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Seems I only get to see the Twilight Zone around Xmas or new years, whichever that holiday is that plays a marathon on the sci-fi channel. Now that i am cable-less, I may have to resort to buying the collection. I grew up watching these type of shows, i was totally fascinated by their strange twists. What are some of your perseonal favorite TZ episodes, if you had to list...say...5? The ones that stand out for me (sorry i don't know their titles) are:

1. The boy who had the power to wish anything, when he didn't like someone he would wish them into the corn. It's sort of odd how today's society is not much different, in that we do whatever we can to pacify kids even if it is excessive spoiling.
2. I always liked the one where the guy flips the quarter to the newspaper salesman and it lands on it's side. All day long he can hear everyones thought. (he was darren in Bewitched). After i saw that i must have flipped a quarter 2 million times trying that trick.
3. The heat wave, with the woman painter. The twist at the end is that she is sick with a high fever and was dreaming the whole thing. Well except that the earth did go off course, but away from the sun and they are all freezing to death.
4. The one with the woman who doesn't realize she is a mannaquin
5. I think it was "walking distance" - where the guy goes to his old neighborhood and gets to view his childhood. Love it

There are SO many, like "to serve man". This was just a phenomenal show, even the 80's remake in color had it's moments but it wasn't up to to the standards. It was always a show with not only a great twist ending, but often they a moral lesson. Exploiting mans desires and consequences of getting what you wished for.

Does anyone own all the twilight zone boxed sets - which are your favorites? And do they contain all the episodes ever made? I'll have to be selective on my purchase since they're each around $86

Hard to pick a favorite, so I'll share a really good one that I only saw for the first time like a year ago during the Sci Fi marathon - it was about a guy in the late 1920s hiikng through Germany.  He stops at a castle for shelter and the monks there are really secretive and tell him not to snoop around.  Naturally, he does and finds some poor wretched soul trapped in a jail cell begging to be released.  The monks find the guy and tell him to stay away from the cell, but that night he hears the guy wailing and pain and goes to let him out.  When he releases him, the poor prisoner turns into none other than Satan (scary transformation scene).  It being Germany in the late 20's, he naturally runs off and start all kinds of mayhem you can read about in the history books.  The guy vows to make ammends for what he did.  In the end, it's the 1950s and the hero is older, living in a big apartment somewhere, there is a door with all kinds of locks and bolts on it.  He is taking on a new maid and warns her not to open that door at any cost.  Good one.

I'd never seen this one before so I assume it is rarely aired.  Good episode.

My favorite episode is "Hocus Pocus & Frisby".

That's the one where Frisby, an old man who tells tall tales so much that no one believes him, gets taken by aliens.
They have been monitoring him and they actually believe that all the tales he told are true.
They think he's the greatest human to have walked the earth.
Frisby starts playing his harmonica but it turns out that harmonica music kills the aliens.
Frisby makes his escape and then goes back to the general store to tell everyone what happened...

They don't believe him.

I love TZ. I can watch those episodes over and over again. They're amazing. I think Rod Serling was one of the greatest writers of all time.

It would be hard for me to pick a favorite. But I'd have to say "The Obsolete Man" is at the top of my list. Here's the episode summary from MSN Entertainment:

"In a futuristic society where books and religion have been outlawed, librarian Romney Wordsworth stands on trial for his life. Adjudged "obsolete" by the imperious Chancellor, Wordsworth is sentenced to death, whereupon he makes one last, unusual request: He wants to have his execution televised, and he wants the Chancellor to be in attendance."

The ending of this episode is fantastic.  

But overall, It would be easier for me to tell you which episodes I DON'T like the most. I can't stand the episode where two kids find a magical world at the bottom of their swimming pool. I'm not sure what the episode is called, but it's a full hour long, and it's incredibly boring.

Wasn't there one with Burgess Meredith as an old banker with super thick glasses who could barely see without them?

He falls asleep in a bank vault and while he's out, nuclear holocaust occurs.
The vault protected him.
He wakes up to find the city outside devastated and then drops his glasses and breaks them...cursed to live in a ruined landcape and not able to see properly.

What was the title of that one?



