Everyone?). Holliman’s performance really made the debut episode of The Twilight Zone something special as he showed a steep decline mentally when he had no one around to interact with. If Holliman did not do so great, would the show had been such a success?

#12. Fritz Weaver (The Obsolete Man). The Chancellor learns a painful lesson thanks to Burgess Meredith in this sci-fi future tale. A 1984/Big Brother type of story with the Chancellor having the tables turned on him. Weaver showed all the emotions and the fear at the end was palpable.

#11. Cliff Robertson (Caesar and Me). Cliff Robertson had some excellent performances in the show, but this one really stands out for me. Watching this man gradually lose himself to this ‘talking’ ventriloquist dummy was very powerful.

#10. Billy Mumy (It’s a Good Life). Young Billy Mumy had several good performances, including Long Distance Call and In Praise of Pip, but he is iconic in this role as the all-powerful Anthony, who ruled the town with a mental power that could send you to the ‘cornfield.’ The coldness of expression was quite advanced for a young boy.

#9. Gladys Cooper (Night Call). Receiving a surprising call in the middle of the night leads to a lot of terror for invalid Elva Keene. She went from terror early to hopefulness when she realized that perhaps she would not have to be alone. This was a very layered performance from a talented actor whom we will see later on this list.

#8. James Whitmore (On Thursday We Leave for Home). Captain Benteen has been the leader of his people for years, and when the rescue ship arrived from earth, Captain Benteen struggled with the idea of not being the God he had been. Whitmore gives this man, who could be considered a cult leader, humanity and you understood why he would become lost.

#7. Burgess Meredith (The Obsolete Man). Burgess Meredith might be considered the MVP of The Twilight Zone and his portrayal of the librarian Romney Wordsworth who was to be put to death because of his obsoleteness. Yet Romney gets the last word on the subject. Burgess Meredith is perfect in this role.

#6. Robert Duvall (Miniature). Another character dealing with mental illness, Charley Parkes found himself much more at ease talking to and interacting with a doll house miniature at a museum, believing that it was alive and carrying on life in the doll house.

#5. Jack Klugman (In Praise of Pip). Here is the first of the three actors to appear twice on this list, and Klugman could have been here a couple of other times as well. His Max Phillips is in such pain when he mistakenly finds out that his son, Pip, had been killed in the Vietnam War. As he is dying himself from a gunshot wound, Klugman spends a day at the amusement park with the spirit of Pip in a truly heartbreaking performance.

#4. Burgess Meredith (Time Enough at Last). One of the best episodes of the series, poor Henry Bemis only wants to be able to read his books and newspapers, but everyone is preventing him from doing it. So when Henry survives the destruction of the city only to break his glasses, irony is truly hard to swallow. Meredith is the second double performance on this list, and he could have easily been here for Printer’s Devil too.

#3. Agnes Morehead (The Invaders). One of the singularly top performances of the series, Agnes Morehead does not have dialogue and she still dominates the screen as she battles the arrival of aliens from another planet (although there is a twist to that).

#2. William Shatner (Nightmare at 20,000 Feet). This was almost #1 as Shatner was brilliant as the man who saw a gremlin on the airplane wing and slowly slipped into madness trying to convince others on the plane that there is danger afoot. Shatner could have easily let this performance slide into an overblown performance (see John Lithgow in Twilight Zone: The Movie), but everything was perfect. Shatner could have made this list too as Don Carter in Nick of Time.

#1. Gladys Cooper (Nothing in the Dark). Wanda Dunn had been hiding from Mr. Death. She had secured herself in a hideaway and avoided human contact. When a policeman was shot outside her place, she had to come out and help him, opening herself up to the final fate that awaits us all. She was so amazing, bringing fear, denial and acceptance to this broken woman. She starred in this with Robert Redford as Mr. Death. She is, of course, the third actor to have double duty on this list.

July 27, 2023- numbers 154, 155, 156

SPOILERS

“Come Wander with Me”

A musical interlude inside The Twilight Zone?

