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The Twilight Zone in the Twilight Zone

The Future Is Unwritten

If The Twilight Zone set the pace for American fantasy and horror through the 1960s, it was during the following decade that the seeds it sowed were truly to flourish, with the emergence of Stephen King as the crown prince of the genre setting the stage.

Born in 1947, the young King was twelve when The Twilight Zone was first screened; seventeen when it left the airwaves; and, despite the (relatively) late hour at which it was broadcast, he fell firmly within the parameters of the show’s most loyal audience. (Media-friendly terms such as “demographics” were unknown at that time.)

According to a spring 1961 poll among Los Angeles schoolchildren (but which could certainly be extended across the rest of the country), The Twilight Zone was firmly ranked as their favorite television program, and that despite it being broadcast at 10:00 p.m.—by which point, one would normally assume, most schoolchildren should be in bed.

As a child, King was already a voracious writer, penning stories inspired by movies he’d seen and selling them to his school friends. He contributed to an underground newspaper published by his brother, Dave’s Rag, and, in 1965, the fanzine Comics Review spread his short story “I Was a Teenage Grave Robber” across four issues.

Two years later, Startling Mystery Stories magazine published his tale “The Glass Floor,” and the next five years saw King regularly publishing short stories, while working on what would become his first novel, Carrie—the very Serling-esque tale of an unpopular high school senior turning the tables on her tormentors in the most nightmarish fashion.

Published in 1973 and swiftly adapted for what remains one of the most effective horror movies of the decade, it was followed by the vampire epic Salem’s Lot (1975) and The Shining in 1977—again destined to occupy a lofty plateau in the annals of cinematic scares.

Further novels followed under the pseudonym Richard Bachman—Rage (1977), The Long Walk (1979), Roadwork (1981) and The Running Man (1982), all intended for a lower profile than publications released under his own name, a catalog that included the apocalyptic epic The Stand (1978), The Dead Zone (1979), Firestarter (1980) and Cujo (1981). Indeed, while King’s brand of horror was, by now, beginning to feel just a little formulaic, excursions into other fields (the fantasy series The Dark Tower) allowed him the leeway to recharge his batteries while maintaining an almost superhumanly prolific output.

Stephen King’s Danse Macabre

In the midst of this period, in 1981, King published Danse Macabre—a nonfiction study of American fantasy and horror that is arguably his most important text, not only in its level-headed enthusiasm for a century’ss worth of past writings, comics, movies and television shows, but also in its ability to disseminate King’s own formative influences to a whole new generation of readers and would-be writers.

His view of The Twilight Zone was especially refreshing. Close to twenty years had now passed since the show went off the air; five had elapsed since Rod Serling’s death; and though the show’s title had long since entered the common vernacular, the episodes themselves were oft regarded as little more than period kitsch, quaint reminders of the very different world in which they had been conceived.

King demanded that they again be afforded the respect they deserved; and, single-handedly, ensured that they received it.

“Of all the dramatic programs which have ever run on American TV,” he wrote, The Twilight Zone “is the one which comes closest to defying any overall analysis. It was not a western or a cop show (although some of the stories had western formats or featured cops ’n’ robbers); it was not really a science fiction show. . . .”

It was not a sitcom, despite occasionally dipping into humorous waters, it was not occult, it was not supernatural. “It was its own things, and in large part that fact alone seems to account for the fact that a whole generation is able to associate the Serling program with the budding of the sixties . . . at least, as the sixties are remembered.”

That last point was key. As The Twilight Zone itself had pointed out on occasion, history seldom recalls events or eras with any kind of all-consuming accuracy. Rather, like a news editor picking sixty seconds of sound bites from a president’s two-hour speech, history hunts out the moments that best suit the individual historian’s own interpretations and weaves its narrative around them.

This is especially true in popular culture, in the worlds of television, movies and music. Between the birth of rock ’n’ roll in the mid-1950s and the advent of the Beatles almost a decade later, we are told, there existed nothing but a wasteland of preening would-be teenage idols singing songs about high school and holding hands with their best girl. Anything that occurred in-between times that contradicts that simplistic scenario is, at best, allowed a passing footnote, but more likely will be completely ignored.

Television is even more harshly treated, with nothing less than the advent of (near) universal color regarded as the then dividing line between “old” and “new.” It is a harsh separation that, even if we look solely at the 1960s and ignore the broadcasts of earlier years, effectively writes off half a decade’s worth of the 1960s’ black-and-white brilliance as somehow belonging to “an earlier age.”

The Twilight Zone, with one chronological foot in the late 1950s and its cancellation falling one full year before American television embraced color broadcasting in 1965 (over half of all network prime-time shows made the transition that fall; the following September, the first all-color prime-time season was launched), fell firmly into that trap. Now, King was arguing that it was the mood of the show, not its presentation, that placed it at the epicenter of all the key elements that history insists encapsulated the sixties.

This striking poster was the moviegoer’s invite into a reborn Twilight Zone.

Warner Bros./Photofest

If You Remember the 1960s, You Were Probably Watching Reruns

It is no exaggeration to say that politically (the show’s strong support for the civil rights movement), scientifically (its fascination with the space race) and culturally (its chillingly delineated opposition to war—very significant as Vietnam heated up), The Twilight Zone was as significant a harbinger of the decade’s (youth-) cultural preoccupations as either the Beatles or, to pick what was, at the time, an equally overlooked medium, the first Marvel comics.

