June 1, 2023- number 7

“The Lonely”

Spoilers

The seventh episode of the first season of The Twilight Zone was called “The Lonely” and it dealt with a sci-fi prison for a man convicted of a crime.

Convicted but innocent, James Corry was stranded on an isolated and deserted asteroid for the duration of his long prison sentence. Supplies would be brought to him every three months, but otherwise, he is completely alone.

Feeling bad for him, Captain Allenby, the pilot of the supply vessel, brought him a special, secret surprise. It was a robot that was in the shape of a woman. The robot’s name was Alicia and she was very feminine. While Corry rejected the robot at first, he became close with her eventually as time passed.

When Corry and Alicia had become a couple, Captain Allenby returned with great news: Corry had received a pardon. Allenby and his crew were collecting other former prisoners and they were there to pick up Corry. They had space only for Corry and a few of his belongings. Corry rejected the idea, insisting that Alicia was more than robot… that she was a real woman and that she had to go with him.

Allenby ended up shooting Alicia in the face, revealing the robotic materials inside her, bringing Corry to his senses.

This was a strange story. It started out interesting as we looked at the relationship that could develop when someone is isolated. There have been plenty of examples in sci-fi of characters falling for machines/robots/androids etc.

However, the story between Corry and Alicia came to such a sudden and dramatic conclusion that it felt like there were some aspects of the tale missing. It needed another 20 minutes or so I think to be effective in telling the story. Otherwise the relationship, which needed to be at the center of this story, rang hollow and empty.

“On a microscopic piece of sand that floats through space is a fragment of a man’s life. Left to rust is the place he lived in and the machines he used. Without use, they will disintegrate from the wind and the sand and the years that act upon them. All of Mr. Corry’s machines, including the one made in his image, kept alive by love, but now obsolete—in The Twilight Zone.“

May 31, 2023- number 6

Spoilers

“Escape Clause”

The sixth episode of The Twilight Zone in the first season was another episode that took the storytelling into a new direction. This was the first time where the protagonist of the tale was someone you did not want to root for.

“You’re about to meet a hypochondriac. Witness Mr. Walter Bedeker, age forty-four. Afraid of the following: death, disease, other people, germs, draft, and everything else. He has one interest in life and that’s Walter Bedeker. One preoccupation: the life and well-being of Walter Bedeker. One abiding concern about society: that if Walter Bedeker should die, how will it survive without him?“

Bedeker was absolutely nothing more than a whining loser who was putting his wife through all kinds of troubles with his made-up symptoms and annoying complaints. When a mysterious man named Cadwallader appeared in his apartment with a shocking offer, Bedeker was intrigued. Even when he figured out that Cadwallader was, in fact, the Devil, Bedeker was not turned away.

Cadwallader offered him a long life span, something Bekeder had been worrying about. He also made him invincible, Nothing could hurt him. But he gave Bedeker an escape clause in case he wanted to get out of the forever life.

Bekeder, with his new power, became even more obnoxious. He discovered that the thrill of danger was now gone and he started doing things that were designed to hurt himself to see if any of them would interest him. He was such a jerk about it all.

His wife winds up being killed and he takes responsibility for the act, looking for the electric chair.

Bekeder was so unlikable that when he wound up getting life in prison instead of the chair, I cheered at the irony. Of course, he took Cadwallader up on the escape clause, which led to his heart attack in his prison cell.

Bekeder had everything you could possibly want but yet he was constantly unhappy. When he was normal, he was always complaining he was sick. When he could no longer be hurt or killed, he was bored. Just a rotten human being and seeing him pay the piper was extremely satisfying.

May 30, 2023 – number 5

“Walking Distance”

Spoilers

This was another solid episode in the first season of The Twilight Zone. This featured a little time travel and a nostalgic look back that becomes too real.

“Martin Sloan, age thirty-six. Occupation: vice-president, ad agency, in charge of media. This is not just a Sunday drive for Martin Sloan. He perhaps doesn’t know it at the time, but it’s an exodus. Somewhere up the road he’s looking for sanity. And somewhere up the road, he’ll find something else.”

Martin Sloan finds himself back in his hometown called Homewood and he was amazed at how nothing seemed to change. The ice cream soda was still a dime, the businesses were just as he remembered, the park was the same.

So when he spotted a young him carving his name into a bandstand, something he remembered doing as a child, the bizarre situation began to formulate before his eyes. When he found his childhood home was still being lived in my his mother and father, Martin was becoming more unstable.