“Mr. Floyd Burney, a gentleman songster in search of song, is about to answer the age-old question of whether a man can be in two places at the same time. As far as his folk song is concerned, we can assure Mr. Burney he’ll find everything he’s looking for, although the lyrics may not be all to his liking. But that’s sometimes the case – when the words and music are recorded in the Twilight Zone.”

This episode has a time loop going on as we see something that, apparently, keeps happening. Floyd Burney, aka “Rock-a-Billy Kid,” arrives at an isolated location in search of a new song. The strange old man in this dilapidated shop in the woods warned him away, but Floyd heard a song being sung in the woods.

Pulled along like the sailors when hearing the siren call from Greek mythology, Floyd finds a woman in the woods named Mary Rachel and tries to convince her to give him the song she was singing. She kept saying that it was someone else’s song. This line is never mentioned again.

Floyd seduces her and she sings the song for him, which he has plans to record himself. However, her brother shows up with a gun and wants to take Floyd back to his other brothers. Floyd struck him with his guitar, killing him. He takes off to run from the other brothers, but Mary Rachel begs him to not run “this time.” She wants him to hide instead saying that he is always caught. Floyd runs back to the old who he also kills… for no real reason this time. The brothers catch up with Floyd and we see the gravestone for Floyd Burney that we saw before.

I have to say that these country folk sure can’t take a punch. The young guy died from getting hit across the back with a guitar that did not look incredibly sturdy. The old man died from one punch.

The song was quite annoying too and it did not sound like a song that a Rock-a-Billy singer would play. When Floyd tried to show the old man what kind of music Rock-a-Billy was and dropped to his knees to sing, I nearly lost it.

This was an annoying episode with ideas that are only ever touched upon or implied.

“The Fear”

This was a decent episode of The twilight Zone, the penultimate episode of the original series’ TV run.

“The major ingredient of any recipe for fear is the unknown. And here are two characters about to partake of the meal: Miss Charlotte Scott, a fashion editor, and Mr. Robert Franklin, a state trooper. And the third member of the party: the unknown, that has just landed a few hundred yards away. This person or thing is soon to be met. This is a mountain cabin, but it is also a clearing in the shadows known as the Twilight Zone.”

I liked how this episode built the tension and the anxiety between the two characters stranded in this cabin in the woods with some mysterious ‘thing’ outside.

My favorite part of this episode was the relationship between Miss Scott and Trooper Franklin. I liked how they interacted, how they dealt with each other honestly and straightforwardly. They did not force a romantic relationship between them, though I could see that developing in the future for them.

The ending of the episode had some iffy moments. I am not sure how I felt about the giant inflatable alien or why the trooper started to shoot at this alien without even once trying to communicate with it. Then the wind from the balloon was somewhat over the top as it deflated.

In the end, it felt like the same basic concept that we had seen in “The Invaders” episode and the episode called “The Little People.” Still, the first two acts of this show made it very good and did support the ending well enough.

“The Bewitchin’ Pool”

The final broadcast episode of the first version of The Twilight Zone had a bunch of problems.

First, apparently, the scenes shot outdoors had trouble with the sound and had to be redubbed. It was painfully noticable.

Even more so, the lines by Mary Badham, who played young girl Sport, could not be dubbed because the actress had gone back to Alabama and it was too expensive to bring her back. So instead they used known voice over actress June Foray to do the lines. June Foray voiced Rocky the Flying Squirrel in the Bullwinkle series. It was a distinct difference from the rest of Sport’s lines.

Sport and her brother Jeb could escape from their mean and always fighting parents by diving into their swimming pool, coming up at a mysterious land where kids escape to and they met an old woman named Aunt T. They go back and forth a couple of times, even though Aunt T said that finding their way back would be nearly impossible until they finally leave their parents and stay in the magical land for good.

The show was a comment on divorce and how it affects kids. Of course, it does not help when you have got a rotten mother who is constantly yelling “Darn you loudmouth kids” at you.