The birth, in November 1961, of The Fantastic Four was unquestionably a product of the same overall zeitgeist as The Twilight Zone, while the arrival over the next couple of years of The Incredible Hulk (May 1962), Spider-man and Thor (August 1962), Iron Man (March 1963), The X-Men (September 1963) and Daredevil (April 1964) effectively allowed Marvel to operate in precisely the same landscape as Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone, but without the headaches of a cost-conscious network, controversy-fearing sponsors and ratings-scouring bean counters.

It is no surprise whatsoever to learn, from anecdotal evidence at least, that a large section of The Twilight Zone’s audience was hooked just as strongly on the first years of Marvel’s output. Indeed, the comic publishers of the causes that Serling held so dear permitted a sense of creative continuity that mainstream rock ’n’ roll would not adapt until 1966–1967 saw the psychedelic movement explode around a generation’s disillusion with the course that mainstream society was embarked on.

By the lights of that particular scenario, the 1969 Woodstock Festival, with its guiding tenets of love, peace, equality and understanding, was effectively the first-ever Twilight Zone fan convention. And while Stephen King was not the first writer to make that connection (albeit somewhat more obliquely), he was the first to do so outside of the closeted world of fanzines and newsletters.

Almost all of the triumphs—or tribulations—to which The Twilight Zone would be heir as the 1980s continued, from the movie in 1983 to the revived television series of the late 1980s and the early 2000s, can be traced back to King’s championing of the show.

That none of them, ultimately, lived up to the majesty of their namesake, however, owes little to their overall quality. It speaks, too, to the almost impractically regal reputation that Serling’s original now enjoyed.

It would be impossible, for even the show’s most devoted viewer, to sit through the entire twenty-eight DVDs’ worth of original episodes, all 156 of them, and declare that the creative well never ran dry. That only a fraction of the stories told can unhesitatingly be ranked among the greatest half-hours (or, in the case of season four, hours) that have ever been broadcast on television.

It is the aura of The Twilight Zone that is all-pervadingly brilliant; the innate understanding that it was (and is) the show’s intent, as opposed to its delivery, that rates it so unimpeachably high in the cultural memory.

By that token, then, any attempt to reprise, or even reinvent, the show is effectively doomed to a dreadful, hideous, lingering and most of all excruciatingly painful death from the very outset, the televisual equivalent of a much-loved band from decades past announcing that not only are they re-forming for a tour, they also have a new album coming out. We know before we’ve even heard a note that it won’t be the new songs we applaud the loudest.

Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine

Coincidental with King’s homily, and possibly its most immediate beneficiary, was Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine, launched with delicious synchronicity in April 1981, the same month Danse Macabre was published. It was produced with the full cooperation of Rod Serling’s estate, which had retained marketing and merchandising rights to the show, and Carol Serling was understandably enthusiastic when T. Z. Publications and editor T. E. D. Klein made their approach.

Rightfully so. Over the next eight years, until its closure with its June 1989 issue, Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine effectively became the blueprint for what we now call genre magazine publishing, both as a repository for fan-based material delving deep into the annals of the show and as a showcase for horror and dark fantasy fiction, past and present.

Stephen King, M. R. James, Mick Farren, Roger Zelazny, David Morrell, Lisa Tuttle, Joyce Carol Oates, Dean Koontz, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Robert Silverberg, and George R. R. Martin all appeared in those pages, while the magazine would also be largely responsible for the rediscovery of one of the late nineteenth century’s most breathtakingly macabre authors, William Hope Hodgson.

There were interviews with authors and filmmakers (Stephen King featured in the premier issue; Richard Donner shared his memories of the show in issue #5), many of whom expounded on their love of The Twilight Zone. Episode guides counted down only the title show, but for others that fell into the same overall category of viewing. Original artwork, reviews and so much more packed every issue, while the magazine’s relationship with members of the original Twilight Zone team even saw previously unread scripts and synopses unearthed.

In October 1981, George Clayton Johnson’s “Sea Change” gave readers a glimpse into the sensibilities that lay behind the show. The chilling saga of a sailor whose accidentally amputated hand becomes a malevolent doppelgänger was rejected because it was simply too horrific for broadcast. Later, the June 1982 issue featured Richard Matheson’s “The Doll” (“the Twilight Zone episode you never saw”), while a slew of other rejected scripts also made their way into the light as the years passed.

The magazine was already a doughty two-year-old veteran, then, when Twilight Zone—The Movie arrived in June 1983, an ambitious effort set to comprise three classic stories from the show’s original run and a fourth loosely adapted piece, each the work of a different director.

You probably won’t recognize him, but this is Ghostbuster Dan Aykroyd, in the prologue to the Twilight Zone movie.

Warner Bros./Photofest

The Movie That Was Haunted by Tragedy

On July 23 1982, while shooting John Landis’s “Time Out” segment (very loosely based on the original episode “A Quality of Mercy”), star Vic Morrow and two child actors, Vietnamese born Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen, were killed when a low-flying helicopter was hit by the blast from a prematurely detonated pyrotechnic. Spiraling out of control, it crashed onto the three actors, killing them all instantly.