This is an interesting take on the time travel as we see the older Martin trying to talk to the younger Martin, chasing him across a carousel, causing the boy to fall and badly injure his leg… something that the older Martin now felt. Some time travel shows go by the idea that the past could not be changed. What happened, happened. This was like LOST. Some time travel shows/films think you can affect the future by what you do in the past, such as Back to the Future. This feels like a combination of the two ideas since the injured leg now is a problem for the older Martin, but his mother and father find out who he is and that does not seem to affect the future at all.

We see very young Ron Howard, pre-Opie from the Andy Griffith Show, as a boy that older Martin comes across and spooks him by claiming to be someone that the boy knew he could not be.

May 29, 2023- numbers 3 & 4

This is the first time I have done a post for The Daily Zone for more than one individual episode. I am linking episodes 3 and 4 together on this post.

SPOILERS

“Mr. Denton on Doomsday“

This episode is a Western and my favorite episode so far. We get the drunken Al Denton, at one point the fasted draw around until he killed a teenager who was wanting to take the title of the best shooter. Al lost himself in the drink more and more to hide from the pain of his reputation.

Mr. Henry J. Fate arrived in town, bringing his magical potions with him, giving Al more belief in himself.

Dan Duryea played Al Denton and he was amazing in this role. You could feel the uncertainty, the anguish over the siren call of the gun. When he was aided magically by Henry Fate, Al set himself on the course of gunslinger once more.

This episode was filled with themes of redemption, fate as well as dealing with alcoholism and the price of fame (or being infamous). It also included a performance by Martin Landau as a bully cowboy who taunted the drunken Al Denton before his discovery of the magical firearm.

I really enjoyed this episode.

Episode 4

“The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine”

“Picture of a woman looking at a picture. Movie great of another time, once-brilliant star in a firmament no longer a part of the sky, eclipsed by the movement of earth and time. Barbara Jean Trenton, whose world is a projection room, whose dreams are made out of celluloid. Barbara Jean Trenton, struck down by hit-and-run years and lying on the unhappy pavement, trying desperately to get the license number of fleeting fame.”

https://twilightzone.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sixteen-Millimeter_Shrine

Ida Lupino starred in the fourth episode of The Twilight Zone as an aging actress named Barbara Jean Trenton, who has become a bit of a recluse, isolating herself in a room with a movie projector, playing her old films. She was in deep denial of the change she was having because she was getting older.

This episode certainly looks at something that Hollywood has had a reputation for doing to actresses as they age. There is a scene where Barbara Jean was offered a bit part in a film as a mother and she flipped out, insulted. Hollywood was known for treating aging actresses poorly and this spoke to that very detail.

It also felt like it dealt with mental illness in a way. Barbara Jean could not accept the changes that comes with age and how it caused her to become depressed and take an extreme step.

There was a sadness to this episode, including a strong performance by Martin Balsam as Barbara Jean’s friend and confidant Danny Weiss.

May 29, 2023- number 2

“One for the Angels”

Spoilers

“Louis J. Bookman. Age 60ish. Occupation: pitchman. Formerly a fixture of the summer. Formerly a rather minor component to a hot July, but throughout his life, a man beloved by the children, and therefore a most important man. Couldn’t happen you say? Probably not in most places, but it did happen…in the Twilight Zone.“

Episode two of the first season of The Twilight Zone featured that tag above from Rod Serling, the narrator of the series, about a pitchman who was in the business of trying to cheat death.

Mr. Bookman, played by well-known comedic actor Ed Wynn, was approached by a mysterious man, played by Murray Hamilton. That man turned out to be Mr. Death, and Mr. Bookman tried to weasel his way out of his fate. Told he was destined to die in his sleep at midnight, Mr. Bookman took advantage of a loophole to be granted a stay.

However, Mr. Death was forced into making new arrangements and, instead of Mr. Bookman, he was prepared to take young girl Maggie (Dana Dillaway) in his place.

Bookman had been friends with the children in the area and Maggie was especially close, so he was determined to prevent Mr. Death from taking the 8-year old.

“One for the Angels” was another character piece focusing in on Louis Bookman. A man who was used to getting by in his life with his voice, making pitches to everyone around him. However, he was a good man and could not stand the idea that the little girl would be a collateral victim of his avoidance of death. He set out on with his plan to sacrifice himself to save the girl the same way he lived his life… through a pitch for the angels.

This episode was sweet and enjoyable. Having the little girl’s life in the balance gave Lou Bookman a chance to show how wonderful of a man he was, and, despite his enthrallment of Mr. Death by his pitch was a tad weird (I mean, wouldn’t Death be able to already find the best ties available?), things like that happen in the Twilight Zone.