The acting of this episode was wooden and lifeless. The voice acting, which was out of the producers’ control, did not help anything. The closing narration said :“A brief epilogue for concerned parents. Of course, there isn’t any such place as the gingerbread house of Aunt T, and we grownups know there’s no door at the bottom of a swimming pool that leads to a secret place. But who can say how real the fantasy world of lonely children can become? For Jeb and Sport Sharewood, the need for love turned fantasy into reality; they found a secret place—in the Twilight Zone.” Was the use of the ‘gingerbread house’ line implying that Aunt T had sinister plans for the kids, fatting them up by feeding them cake like the witch in ‘Hansel and Gretel?” Will Jeb and Sport wind up as meal time?

Honestly, that would make this episode considerably better. It was a weak episode to end the series on.

This brings the Daily Zone to a close, as the first season of The Twilight Zone with Rod Serling is done. I watched all 156 episodes over the last two months.

I will be doing a few lists over the next few days of my favorite this and least favorite that.

Just remember that all of that is just my opinion… and if you disagree… that is okay and you can form your own opinions… in the Twilight Zone.

July 26, 2023-number 153

Spoilers

“The Brain Center at Whipple’s”

Lookie, there is Robby the Robot again. This is the second bad episode guest starring Robby.

This is also very relevant episode in today’s world as the Screen Actor’s Guild and the Writer’s Guild of America has been on strike with one of the big reasons being the use of AI by studios, which threatens to replace working actors and writers. Much like the theme of this episode.

“These are the players — with or without a scorecard. In one corner a machine; in the other, one Wallace V. Whipple, man. And the game? It happens to be the historical battle between flesh and steel, between the brain of man and the product of man’s brain. We don’t make book on this one and predict no winner….but we can tell you for this particular contest, there is standing room only — in the Twilight Zone.”

Wallace Whipple is only a caricature of a person. He is only a representation of the selfishness and the greed of the CEOs and the faceless heads of giant companies. His glee in his cruelty in this episode really takes away from the downfall later in the episode because it all turned on him too quickly.

Still, there is no one to truly root for in this episode. I think you are meant to relate to Dickerson, the foreman who lost his job and got drunk and tried to destroy the computer, but he was a loud drunk and not someone I felt for. The character of Mr. Hanley was shown as a decent man, but he was not around enough for any connection to be made.

There was Robby the Robot! A silly cameo tucked on at the end of the episode to show that even Mr. Whipple is replaceable. Danger, Mr. Whipple, Danger!

A poorly written episode with way too much melodrama that draws away from the important theme of the show. I did not like much of anything in this episode.

July 25, 2023- numbers 150, 151, 152

Spoilers

“Stopover in a Quiet Town”

“Stopover in a Quiet Town” is a standout episode of The Twilight Zone that has inspired plenty of other pop culture items.

“Bob and Millie Frazier, average young New Yorkers who attended a party in the country last night and on the way home took a detour. Most of us on waking in the morning know exactly where we are; the rooster or the alarm clock brings us out of sleep into the familiar sights, sounds, aromas of home, and the comfort of a routine day ahead. Not so with our young friends. This will be a day like none they’ve ever spent – and they’ll spend it in the Twilight Zone.”

Trapped inside this apparently deserted town, Bob and Millie run around the city of Centerville realizing that they could not escape and that thing that looked to be real, such as trees and the squirrel, were fake or stuffed.

They could find no one else in the town, only a few dummies set up in cars to look like there were people. They ran around in desperation to try and find their way out.

They heard the laughter of a little girl all around them, which was eventual revealed that they had been abducted by aliens and were being used like dolls in a little girl’s toy set.

The idea was similar to the set up of the season three episode, “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” except this was a “don’t drink and drive” type theme. I’m not sure if it was a good idea to make it the woman’s fault for being abducted, which the show hinted at. Still the execution of the story was very good even if the child’s laughter and the hints of a shadow coming over the car made this twist fairly predictable.

“The Encounter”

This one was uncomfortable.

I immediately thought that this was George Takei, who would wind up as Sulu on the original Star Trek series, which it did turn out to be. Both Takei and co-star Neville Brand were intense with their performances in this story.

It made me feel like it was a stage play. One basic setting with two actors just bouncing their performances off the other. It was certainly carried by the strength of these two actors.