Controversy followed when it was revealed that the two children were working in contravention of California’s child labor laws, but although a decade-long legal action would end with nobody being found criminally responsible for the accident. Perhaps adding insult to injury, all scenes featuring the two dead children were removed from the finished movie.

“Time Out” is the first of the movie’s four segments, following on from a prologue in which Albert Brooks is driving Dan Aykroyd through a darkened landscape, while discussing old episodes of The Twilight Zone, and debating which was the most terrifying.

Finally Aykroyd asks, “Do you want to see something really scary?” and, when the car slows to a halt, he transforms into a monster and attacks. The familiar theme music begins, and Burgess Meredith, returning as narrator to a land he so dignified as an actor more than twenty years before, speaks the opening introduction:

“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.”

Despite its authorship, Landis’s “Time Out,” in many ways, is the archetypal Rod Serling tale, the story of a modern-day racist who finds himself catapulted back into time, as the victim of other people’s prejudices—in wartime France, Gestapo officers see him as a Jew; in the American south, he is mistaken by Ku Klux Klansmen for a black man they intend on lynching; in Vietnam, American soldiers see him as an enemy combatant Viet Cong; and, back in France, we see him again as he is shoveled onto a train as it departs for the death camps.

The remaining stories—the Steven Spielberg–directed “Kick the Can,” Joe Dante’s take on “It’s a Good Life” and George Miller’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”—were all Twilight Zone originals, adapted for the movie by Richard Matheson from original screenplays by George Clayton Thomas, Jerome Bixby and Matheson himself. Finally the epilogue picks up from where “Nightmare” ended, with its terrified protagonist being driven away in an ambulance. Suddenly the driver turns and asks, “Heard you had a big scare up there, huh? Wanna see something really scary?”

Kevin McCarthy, William Schallert, Kathleen Quinlan and Patricia Barry contemplate the movie’s insistence that it’s still a good life.

Warner Bros./Photofest

The movie opened strongly, fourth at the box office on its debut weekend, with a $6,614,366 gross from 1,275 theaters. Ultimately, however, it brought home a little under $30 million—a poor return, it was generally felt, for a movie that cost $10 million to make in the first place, although it was certainly not helped by reviews such as the New York Times’s scathing dismissal of it as “flabby, mini-minded behemoth.”

Other commentaries were equally (if not so memorably) harsh, and moving forward thirty years to today, and the endemic belief that the mere ownership of an Internet connection requires one’s every thought to be broadcast to the world, consumer reviews tend equally toward the negative.

Yet it is not a bad movie. Matheson’s scripting is tight, to the point of, and in many respects superior to, the original tales; while the transition from early sixties television to early-eighties cinema only broadens and brightens the scope of the stories.

Watched without any awareness of the original episodes, without nostalgia, and certainly bereft of the belief that the original Twilight Zone was a beast of untouchable brilliance, and it is the 1960s stories that feel clunky and underdone, with even William Shatner’s star turn in “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” undone by what we now know (thanks, Star Trek) to be his penchant for a certain thespian overexaggeration.

Nor was Spielberg especially distraught over the movie’s reception; indeed, emboldened by the success that it did enjoy, he declared that his next move would be into television, and the creation of a new anthology series firmly modeled on the old Twilight Zone format, Amazing Stories.

The old Alfred Hitchcock Presents series, too, was given a reboot, with old episodes remade and linked to Hitchcock’s original introductions, colorized for a new generation of viewers. Suddenly, horror anthologies were hot again.

How could CBS resist?

The 1980s Revival

In fact, several attempts to relaunch the show had been made over the years, most notably by Rod Serling and original producer Buck Houghton, and later by Francis Ford Coppola.

Neither raised more than a murmur of enthusiasm at CBS headquarters. But the continued success of the old show in syndication, coupled with both the movie and the popularity of Spielberg’s other movies, many of which (agreed CBS program chief Harvey Shepard) moved into distinctly twilit territory, brought about a rethink.

In 1984, a new series of The Twilight Zone received the green light, which in turn became a beacon to lure in a host of talent, all of whom seemed to have their own fond memories of the original show.

Writers the caliber of George R. R. Martin, Rockne S. O’Bannon (the creator of Farscape), Batman comic scribe Alan Brennert and Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski; directors Wes Craven, Tommy Lee Wallace, Robert Downey and William Friedkin; actors Jenny Agutter, Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren and Martin Landau (returning from the original series), all were recruited to the burgeoning galaxy of talent, the very name The Twilight Zone seemingly proving as irresistible to the latest generation of thespians as it had to their counterparts of a quarter of a century before.

A new arrangement of the theme was commissioned from Jerry Garcia and performed by his band, the Grateful Dead; and actor Charles Aidman, a veteran of the original episodes “And When the Sky Was Opened” and “Little Girl Lost,” was hired as the late Rod Serling’s replacement.

The show was even returned to its traditional berth of Friday nights (albeit at 8:00 p.m.), and, on September 27, 1985, America settled down to enter, once again, The Twilight Zone.

Episodes were presented in an hour-long time slot, with each week serving up two, and sometimes three stories; and while ratings were destined not to hold their original high mark, the series was not only renewed for a second season in 1986, but even ran to a third before its final cancellation in 1989.