Post Edited (08-22-04 13:28)

I can't remember, but it was one of my favorites too.

"To Serve Man" was awesome... did anyone else think the aliens looked stoned?

The one with Shatner on the airplane.  A classic.

The one with the talking doll was creepy.

The one with the people that put on the masks and, when they take them off, their faces are completely deformed like the masks.  Really good message in that one.

The episode you're talking about was called "Time Enough at Last."

The Burgess Meredith episodes were often good.
"Printer's Devil", "Mr. Dingle, the Strong"... and the episode I already mentioned was my absolute favorite, "The Obsolete Man" all featured Meredith.

"Time Enough At last", The one where people who are beautiful are considered un-natural and ugly. (How can you NOT deform somebody's face with a operation?), and I really like the one where a man returns to his home town and everything is different and it had a nice ending.

> "In a futuristic society where books and religion have been
> outlawed, librarian Romney Wordsworth stands on trial for his
> life. Adjudged "obsolete" by the imperious Chancellor,
> Wordsworth is sentenced to death, whereupon he makes one last,
> unusual request: He wants to have his execution televised, and
> he wants the Chancellor to be in attendance."


Ah i remember that one! Did the chancellor know how he was going to die? I'm trying to remember and I wanna think that he got to pick the way he died, which is what kind of created that twist ending. oh i'd have to see it again!

Yeah the swimming pool one, very corny. I never liked that live one with santa clause...for some reason certain episodes just didn't appeal to me at all. I also tuned out on anything that had a western theme.

Kory wrote:

"To Serve Man" was awesome... did anyone else think the aliens
> looked stoned?

Yeah like lurch on the Addams family ;-)


> The one with the talking doll was creepy.

My name is Talking Tina. And I want to kill you!

I also remember one i really liked about this man who made a wish that affected his hearing. And suddenly it's like he was deaf. Isn't that how it began? And the end had him suddenly hearing everything tremendously loud, or was it vice versa? Seems like he had a nagging wife or something...and he always wanted to just listen to his record. Sound familiar? It might be that he could hear everything well and heard things that made him mad and kill his wife. I may be mixing it all up



Post Edited (08-22-04 16:52)

Only Wordsworth knew how he was going to die. The Chancelor didn't- until Wordsworth told him. Wordsworth explained that the room was rigged to explode. The Chancelor thought that method of execution was "most unusual" but didn't really seem to care- until he tried to open the door and leave. That's when he found out that Wordsworth had locked him inside!

The Chancelor tried to face his fate bravely, but was eventually reduced to a snivelling coward, breaking down and begging Wordsworth to unlock the door.

The alien in To Serve Man was played by Richard Kiel (Jaws from the James Bond movies).

One of my favorites is The Monsters are Due on Maple Street. Where all the machinery stops working, the power goes out , and all the neighbors start turning against each other and then gang up on the new family in the neighborhood because their lights are still on.  At the end you see the aliens observing this and talking about how easy it will be to conquer us, because all the have to do is turn off a few of our machines and we will do it to ourselves.

I remember another one in the same vein about a family being the only one with a bomb shelter and a nuclear attack has been launched. Can't remember the name though.

Another good one was with the husband and wife travelling through a weird looking deserted town only to find out that they're both miniature size and in a boy's scale model of a town.

What was the name of that episode?

SciFi channel's website has an excellent episode guide to the original Twilight Zone.

TZ Episode Guide (http://www.scifi.com/twilightzone/episodes/)

Scanning over this, there are quite a few I don't recall seeing. There were 5 seasons,  4 of which included 35 or more half hour episodes each, the fourth season was made up of 18 hour long episodes.

The episode you're talking about is called "Stopover in a Quiet Town"

"The day after a drunken party, a married couple awakens in an unfamiliar house with no idea how they got there."