“Two men alone in an attic, a young Japanese-American and a seasoned veteran of yesterday’s war. It’s twenty odd years since Pearl Harbor, but two ancient opponents are moving into position for a battle in an attic crammed with skeletons, souvenirs, mementos, old uniforms, and rusted medals. Ghosts from the dim reaches of the past, that will lead us into the Twilight Zone.

This episode was removed from much of the Twilight Zone syndication after its initial debut because of the racial overtones present and some of the controversy over the story told, in particular the revelation that Takei’s character’s father had been a traitor at Pearl Harbor and had helped signal the planes, a fact that was not true and that there had been no indication that there were any Japanese-Americans at Pearl Harbor helping the bombers.

There was also a lot of racial insensitive language being tossed around, especially from the character played by Neville Brand, who was a former soldier during WWII and had recently been fired from his job and had his wife leave him because of his drinking. Both actors used this incendiary dialogue to create some real tension in the scenes.

There were some supernatural elements of the episode too, mostly surrounding a samurai sword that Band’s character had taken off of a Japanese soldier that he had killed during the war. This was the weaker aspect of the script as the interactions with the actors was considerably more potent.

This episode had its strengths and weaknesses and they were distinctly pronounced. Some of the scenes were riveting while others made no sense. It was a tough watch for sure.

“Mr. Garrity and the Graves”

This is definitely the worst of the three episodes in this post.

“Introducing Mr. Jared Garrity, a gentleman of commerce, who in the latter half of the nineteenth century plied his trade in the wild and wooly hinterlands of the American West. And Mr. Garrity, if one can believe him, is a resurrecter of the dead – which, on the face of it, certainly sounds like the bull is off the nickel. But to the scoffers amongst you, and you ladies and gentlemen from Missouri, don’t laugh this one off entirely, at least until you’ve seen a sample of Mr. Garrity’s wares, and an example of his services. The place is Happiness, Arizona, the time about 1890. And you and I have just entered a saloon where the bar whiskey is brewed, bottled and delivered from the Twilight Zone.”

A con man comes into town, pretending to be able to raise the dead. He sets up a town that, apparently, did not have any loved ones that they were sad were dead. All the people of Happiness, Arizona seemed to be happy that their relatives and family members were gone.

So, after he pretended to raise the dead, Garrity had the people pay him to have them go back to their graves.

It was clear that he was pulling a con on everybody except these dumb people.

However, the worst part of the episode was the ending. When Garrity met up with his accomplice and the dog that he pretended to bring back from the dead, it was revealed that he had actually unwittingly brought the dead people back to life and they were heading down to the town to cause trouble.

I thought maybe these zombie-like people would attack Garrity as a way to show that you can’t mess with life-death, but, nope. It was not that. They were just heading back to Happiness and the closing narration implied that Garrity did not know his own power.

How dumb was this episode? Extremely dumb. Did not like this one at all.

As of now, I only have four more episodes of the original series of The Twilight Zone for the Daily Zone. Plans are to do one episode on Wednesday and then finish up with three on Thursday (pending actual time). Perhaps it gets pushed back a day or so, but Friday is the absolute last potential day for the Daily Zone.

July 24, 2023-Numbers 146, 147, 148, 149

Spoilers

“I Am the Night-Color Me Black”

Director Abner Biberman was responsible for one of the best shots of the entire episode, as this point of view shot through the hangman’s noose was one of the images that truly stuck with me over this entire series.

“Sheriff Charlie Koch on the morning of an execution. As a matter of fact, it’s seven-thirty in the morning. Logic and natural laws dictate that at this hour there should be daylight. It is a simple rule of physical science that the sun should rise at a certain moment and supersede the darkness. But at this given moment, Sheriff Charlie Koch, a deputy named Pierce, a condemned man named Jagger, and a small, inconsequential village will shortly find out that there are causes and effects that have no precedent. Such is usually the case—in the Twilight Zone.”

There were a couple of familiar faces popped up in this episode. Ivan Dixon, Kinch from Hogan’s Heroes, and George Lindsey, Goober Pyle from the Andy Griffith Show, appear in this episode.