Jeremy Licht in the role made famous by Billy Mumy, in the 1983 Twilight Zone movie remake of “It’s a Good Life.”

Warner Bros./Photofest

1985–1989 Series at a Glance

Episode	Director	Writer	Broadcast
Season One
“Shatterday”	Wes Craven	Harlan Ellison and Alan Brennert	September 27, 1985
“A Little Peace and Quiet” (aka “A Kind of a Stopwatch”)	Wes Craven	James Crocker	September 27, 1985
“Wordplay”	Wes Craven	Rockne S. O’Bannon	October 4, 1985
“Dreams for Sale”	Tommy Lee Wallace	Joe Gannon	October 4, 1985
“Chameleon”	Wes Craven	James Crocker	October 4, 1985
“Healer”	Sigmund Neufeld Jr.	Michael Bryant	October 11, 1985
“Children’s Zoo”	Robert Downey	Chris Hubbell and Gerrit Graham	October 11, 1985
“Kentucky Rye”	John Hancock	Delree Todd, Chip Duncan and Richard Krzemien	October 11, 1985
“Little Boy Lost”	Tommy Lee Wallace	Michael Cassutt	October 18, 1985
“Wish Bank”	Rick Friedberg	Michael Cassutt	October 18, 1985
“Nightcrawlers”	William Friedkin	Robert R. McCammon and Philip DeGuere	October 18, 1985
“If She Dies”	John Hancock	David Bennett Carren	October 25, 1985
“Ye Gods”	Peter Medak	Anne Collins	October 25, 1985
“Examination Day”	Paul Lynch	Henry Slesar and Philip DeGuere	November 1, 1985
“A Message from Charity”	Paul Lynch	William M. Lee and Alan Brennert	November 1, 1985
“Teacher’s Aide”	B. W. L. Norton	Steven Barnes	November 8, 1985
“Paladin of the Lost Hour”	Gilbert Cates (credited as Alan Smithee)	Harlan Ellison	November 8, 1985
“Act Break”	Ted Flicker	Haskell Barkin	November 15, 1985
“The Burning Man”	J. Feigelson	Ray Bradbury and J. D. Feigelson	November 15, 1985
“Dealer’s Choice”	Wes Craven	Donald Todd	November 15, 1985
“Dead Woman’s Shoes”	Peter Medak	Lynn Barker	November 22, 1985
“Wong’s Lost and Found Emporium”	Paul Lynch	William F. Wu and Alan Brennert	November 22, 1985
“The Shadow Man”	Joe Dante	Rockne S. O’Bannon	November 29, 1985
“The Uncle Devil Show”	David Steinberg	Donald Todd	November 29, 1985
“Opening Day”	John Milius	Gerrit Graham and Chris Hubbell	November 29, 1985
“The Beacon”	Gerd Oswald	Martin Pasko	Rebecca Parr
“One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty”	Don Carlos Dunaway	Harlan Ellison and Alan Brennert	December 6, 1985
“Her Pilgrim Soul”	Wes Craven	Alan Brennert	December 13, 1985
“I of Newton”	Kenneth Gilbert	Joe Haldeman	December 13, 1985
“Night of the Meek”	Martha Coolidge	Rockne S. O’Bannon and Rod Serling	December 20, 1985
“But Can She Type?”	Shelley Levinson	Martin Pasko and Rebecca Parr	December 20, 1985
“The Star”	Gerd Oswald	Arthur C. Clarke and Alan Brennert	December 20, 1985
“Still Life”	Peter Medak	Gerrit Graham and Chris Hubbell	January 3, 1986
“The Little People of Killany Woods”	J. Feigelson	J. D. Feigelson	January 3, 1986
“The Misfortune Cookie”	Allan Arkush	Charles E. Fritch and Steven Rae (aka Rockne S. O’Bannon)	January 3, 1986
“Monsters!”	B. W. L. Norton	Robert Crais	January 24, 1986
“A Small Talent for War”	Claudia Weill	Alan Brennert and Carter Scholz	January 24, 1986
“A Matter of Minutes”	Sheldon Larry	Theodore Sturgeon and Rockne S. O’Bannon	January 24, 1986
“The Elevator”	R. L. Thomas	Ray Bradbury	January 31, 1986
“To See the Invisible Man”	Noel Black	Robert Silverberg and Steven Barnes	January 31, 1986
“Tooth and Consequences”	Robert Downey	Haskell Barkin	January 31, 1986
“Welcome to Winfield”	Bruce Bilson	Les Enloe	February 7, 1986
“Quarantine”	Martha Coolidge	Alan Brennert	February 7, 1986
“Gramma”	Bradford May	Stephen King and Harlan Ellison	February 14, 1986
“Personal Demons”	Peter Medak	Rockne S. O’Bannon	February 14, 1986
“Cold Reading”	Gus Trikonis	Martin Pasko and Rebecca Parr	February 14, 1986
“The Leprechaun- Artist”	Tommy Lee Wallace	Tommy Lee Wallace	February 21, 1986
“Dead Run”	Paul Tucker	Greg Bear and Alan Brennert	February 21, 1986
“Profile in Silver”	John Hancock	J. Neil Schulman	March 7, 1986
“Button, Button”	Peter Medak	Richard Matheson	March 7, 1986
“Need to Know”	Paul Lynch	Mary Sheldon	March 21, 1986
“Red Snow”	Jeannot Szwarc	Michael Cassutt	March 21, 1986
“Take My Life . . . Please!”	Gus Trikonis	Gordon Mitchell	March 28, 1986
“Devil’s Alphabet”	Ben Bolt	Arthur Gray	March 28, 1986