The Original Twilight Zone

The Last Flight
Time Enough at Last
A World of Difference
King Nine Will Not Return
Deaths-Head Revisited
A Game of Pool
The Changing of the Guard
Miniature
The Masks

The New Twilight Zone

Wordplay
A Message From Charity
Wong's Lost and Found Emporium
Her Pilgrim Soul
To See the Invisible Man
Voices in the Earth

I have all of the TWILIGHT ZONE DVDs from the set that was issued a few years ago.  There are over 40 DVDs in the set.  I have watched about 70% of the episodes.  Some of my favorites are:

1. The "Talky Tina" episode with Telly Savalas;
2. There is a "ventriloquist's dummy" episode that is pretty good.  I can't remember who the star is;
3. There's one where William Shatner and his wife go to a diner and get terrified by a coin operated fortune telling machine;
4. "Time Enough at Last" (of course);
5. "To Serve Man" (of course);
 
Plus, 3 of the ones Susan mentioned:

 1. The boy who had the power to wish anything, when he didn't like someone he would wish them into the corn. It's sort of odd how today's society is not much different, in that we do whatever we can to pacify kids even if it is excessive spoiling.
2. The heat wave, with the woman painter. The twist at the end is that she is sick with a high fever and was dreaming the whole thing. Well except that the earth did go off course, but away from the sun and they are all freezing to death.
3. The one with the woman who doesn't realize she is a mannaquin

There are really quite a few good episodes, but I can't remember them all.



Post Edited (08-22-04 20:51)

>Susan: (sorry I don't know the titles)

WELL, YOU'D BETTER BE!!!!!!!! I actually know the titles of quite a few of them, oddly enough.

Scary magical Billy Mumy - "It's A Good Life" (they have to always think that everything he makes is good, because he can read their minds)

The Devil trapped in the monestary - "The Howling Man"

Everyone has a pig face in "Eye Of The Beholder", with the girl from Beverly Hillbillys.

I think Mr Frisby was Slim Pickens. I kind of liked the swimin' hole episode, although I prefer them shorter, and I think the little girl might have been Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird.

I also especially liked the end of "The Obsolete Man". I got the impression that part of the reason the Chancellor becomes obsolete is that they simplify the procedure; Fire the judge guy and just have the "jury" tear the victim limb from limb. You kind of have to suspend extra disbelief to buy that they'd let you pick your own death instead of just shooting you or whatever, but it's worth it.

The bad episodes tend to be the generic ones- A deal with the Devil goes awry, bigot gets ironic comeupance, etc.

My nominations:

 "(The?) Invaders", where some famous actress isn't talking at all, she's alone in a cabin getting attacked by little robots, at the end she finds their ship on the roof and smashes it with an axe...

One they don't show often is "The Fear", kind of the opposite of the above in a way. A man and a woman are in a remote mountain cabin terrorized by GIANT aliens. In the end it turns out they used tractor beams or something to make it look like they were pulling the roof off, spray paint to put giant fingerprints on the car, and big inflatable cyclopses. The real aliens are tiny, and unwilling to contact any species that dosn't fall for their intimidation tactics.

I love "The Old Man In The Cave". There's been a nuclear war, these villagers have a guy that they send to talk to the old man in the cave to find out what the weather's going to be like, what's safe to eat, etc. Either Lee Marvin or the guy I always mix up with Lee Marvin shows up and tries to take over and convince them not to heed the warnings of the old man anymore, then they all go to the cave to drag him out...

Wow, giant post. What have I done with my life?

I think Charles Bronson is in the Old Man in the Cave episode.

nobody wrote:

> The episode you're talking about is called "Stopover in a Quiet
> Town"
>
> "The day after a drunken party, a married couple awakens in an
> unfamiliar house with no idea how they got there."


Which is funny in that it has a moral lesson about that partying lifestyle, except most people who wake up not knowing where the hell they are, don't often find themselves in a giant alien childs toyroom. That kind of reminds me of the episode where the people wake up in a room and nobody knows who they are or how they got there. As it turns out they are toys

Bargle5 wrote:
>
> The New Twilight Zone
>
> Wordplay
> A Message From Charity
> Wong's Lost and Found Emporium
> Her Pilgrim Soul
> To See the Invisible Man
> Voices in the Earth


The only episodes of th new twilight zone i can really remember well is the one where the couple finds themself stuck inbetween seconds, where all these workers come out and replace everything. Apparently they do it each second. The other one was the time travel/butterfly theory one.  I seem to also remember seeing a show that i want to say was a twilight zone episode. It involved a man who was just living an ordinary boring life, but as it turns out he is, unbeknowgst to him, part of a secret tv show that has been filming his life. (like the truman show). When he discovers the cameras..ec..the show talks to him and tells him to act normal. But once he realizes he's on tv all the time, he doesn't act normal and ratings begin to slip. They tell him his show is cancelled, but he doesn't really know if that's true or not.