While this episode turned out to be a touch preachy, I really enjoyed the idea of the darkness overcoming the small town, how hate can only bring more hate to the world. The anger of the crowd toward Jagger, who killed a bigot supposedly in self-defense, and the desire of Goober to see him hanged really stood out.

According to Wikipedia, this episode was penned by Rod Serling as a response to the assassination of John Kennedy.

“Sounds and Silences”

Here is another Twilight Zone episode that suffers from a lead character that is wholly unlikable.

However, some of the comments made about Roswell by his staff and co-workers were very inappropriate and were directed simply at his weight. That makes them every bit as bad as this guy, who is absolutely obnoxious and loud.

“This is Roswell G. Flemington, two hundred and twenty pounds of gristle, lung tissue and sound decibels. He is, as you have perceived, a noisy man, one of a breed who substitutes volume for substance, sound for significance, and shouting to cover up the readily apparent phenomenon that he is nothing more than an overweight and aging perennial Sea Scout whose noise-making is in inverse ratio to his competence and to his character. But soon our would-be admiral of the fleet will embark on another voyage. This one is an unchartered and twisting stream that heads for a distant port called the Twilight Zone.”

This episodes shows the progression of a man and his succumbing to a mental illness. The episode shows Roswell first hearing every sound at a deafening level and then, after seeing a psychiatrist, trying to be able to control the sound, succeeding in a sense, but unable to adjust that volume back up again.

Another episode with sound effects that are truly awful, which is bad considering how important they are to this story. Overall, unlikable protagonist and unenterable sound beats in the story. One of the weaker episodes of the series.

“Caesar and Me”

The idea of a living ventriloquist dummy returns to “Caesar and Me.”

“Jonathan West, ventriloquist, a master of voice manipulation. A man, late of Ireland, with a talent for putting words into other peoples’ mouths. In this case, the other person is a dummy, aptly named Caesar, a small splinter with large ideas, a wooden tyrant with a mind and a voice of his own, who is about to talk Jonathan West – into the Twilight Zone.”

This is another episode that deals with mental illness, as Jonathan West descends into a dark place because of the machinations of the dummy, Caesar. Of course, the episode makes us think that Caesar can talk, but this is clearly a metaphor for someone hearing voices and having those voices make you do things. Jackie Cooper’s desperate pleading to Caesar to talk when the police had arrived was a haunting moment of a very good episode.

This is the same dummy used in the season three episode entitled “The Dummy.” On fact, in my head (although not labeled as such) I considered this a sequel to that episode, seeing where the dummy ends up after that last appearance.

There is also one of the worst characters of the show. The young girl named Susan, played by Morgan Brittany (who appeared later in Dallas), was just a horrible person and shown as a whiny, cruel, mean-spirited character and I do not think it is a coincidence that she ends up with Caesar at the end of the episode.

“A little girl and a wooden doll. A lethal dummy in the shape of a man. But everybody knows dummies can’t talk – unless, of course, they learn their vocabulary in the Twilight Zone.”

While this is not as great as “The Dummy,” “Caesar and Me” is another very strong episode that I enjoyed tremendously.

“The Jeopardy Room”

Welcome to The twilight Zone, Martin Landau!

Some spycraft arrives in the Twilight Zone with a single room setting, creating some stress and claustrophobia.

“The cast of characters—a cat and a mouse, this is the latter. The intended victim who may or may not know that he is to die, be it by butchery or ballet. His name is Major Ivan Kuchenko. He has, if events go according to certain plans, perhaps three or four more hours of living. But an ignorance shared by both himself and his executioner, is of the fact that both of them have taken the first step into the Twilight Zone.”

The cat and mouse between Martin Landau and John van Dreelen (who played Commissar Vassiloff) was the highlight of this episode. Vassiloff was clearly interested in finding a worthy adversary which he even placed above the actual mission – which was to kill Kuchenko.