“The Library”	John Hancock	Anne Collins	March 28, 1986
“Shadow Play”	Paul Lynch	James Crocker and Charles Beaumont	April 4, 1986
“Grace Note”	Peter Medak	Patrice Messina	April 4, 1986
“A Day in Beaumont”	Philip DeGuere	David Gerrold	April 11, 1986
“The Last Defender of Camelot”	Jeannot Szwarc	Roger Zelazny and George R. R. Martin	April 11, 1986
Season Two
“The Once and Future King”	Jim McBride	Bryce Maritano and George R. R. Martin	September 27, 1986
“A Saucer of Loneliness”	John Hancock	David Gerrold and Theodore Sturgeon	September 27, 1986
“What Are Friends For?”	Gus Trikonis	J. Michael Straczynski	October 4, 1986
“Aqua Vita”	Paul Tucker	Jeremy Bertrand Finch and Paul Chitlik	October 4, 1986
“The Storyteller”	Paul Lynch	Rockne S. O’Bannon	October 11, 1986
“Nightsong”	Bradford May	Michael Reaves	October 11, 1986
“The After Hours”	Bruce Malmuth	Rod Serling and Rockne S. O’Bannon	October 18, 1986
“Lost and Found”	Gus Trikonis	Phyllis Eisenstein and George R. R. Martin	October 18, 1986
“The World Next Door”	Paul Lynch	Lan O’Kun	October 18, 1986
“The Toys of Caliban”	Thomas J. Wright	Terry Matz and George R. R. Martin	December 4, 1986
“The Convict’s Piano”	Thomas J. Wright	Patrice Messina and James Crocker	December 11, 1986
“The Road Less Traveled”	Wes Craven	George R. R. Martin	December 18, 1986
“The Card”	Bradford May	Michael Cassutt	February 21, 1987
“The Junction”	Bill Duke	Virginia Aldridge	February 21, 1987
“Joy Ride”	Gil Bettman	Cal Willingham	May 21, 1987
“Shelter Skelter”	Martha Coolidge	Ron Cobb	May 21, 1987
“Private Channel”	Peter Medak	Edward Redlich	May 21, 1987
“Time and Teresa Golowitz”	Shelley Levinson	Alan Brennert and Parke Godwin	July 10, 1987
“Voices in the Earth”	Curtis Harrington	Alan Brennert	July 10, 1987
“Song of the Younger World”	Noel Black	Anthony and Nancy Lawrence	July 17, 1987
“The Girl I Married”	Philip DeGuere	J. M. DeMatteis	July 17, 1987
Season Three
“The Curious Case of Edgar Witherspoon”	René Bonnière	Haskell Barkin and J. Michael Straczynski	September 24, 1988
“Extra Innings”	Douglas Jackson	Tom Palmer	October 1, 1988
“The Crossing”	Paul Lynch	Ralph Phillips	October 8, 1988
“The Hunters”	Paul Lynch	Paul Chitlik and Jeremy Bertrand Finch	October 15, 1988
“Dream Me a Life”	Allan King	J. Michael Straczynski	October 22, 1988
“Memories”	Ryszard Bugajski	Bob Underwood	October 29, 1988
“The Hellgramite Method”	Gilbert M. Shilton	William Selby	November 5, 1988
“Our Selena Is Dying”	Bruce Pittman	J. Michael Straczynski and Rod Serling	November 12, 1988
“The Call”	Gilbert M. Shilton	J. Michael Straczynski	November 19, 1988
“The Trance”	Randy Bradshaw	Jeff Stuart and J. Michael Straczynski	November 26, 1988
“Acts of Terror”	Brad Turner	J. Michael Straczynski	December 3, 1988
“20/20 Vision”	Jim Purdy	Robert Walden	December 10, 1988
“There Was an Old Woman”	Otta Hanus	Tom J. Astle	December 17, 1988
“The Trunk”	Steve DiMarco	Paul Chitlik and Jeremy Bertrand Finch	December 24, 1988
“Appointment on Route 17”	René Bonnière	Haskell Barkin	December 31, 1988
“The Cold Equations”	Martin Lavut	Alan Brennert and Tom Godwin	January 7, 1989
“Stranger in Possum Meadows”	Sturla Gunnarsson	Paul Chitlik and Jeremy Bertrand Finch	January 14, 1989
“Street of Shadows”	Ryszard Bugajski	Michael Reaves	January 21, 1989
“Something in the Walls”	Allan Kroeker	J. Michael Straczynski	January 28, 1989
“A Game of Pool”	Randy Bradshaw	George Clayton Johnson	February 4, 1989
“Room 2426”	Ryszard Bugajski	Jeremy Bertrand Finch and Paul Chitlik	February 11, 1989
“The Mind of Simon Foster”	Douglas Jackson	J. Michael Straczynski	February 18, 1989
“The Wall”	Atom Egoyan	J. Michael Straczynski	February 25, 1989
“Cat and Mouse”	Eric Till	Christy Marx	March 4, 1989
“Rendezvous in a Dark Place”	René Bonnière	J. Michael Straczynski	March 11, 1989
“Many, Many Monkeys”	Ryszard Bugajski	William Froug	March 18, 1989
“Love Is Blind”	Gilbert M. Shilton	Cal Willingham	March 25, 1989
“Crazy as a Soup Sandwich”	Paul Lynch	Harlan Ellison	April 1, 1989
“Special Service”	Randy Bradshaw	J. Michael Straczynski	April 8, 1989
“Father and Son Game”	Randy Bradshaw	Jeremy Bertrand Finch and Paul Chitlik	April 15, 1989