Then there's one show about a guy who sells bits of his memory for money. Apparently there's some trade where people buy memories.



Post Edited (08-23-04 17:31)

Dave Munger wrote:
 I kind of liked the swimin'
> hole episode, although I prefer them shorter, and I think the
> little girl might have been Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird.
>

Yeah but the really trippy part is everytime you hear her talking in one of the worlds (i think it's the real world, not the swimhole world). it's somebody elses voice!!! She is totally voiced over about someone else, who sounds alot like the voice of rudolph or Rocky something from one of those dated cartoons. I always wondered who did the voiceover

Twilight Zone was just a phenomenal show.  If I had to pick a favorite episode it would probably be "Uncle Simon," where this old inventor and his sister (I think she was his sister) live together, and they're both horrible people and make one another's lives miserable.  The inventor dies, leaving his estate to his sister on the condition that she care for his last invention.  This invention is a robot who begins to take on more and more of the inventor's horrible traits.

The guy who I mix up with Lee Marvin is James Coburn (had to google "In Like Flint"), but I wouldn't be too surprised if Charles Bronson was in there somewhere as one of the townsfolk. He was in a lot of stuff, and is kind of easy to overlook when he's not shooting people. He was in the ultimate generic Adam and Eve episode with Samantha from Bewitched. They're soldiers with different insignia on their uniforms and she dosen't speak English. I kind of like how the jungle had already encroached on the city like Angkor Wat or something.

Not sure if it was the girl, but I have a feeling someone in the swimin' hole episode was in "To Kill A Mockingbird". Maybe they just used some of the same incidental music or something. The voice was probably the same lady who did Rocky the Flying Squirrel, she did assloads of voicework. I'm pretty sure she did the voice of Talky Tina and was probably a TZ semiregular (just googled it, it's [http://www.google.com/search?q=%22June+Foray%22&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8]June Foray[/http://www.google.com/search?q=%22June+Foray%22&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8] hope I did that right). Kind of reminds me of Andie McDowel in that Tarzan movie where they used Glen Close's voice. Never has a film been less true to the spirit of Burroghs. I hadn't noticed though, I guess I just thought the sound was funny.

The newer ones seem even easier to mix up with other stuff, like Night Gallery. Probably because of being in color.  I kind of remember "Wong's Lost And Found Emporium", but just the setting and a part at the begining where a guy's in the sex shop at the front of Wongs trying to sell them an especially realistic baby doll for pedofiles, at least that's how I remember it. TZ memories seem especially prone to distortion. "To See The Invisible Man" was great. My parent's said it reminded them of "The Prisoner", but I didn't see that until after high school. I put that show right up there with The Zone.

Starting to remind myself of the guy on Seinfeld that made Elaine a boquet out of Frank's old TV guide then based a manequin on her.

Tv shows don't have cool intro's either, anymore. I used to love watching shows that either had a theme you could sing to, talk with or that was just a cool little tune (like hitchcock presents). I admit that while i didn't care for the show that much, i loved getting my casio organ out and talking/playing along with the intro of Tales from the Darkside...lol The Twilight Zone had two different openings as I recall.

You're travelling to another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound...but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land, whose boundaries are only that of the imagination...you're entering...the Twilight Zone...


Does anyone remember the version with the "sign post up ahead"?

Hmm, Rod Serling's writing credits include "Planet of the Apes". Facts about serling I never knew:
He stood only 5'4"
He was only 51 when he died
Served in WWII as Infantry Combat Demolition Specialist and a Paratrooper

While "the time element" was meant to be the pilot episode for TZ, because it was previously aired he had to write another script. He penned one called "The Happy Place" about a future society where when people reach age 60 they are sent to a concentration camp called "The Happy Place" and killed. It never happened, CBS told him it would never sell the series. He wroteanother script, "Where is Everybody" and it was accepted.