Because of his personal machinations, Vassiloff created several holes that allowed Kuchenko a chance to survive. Vassiloff even pulled The Dread Pirate Roberts’ trick of drinking a poison that he was immune to in order to win the confrontation. No idea if this was Iocane Powder or not, though that was the deadliest poisons known to man and it did not kill Kuchenko (Love a good Princess Bride connection!)

I did like this episode a lot, but the ending turned out to be cheesy. Kuchenko turned the trap back onto Vassiloff and his henchman Boris, a henchman that proved himself to be a really stupid one, answering a booby trapped phone even though he knew that it had a bomb in it. That ending was a bit of a drawback to the solid episode.

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The Daily Zone is down to seven remaining episodes in the final season of the original version of The Twilight Zone.

July 23, 2023-numbers 143, 144, 145

“Queen of the Nile”

I do like how the episode “Queen of the Nile” did not come right out and namedrop Cleopatra as the true identity of the ageless starlet Pamela Morris. Sure, they implied it heavily, with plenty of evidence to support such an inference, but without the specific name coming up, this felt more in doubt.

Funny how the next episode, “What’s in the Box?” actually mentions Cleopatra.

“Jordan Herrick, syndicated columnist, whose work appears in more than a hundred newspapers. By nature a cynic, a disbeliever, caught for the moment by a lovely vision. He knows the vision he’s seen is no dream; she is Pamela Morris, renowned movie star, whose name is a household word and whose face is known to millions. What Mr. Herrick does not know is that he has also just looked into the face—of the Twilight Zone.”

All I could think of as I was watching this episode was the MCU movie, The Eternals, with Kumail Nanjiani’s character Kingo being a star in movies from Bollywood and having to pretend he is a descendent after so many years, since he did not age. Of course, Kingo did not need the help of an age-sucking scarab to stay youthful.

Poor Jordan Herrick never suspected the real truth about Pamela Morris and the sacrifices that she had to make in order to stay young. I suppose if he had stayed alive, he may have uncovered the whole truth, but when you are aged so rapidly that you turn to dust on the floor, you may not be able to realize that you’ve messed up.

I liked the end of this episode as Herrick met his fate and we see how Pamela remained so young after centuries of life.

“What’s in the Box”

This is another episode of The Twilight Zone where our main protagonists are just unlikable which makes it difficult to care what happened to either of them.

“Portrait of a TV fan. Name: Joe Britt. Occupation: cab driver. Tonight, Mr. Britt is going to watch “a really big show,” something special for the cabbie who’s seen everything. Joe Britt doesn’t know it, but his flag is down and his meter’s running and he’s in high gear—on his way to the Twilight Zone”

Honestly, it was the TV repairman that may have been the worst character around. I mean, he pulls some tricks with the TV causing Joe to see his future, the murder of his wife, Phyllis. The TV repairman, played by Sterling Holloway, did not appreciate the snide comments made by Joe so he pulled something sneaky with the TV and that led to the death of Phyllis. This feels a bit much for the TV repairman’s hurt feelings. It also seems a bad turn for the voice of Winnie the Pooh, himself (Sterling Holloway).

This is basically the same story as “A Most Unusual Camera” from season 2, only this is a TV instead of a camera. Overall this is not as good as that episode and this feels excessive.

“The Masks”

You may have to use some of that inheritance for some plastic surgery.

“Mr. Jason Foster, a tired ancient who on this particular Mardi Gras evening will leave the Earth. But before departing, he has some things to do, some services to perform, some debts to pay—and some justice to mete out. This is New Orleans, Mardi Gras time. It is also the Twilight Zone.”

Jason’s family was really a rotten group of people. This makes their eventual fate quite satisfying. You kind of see it coming, but it still works because of these terrible characters. They may not be as well developed of a group of characters (this is another one that might have benefitted from the longer run time of season 4), but we get enough of each character that lets us understand how lacking they are as human beings.

Robert Keith was excellent as the dying patriarch of the family that he had clearly had enough of over the years. He was very effective delivering the exposition in a clever and revealing manner.

This was a solid episode that does deliver the justice you want. The masks were sufficiently creepy and Keith is the pulse of the whole episode.