Dark Days

The revived Twilight Zone’s life span was, however, turbulent. Shifted to Saturday nights, the second season was put on hiatus just weeks into its scheduled run, and when it returned in December, it had been pruned to a mere half an hour. Two months later, in February, it was canceled.

Unscreened stories were held back for a series of summer reruns, and, although a third season was made (with a completely new production team and host, Robin Ward), it was done so purely to fulfill the syndication agreements made when first the show was launched and the portents were all still starry. The opening episode, “Shatterday,” was classic Twilight Zone, as Bruce Willis telephoned his own home and found himself in conversation with his alter ego.

Not all of the 110 episodes featured newly written material. In keeping with the original show, adaptations were common, with the original series of The Twilight Zone considered as ripe for reappraisal as any other source. As early as episode two, “A Kind of a Stopwatch” had been remade as “A Little Peace and Quiet,” brilliantly directed by Wes Craven and magnificently acted by Melinda Dillon.

Later, the old Christmas special “Night of the Meek” and “A Game of Pool” were revisited; while other stories, although putatively original, at least took a shadow of their substance from past Twilight Zone favorites. George R. R. Martin’s “The Toys of Caliban” for example, has a definite taste of “It’s a Good Life” around the edges.

Another episode reprieved William Froug’s “Many, Many Monkeys,” abandoned all those years before; while Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Richard Matheson, Stephen King, Robert Silverberg and Theodore Sturgeon would all receive writing credits as the show ran on.

However, while a number of excellent tales continued to be produced, it was becoming clear that simply making a bunch of scary stories and slapping The Twilight Zone’s name on the tin was not the same as remaking The Twilight Zone itself.

Again, it’s as much a fabrication of nostalgia and hindsight as it is an established fact, but Rod Serling’s original Twilight Zone succeeded because it was perceived to have a stylistic unity; a sense that, though every story was (nominally) different and the tone of the show changed almost as frequently as its stars and directors, it remained instantly recognizable as The Twilight Zone.

This is not necessarily true. Excise the opening and closing credits, and one can readily shuffle episodes of The Outer Limits into a Twilight Zone viewing marathon without feeling any kind of dislocation.

What The Twilight Zone does possess, and The Outer Limits too, is a sensibility and social awareness that feels so much more natural in a vintage television program, where the lessons are themselves couched in our awareness of history. Apply those same qualities to a modern show, and at best you feel you’re being preached to, and at worst, you can see the scars where the moral was shoehorned into place.

There was a lot of shoehorning taking place in the new series.

But there was a lot of great television, too; as the bloggers at steveandmarta.com say, “The new Twilight Zone would always be compared to the original, yet it wasn’t a copy. It stood by itself, at least the first two seasons, bringing many new stories to the mix from famous writers and producing quality adaptations with care and expertise. It was a landmark of imagination and quality in the swamp of mid-1980’s television, and only those of us who lived through that decade understand this statement.”

Or, as the show’s executive story consultant Alan Brennert so succinctly put it, “You have not known humiliation until you have been beaten [in the ratings] by Webster and Mr. Belvedere”—ABC sitcoms of dire repute. (It was also routinely whipped by David Hasselhoff’s Knight Rider, over on NBC.)

But at least a couple of dozen of the broadcast episodes rank alongside any of the tales being told by the other anthology shows that pocked the late 1980s and early 1990s.

An adaptation of Stephen King’s “Gramma” remains supremely creepy, even after several viewings; another effort, “Paladin of the Lost Hour,” pursues one of Serling’s favorite devices, the mystery of the timepiece. “Her Pilgrim Soul” is director Wes Craven and writer Alan Brennert’s vision of the W. B. Yeats poem “When You Are Old”; the presence of Helen Mirren ensures “Dead Woman’s Shoes” will forever be watchable; and Jenny Agutter is utterly spellbinding as Morgan Le Fay in the Arthurian epic “The Last Defender of Camelot,” George R. R. Martin’s adaptation of a Roger Zelazny original.

Even the oft-despised third season served up “The Cold Equations.”

Indeed, had that third season only been afforded more time and, perhaps, more tolerance from critics and viewers alike, it might well have developed in very different directions.