(http://tzone.the-croc.com/images/rodbio1.jpg)

>1. The boy who had the power to wish anything, when he didn't like someone he
>would wish them into the corn.

It's a Good Life. The UPN Twilight Zone had a sequel to this with Billy Mumy reprising his role of Anthony as an adult. He has a daughter (played by Mumy's real life daughter) who has the same power as her father.

>"To See The Invisible Man" was great.

I liked that one also. Also the one where the weapons designer is awakened in the future to help stop an asteroid from hitting the Earth and at the last minute he finds out that he was tricked into helping destroy an Earth ship bringing weapons back to the world.

My favorite New Twilight Zone was one of the 30 minute episodes that was made after it went into syndication (the network version was an hour with 2-3 different stories in each one): The Cold Equations. A girl stows away on a spaceship bringing emergency medical supplies to a colony so that she can see her brother. Unfortunately, the ship doesn't have enough fuel to deal with her extra mass. If she stays on board, the ship will end up running out fuel and crashing so she'll die, the pilot will die and all the people waiting for the medical supplies will die. In the end, she's forced to sacrifice herself. This was also made into a TV movie which had hints of government conspiracy and basically blew it all out of proportion. Find the Twilight Zone episode, it's much better and just the right length.

Susan: "Hmm, Rod Serling's writing credits include "Planet of the Apes"."

Unfortunately, Rod's version of "Planet of the Apes" was ruined by outside forces. Here's a quick explination from rodserling.com:



"I first became involved with Planet of the Apes about ten years ago," Serling told journalist David Johnson in 1974. "I was approached by an outfit called the King Brothers, who did mostly Indian-elephant pictures shot for about $1.80…The King Brothers had a notion about doing the Pierre Boulle book as a nickel-and-dime picture." Serling provided a detailed treatment for the prospective producers, he said, but ultimately the budget simply proved too high. The King Brothers dropped the idea. But then Serling heard from Blake Edwards, "the next individual to get into it and who was going to produce and direct it." Again, the matter was ultimately dropped for budgetary reasons. Finally Arthur Jacobs became involved, for whom Serling wrote "about three drafts of the actual screenplay."

Though Serling had followed his producer's instructions in creating a modern, ape-city environment for his story, Jacobs ultimately decided, again for reasons of budget, that a more primitive world was needed. Serling himself, who by this point had been involved for several years with Planet of the Apes, felt burned-out on it, and he and Jacobs mutually, and amicably, agreed to part ways.

It is often claimed that Serling's work was completely discarded when Michael Wilson came on to the project, but this is far from true. Wilson "took away almost all of my dialogue," Serling said, but "the chronology of scenes and events was identical to mine—except that people didn't say the same things."

On a sort-of-off-topic-but-not-really note, has anyone here seen A Town Has Turned to Dust? Serling wrote the teleplay (I think it may have been his last), and it ended up as a Sci-Fi Channel original movie with Stephen Lang (not so great) and Ron Perlman (great as always).  Interesting future-western with a journalist investigating various doings on a Martian mining colony.

I've never heard of this movie until now. I checked it out on IMDB, and the popular opinion is that it's a weak, watered down movie, full of borrowed ideas and cliches from other movies. I find it hard to believe that Serling would write such a thing... but then again he could've written it during his not-so-golden golden years, in between commercial breaks for "The Liar's Club."
I'll still check it out, but I won't go in expecting much.

I like one or two episodes from the new series such as the man with the talking doll or the or the episode with the babysitter and the toys,but they dont compare to the previous series.

To Serve Man....anyone else think the alien in "Phantom from space" looks like a Kanamit?

Dave Munger wrote:
"I think Mr Frisby was Slim Pickens."
Mr. Frisby was played by Andy Devine. They did have a similar vocal quality though.
" I kind of remember "Wong's Lost And Found Emporium", but just the setting and a part at the begining where a guy's in the sex shop at the front of Wongs trying to sell them an especially realistic baby doll for pedofiles, at least that's how I remember it."
I recall it as opening in a bar with one of the doors to Wong's in the rear. It's been a while though.