I thought at first that this would devolve into something very dark, as I had read in the graphic novel The Twilight Man, that many episodes of the show were considered dark, this one wound up in an almost heroic manner. Ed Wynn was the heartbeat of the episode and does a great job of creating a man that was ultimately likeable and full of caring.

May 28, 2023- number 1

“Where is Everybody?“

Spoilers

Welcome to the first post under the new initiative of EYG for the summer, The Daily Zone, which will take a deep dive into the episodes of the EYG Hall of Fame TV series, The Twilight Zone, from the creative mind of writer Rod Serling.

I will be talking about the episodes in detail, so expect that there will be spoilers involved in these posts. If you are mad about a spoiler from a 1959 TV series, then you have been warned.

I will be watching these daily episodes on Amazon Prime where all five seasons of the original series as well as the 2019-20 remake by Jordan Peele exist.

First episode up is episode 1 from 1959, entitled “Where is Everybody.”

The episode kicks off with Earl Holliman’s character walking into a town where there are no people anywhere to be found and the man has no idea who he is. Amnesia, he assumes as he tries actively to find someone who could help him with his plight. With each passing failure at the diner, the police station, movie theater and such, the man becomes increasingly frustrated and agitated.

Eventually the man realized that he had been a part of the Air Force and that lead to the audience having the curtain pulled aside and revealed the truth of what was happening to the man. He ended up desperately pressing a button which was revealed as a ‘panic button’ signaling to the Air Force that the man, who turned out to be Sgt. Mike Ferris, who had spent 484 hours in an isolation chamber in preparation for a trip to the moon.

Ferris’s mind had created the delusion of the empty town where he seemed to be the last man alive as a way to deal with the loneliness and the isolation he was experiencing. The hallucination was brought about by sensory deprivation.

To be honest, this episode did not include much science fiction. It was more of a psychological study, dealing with the effects of loneliness and isolation on the mind of human beings. The idea of space travel was the little bit of sci-fi in the episode and that came at the very end. The end was sudden and felt almost tacked on. Watching Earl Holliman decent into anxiety over the lack of human contact and his desperation to find anyone to interact with was interesting. Admittedly, the ending was not as interesting as what preceded it.

“You’re traveling through another dimension — a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the Twilight Zone!

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone.

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call ‘The Twilight Zone’.” -ROD SERLING

Welcome to The Daily Zone. This is one of the summer’s big initiatives at EYG, along with the second annual June Swoon. This will fall under the TV G[eek] category and it will be a deep dive into the episodes of the EYG Hall of Fame member, the TV show The Twilight Zone.

This idea formed after I completed reading a graphic novel that I had recently purchased b Koren Shadmi entitled The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television. It was a fascinating read about the life and times of the creator of the classic TV series that ran from 1959-1964.

The Twilight Zone was an anthology series where every episode dealt with a new story and different characters. It was a science fiction series despite Rod Serling not being an expert in the genre. According to The Twilight Man graphic novel, Serling decided on science fiction because much of what he was trying to do was being censored because it was too current and controversial. Being able to set the story in a sci-fi world, he found he could get away with the concepts without the censorship that he fought against for much of his career.

With summer vacation approaching, I knew I had some time available for something new. Even with the June Swoon 2 already planned, I figured that there would still be plenty of time to start up what I called The Daily Zone.

Every day, starting today, I will watch at least one episode of the original Twilight Zone and do a write up on them. There may be several episodes on each post, to save writing. During the summer months, I anticipate watching several episodes in a single day. There were five seasons and 156 episodes of the series, which ran about a half hour each. All of the seasons are currently available on Amazon Prime. There is also a 2019-2020 series from producer Jordan Peele which I may include in the Daily Zone when I work my way through the original series from Rod Serling.

I am not sure if I am setting a time frame for completion of this project. I would ideally be done before school resumes in mid-August, but I have not sat down and planned that out.

I have seen a few episodes of the series but I have not seen very many. The graphic novel made me intrigued to see the work of Rod Serling.

I may yet revisit this summer the 1983 film, Twilight Zone: The Movie in the Doc Classic Movies Reviewed section of the site. I know some of the sections of that film were remakes of the series. I have seen that film, but it has been a very long time.

The Twilight Zone is a member of the EYG Hall of Fame, being inducted in the Class of 2010.

The rankings of each episode will fall into the following five categories.

The best episodes will receive…

Followed by…

Then…

Followed by…

And the lowest of the rankings get the…