In November 1988, Starlog magazine interviewed J. Michael Straczynski, story editor of that final run, and found him in ferocious fettle. Another recent interviewer, it seemed, had asked him “what made us think [Straczynski’s team] could pull off another Twilight Zone if [other great writers] couldn’t . . . and I pulled back a second before responding. But then I told him that if we did it right, we could pull it off.”

Matters were not helped by the fact that a writers strike was carving swathes through the American television industry for much of the time Straczynski had previously envisaged being spent in production, and he acknowledged the weight of the show’s history and reputation often felt daunting. But he was also adamant that he would not fall into the traps that what he called “the Network Zone” ran into.

Straczynski recalled how several excellent scripts were rejected because they felt too much like The Twilight Zone; in other words, that they were too formulaic for a show whose only formula was the abandonment of that quality. He wanted passion, emotion, humanity. Not “the kind of arbitrary, illogical stories that always end with ‘whoops, I’m dead’ or ‘whoops, I’m a robot’ or ‘whoops, it turns out to be Earth.’”

It was, he concluded, a unique opportunity, and if one watches that so poorly treated third season with an open mind, it does indeed have its moments. Whether even these, however, could also be matched alongside shows from the original Twilight Zone is for the individual viewer to determine.

The 1980s revival of The Twilight Zone featured Bruce Willis in the September 1985 episode “Shatterday.”

CBS/Photofest

The 2002 Series

In 2001, it was announced that production of a new series of The Twilight Zone was under way via the UPN Network, an enterprise owned by Chris-Craft Industries, chiefly utilizing shows produced by Paramount Television. (UPN’s name comprised the initials of Chris-Craft’s own United Television subsidiary and Paramount.)

Launched in 1995 with the two-hour pilot of Star Trek: Voyager, but constantly struggling against low ratings and, in general, less than must-see programming, UPN’s ownership shifted to Viacom in 2000, just months after the entertainment giant purchased CBS—an ironic turnaround in that Viacom had itself been formed by CBS, back in 1952, as CBS Films Inc. to handle the parent company’s syndication series. (It became Viacom in 1971.)

The deal naturally included all past television and radio properties that CBS owned, but not, perhaps, the caution that experience should have encouraged the network to exercise when it came to reviving The Twilight Zone.

Twice, now, it had proved a serial failure—first, following the partial cancellation following the third season back in 1961, and with the death of the reborn show in 1964; then again with the death and subsequent zombie half-life of the 1980s remake.

Perhaps hoping that the third time’s the charm, UPN pushed ahead, recruiting actor Forest Whitaker to step into Rod Serling’s shoes as on-screen narrator (a presence with which the 1980s series had, perhaps foolishly, dispensed) and Korn’s Jonathan Davis to have a go at the theme music. Stories would also be confined to a strict thirty minutes, with two tales being allocated to each week’s hour-long slot.

The other departure from the remake that could be considered a return to Serling’s original basics was a sharp eye for contemporary social issues. As the first season fell into shape, issues as diverse, but certainly relevant, as racism, terrorism and gender politics would all be broached—immediately sounding warning bells among those viewers who are mindful of any show that boasts of its social conscience, but reassuring, too, for those who bemoaned the 1980s series’s callous disregard for what had hitherto been a bedrock of the show.

Once again, the show’s brief allowed for both new material and remakes of Serling-era classics, although the first season would be almost two-thirds over before these latter became manifest—first via a revamp of “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” unequivocally retitled “The Monsters Are on Maple Street” and replacing the original aliens with the new era’s little green bogeymen, international terrorists; then with a straightforward remake of “Eye of the Beholder,” an episode whose cachet had only increased in the years since Stephen King (in Danse Macabre) referred to it as among his all-time favorite first-run stories.

The most impressive of these reflections, however, came with “It’s Still a Good Life,” a literal sequel to the original “It’s a Good Life,” in which original cast member Billy Mumy reappears as a father who sees his daughter (played by his real-life offspring Liliana Mumy) assuming the same terrifying powers that he once possessed. Of all the episodes featured in this latest Twilight Zone’s twenty-two-story run, “It’s Still a Good Life” remains the one most viewers remember, and most fans will lionize.

(Mumy also contributed to another story; “Found and Lost” was scripted by Frederick Rappaport from an original Mumy story, in which businessman Sean Moore finds himself afforded the opportunity to revisit the past and try again to woo the woman he loved and lost.)

The remainder of the season focused on new material, often penned by up-and-coming writers, although the show’s attraction for guest stars remained undiminished. Broadcast on September 18, 2002, the premier episode coupled Jill Blotevogel’s “Evergreen” with Christopher Mack’s “One Night at Mercy,” and starred, respectively, General Hospital’s Amber Rose Tamblyn as a rebellious teen about to talk her way into a heap of trouble and Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander as a suicidal Death.

The following week, Vincent Ventresca (from the SciFi Channel’s The Invisible Man) and American Pie’s Shannon Elizabeth topped the bill, while the series went on to star such names as Ione Skye, Rory Culkin, Lou Diamond Phillips, R&B star Usher and singer Jessica Simpson.

As before, stories worked hard to slip into the established Twilight Zone mold, perhaps shedding Serling’s love for “the old O. Henry twist,” but replacing it with at least a modern approximation thereof. Time travel, premonitory dreams, cheated death, haunted artifacts and all-round instant karma each took a bow in the tales, whether it be the fated guitar that transforms struggling musician Corey Williams (Lukas Haas) into an international superstar (the episode “Harsh Mistress”) or the demented doll that convinces a browbeaten employee to stand up to his bullying boss (“Mr. Motivation”).