Susan wrote:
 I seem to also remember seeing a show that i want to say was a twilight zone episode. It involved a man who was just living an ordinary boring life, but as it turns out he is, unbeknowgst to him, part of a secret tv show that has been filming his life. (like the truman show)
That was the episode Special Service starring David Naughton (the Dr. Pepper guy) as the man whose life is on camera.

 The Burgomaster wrote:
 There is a "ventriloquist's dummy" episode that is pretty good. I can't remember who the star is;
I think you're thinking of "The Dummy" with Cliff Robertson.

TNT was airing The New Twilight Zone on an irregular basis, but they seem to have dropped it earlier this year.

That guy wasn't Slim Pickens? My childhood is ruined!

LOL Dave!

Maybe I missed it in my skimming, but I cannot believe nobody mentioned the one with the us that stops at a diner and events transpire to indicate that one of the people there is an alien...  Turns out two were.

Also - anyone remember the episode with the guy who played Sheriff Lobo and two othe guys robbed some gold from somewhere and then went into these cryosleep chambers in a cave so hey would awake in 1000 years super rich and nobody would remember their crime.  One of the chambers broke and the guy aged and died (just like in Serling's Planet of the Apes a few years later) and Lobo winds up killing the other guy he's so consumed with greed.  He gets lost lugging all this gold in the desert and collapses by the road side.  A futuristic car pulls up and these two people come to his aid, laughing at how he has all these gold bars when gold is an entirely common and relatively worthless commodity in the time they arrived at.

My favorite New TZ episode was the lady who found a locket that would stop time if she said the words "Shut up" and resume time when she said "start talking."  She uses it to enrich herself with material gain and grows apart from her family which now seems boring to her.  Then there's a nuclear war and she yells shut up as the missiles are falling.  Final scene: her walking around going mad in her bath robe with a Russian warhead hanging a few hundred feet above her.

To be honest, I'm not sure why general opinion of this movie is so low. It's been a while since I watched it, but Perlman makes anything watchable, and I remember thinking it was probaby the most original and innovative movie I'd seen on Sci-Fi in a good long while.  Oh well.

Eirik, the first episode you mention is "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up"
The second one is "The Rip Van Winkle Caper". A correction, it starred Simon Oakland, not Claude Akins.
The third one is "A Little Peace and Quiet".
All excellent choices!

Claude Akins did appear in an episode called The Little People. He was a member of a spaceship crew who discovers a microscopic civilization. His ego gets the better of him and he becomes their "god", then he gets mad and destroys them. In the end, another ship lands and they turn out to be as large to him as he was to the people he destroyed. They accidentally crush him when they pick him up.

The episode with the William Shantner and the diner fortune vending machine.

(http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~culttv/zonenicktime.jpg)

The episode with the telephone line in the grave.

The episode with the officer, clown, dancer, etc. in a container and they try to get out.

The lady driving and the guy on the road late at night.

The futuristic one with the body models for male and females of a certain age. They had to pick which model they would be.

The episode with the alien cook with the eye on the forehead.

The Alien Cookbook. (or was that Outer Limits?)

Liked them all. Rod Sterling was a local legend in Western Upstate New York where I grew up. He lived in Binghamton N.Y., Taught at Cornell in Ithaca, N.Y., Died In Rodchester N.Y..



Post Edited (08-26-04 00:07)

The alien cookbook one was "To Serve Man"

Thanks Kory. I just read your previous post and also like the one with Shatner on the plane. The many post post are long and I didn't get to read them all, but will later. Just wanted to put in my two cents.

my favorite would have to be the new exhibit

Dave Munger wrote:

>
> My nominations:
>
>  "(The?) Invaders", where some famous actress isn't talking at
> all, she's alone in a cabin getting attacked by little robots,
> at the end she finds their ship on the roof and smashes it with
> an axe...
>

This one was my vote (though I sure could go for many of the others mentioned in the thread).  The famous actress was Agnes Moorehead, Endora of "Bewitched."  I liked the terror portrayed solely by facial expression and action, not by words.

Per TV Tome, the spaceship at the end was the same one used in "Forbidden Planet."

http://www.tvtome.com/TwilightZone/season2.html#ep51