Favorite TZ Episode

[Susan]

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

[Eirik]

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.

[Ash]

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.

[nobody]

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.

[Ash]

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)

[Kory]

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.

[nobody]

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.

[daveblackeye15]

"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.

[Susan]

> "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.

[Susan]

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)

[nobody]

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.

[trekgeezer]

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.

[Ash]

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?

[trekgeezer]

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

TZ Episode Guide

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.

[nobody]

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."