No less than its late, unlamented predecessor, The Twilight Zone appeared to be pressing all the right buttons. And, no less than their eighties forebears, audiences didn’t really seem to care.

Television, after all, was even more splintered than it had been in the late 1980s.

Cable was an all-but-universal fact of life, bringing ever more competition than before to the networks, whose own number had swollen from three in 1985 to six in 2002. And Wednesdays at nine were a busy time. Up against perennial ratings winners The West Wing (NBC), The Bachelor (ABC) and Angel (WB), The Twilight Zone fared even more poorly than its 1980s incarnation, and, after just one season of twenty-two episodes (forty-four stories), it disappeared from view.

The 2002 Season at a Glance

Episode	Director	Writer	Broadcast
“Evergreen”	Allan Kroeker	Jill Blotevogel	September 18, 2002
“One Night at Mercy”	Peter O’Fallon	Christopher Mack	September 18, 2002
“Shades of Guilt”	Perry Lang	Ira Steven Behr	September 25, 2002
“Dream Lover”	Peter O’Fallon	Frederick Rappaport	September 25, 2002
“Cradle of Darkness”	Jean de Segonzac	Kamran Pasha	October 2, 2002
“Night Route”	Jean de Segonzac	Jill Blotevogel	October 2, 2002
“Time Lapse”	John T. Kretchmer	James Crocker	October 9, 2002
“Dead Man’s Eyes”	Jerry Levine	Frederick Rappaport	October 9, 2002
“The Pool Guy”	Paul Shapiro	Hans Beimler	October 16, 2002
“Azoth the Avenger Is a Friend of Mine”	Brad Turner	Brent V. Friedman	October 16, 2002
“The Lineman” (one-hour story)	Jonathan Frakes	Pen Densham	October 23, 2002
“Harsh Mistress”	Brad Turner	Bradley Thompson and David Weddle	October 30, 2002
“Upgrade”	Joe Chappelle	Robert Hewitt Wolfe	October 30, 2002
“To Protect and Serve”	Joe Chappelle	Kamran Pasha	November 6, 2002
“Chosen”	Winrich Kolbe	Ira Steven Behr	November 6, 2002
“Sensuous Cindy”	John T. Kretchmer	James Crocker	November 13, 2002
“Hunted”	Patrick Norris	Christopher Mack	November 13, 2002
“Mr. Motivation”	Deran Sarafian	Brent V. Friedman and Steven Aspis	November 20, 2002
“Sanctuary”	Patrick Norris	James Crocker	November 20, 2002
“Future Trade”	Bob Balaban	Clyde Hayes	November 27, 2002
“Found and Lost”	Vern Gillum	Frederick Rappaport and Bill Mumy	November 27, 2002
“Gabe’s Story”	Allan Kroeker	Dusty Kay	December 11, 2002
“Last Lap”	Brad Turner	Rob Hedden	December 11, 2002
“The Path”	Jerry Levine	James Crocker	January 8, 2003
“Fair Warning”	John T. Kretchmer	David Weddle and Bradley Thompson	January 8, 2003
“Another Life”	Risa Bramon Garcia	Amir Mann and Brent V. Friedman	February 5, 2003
“Rewind”	Kevin Bray	James Crocker	February 5, 2003
“Tagged”	James Head	Charles Largent and Michael Angeli	February 12, 2003
“Into the Light”	Lou Diamond Phillips	Moira Kirland Dekker	February 12, 2003
“It’s Still a Good Life”	Allan Kroeker	Ira Steven Behr (based on characters created by Jerome Bixby)	February 19, 2003
“The Monsters Are on Maple Street”	Debbie Allen	Erin Maher and Kay Reindl (based on a story by Rod Serling)	February 19, 2003
“Memphis”	Eriq La Salle	Eriq La Salle	February 26, 2003
“How Much Do You Love Your Kid?”	Allison Liddi-Brown	Michael Angeli	February 26, 2003
“The Placebo Effect”	Jerry Levine	Brent V. Friedman and Rebecca Swanson	April 2, 2003
“Cold Fusion”	Eli Richbourg	Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz	April 2, 2003
“The Pharaoh’s Curse”	Bob Balaban	Stephen Beck	April 23, 2003
“The Collection”	John T. Kretchmer	Erin Maher and Kay Reindl	April 23, 2003
“Eye of the Beholder”	David R. Ellis	Rod Serling	April 30, 2003
“Developing”	Allison Liddi-Brown	Moira Kirland Dekker	April 30, 2003
“The Executions of Grady Finch”	John Peter Kousakis	Ira Steven Behr, Brent V. Friedman, Frederick Rappaport	May 7, 2003
“Homecoming”	Risa Bramon Garcia	Michael Angeli, Bradley Thompson and David Weddle	May 7, 2003
“Sunrise”	Tim Matheson	Frederick Rappaport and Katrina Cabrera Ortega	May 21, 2003
“Burned”	John T. Kretchmer	Seth Weisburst and Daniel Wolowicz	May 21, 2003