Classic Twilight Zone - Your Favourite Episodes?

[JaseSF]

When it comes to genre series, it doesn't get much better than the original, classic  Twilight Zone. Hosted and Narrated By Rod Serling, the show often had outstanding writing, acting and directing. Its stories were about people at heart (what makes  people the way they are, what's right and what's wrong, injustice, social and political issues) all wrapped up in the pretext of horror & science fiction twists.
At its best The Twilight Zone makes the viewer stop and think and reflect upon what he/she has just watched. Even lesser episodes which never managed to really  accomplish this still generally managed to capture audience interest and be entertaining.

The main three writers on The Twilight Zone were Rod Serling himself (who wrote an unbelievable 92 episodes!), Charles Beaumont (21 epsiodes) and prolific writer Richard Matheson (16 episodes). Earl Hamner Jr. and George Clayton Johnson also
wrote several episodes.

Also such reknown directors as Ida Lupino, Christian Nyby, Ted Post, Boris Sagal, Don Seigel, Buzz Kulik, John Brahm, Richard Donner and even Jacques Tourneur directed episodes..but that's just some of them.

Everyone has their favourite Twilight Zone episodes.  My personal faves include the following:

1) Time Enough At Last: Burgess Meredith starred in several of the very best Zone episodes and this one is arguably the best...a man who can never find enough time to read finally gets his wish but all isn't roses.

2) Nightmare At 20000 Feet: William Shatner stars as a former mental patient who swears there's a goblin on the outside of his plane.

3) The Masks: An old man makes his greedy inheritors wear masks in order to qualify for his inheritance.

4) Miniature: A lonely man sees the doll of his dreams come to life in a museum in this wonderful, albeit slightly disturbing, romantic fantasy episode.

5) The New Exhibit: a man who takes care of horrifying wax figures of the world's most notorious murderers begins to fancy seeing the figures come to life.

6) A Quality of Mercy: An American soldier with a strong hatred of 'the enemy' suddenly finds himself one of "them".

7) The Obsolete Man: A man is declared obsolete by the state and must choose his own form of execution. Stars Burgess Meredith yet again.

8) The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street: A study in paranoia...people believe that alien creatures may live amongst them.

9) The Shelter: When it seems a nuclear attack is imminent..one man's bomb shelter becomes an horrifying object of dispute with neighbours who weren't so prepared.

10) Nightmare As A Child: A woman encounters a little girl who helps her to remember what she had locked away inside of her.

[The Burgomaster]

* TIME ENOUGH AT LAST

* TO SERVE MAN

* TALKY TINA

[peter johnson]

I think it's called "100 Yards Over The Rim" -- Cliff Robertson in a very understated performance as a pioneer who experiences a time warp & ends up in 1961.  Favorite.

Second Favorite:  "One For the Angels" -- Ed Wynn as a sidewalk pitchman who bargains with Death.

"It's a Good Life" -- Billy Mumy in the Jerome Bixby short story.  Don't go into the cornfield . . .

Can't remember the name, but Jonathan Winters as a demonic ghost plays pool with Jack Klugman.  Winters is perfectly chilling & proved once and for all that he really could act.

"In Praise of Pip" -- A dying Jack Klugman visits with ghostly Billy Mumy.

The Zone rules, dooood --

peter rod/denny serling

[RCMerchant]

I loved ALL of them! A lot of my favorites have already been mentioned.

I always liked 'Eye of the Beholder"...ya know...the one with the ugly pig people?



Also...
"the Invaders'-Agnes Moorehead has a tiny ufo land in her house!
"I Sing the Body Electric"-It's written by Ray Bradbury!!!
.'the Midnight Sun'-Kinda like the DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE. I remeber reading this story in one of those Twilight Zone paperbacks as a kid before I ever seen the show itself!

[WingedSerpent]

I think my favorite would have to be On Thurday, We leave for home.  Its about a lost colony of space explorers.  The leader of the colony rulespretty much all aspects of their lives and keeps them happy with stories of Earth.  When a rescue ship finally arrives, the leader finds he has trouble with the idea of losing his authority over his colony.

It's one I watch when ever sci-fi channel has one of its marathons.

[Allhallowsday]

"It's a Good Life" based on the classic Science Fiction story by JEROME BIXBY: BILLY MUMY is a willful, vindictive godling who can do as he pleases. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfGWvexg90w

[JaseSF]

Great picks guys. 

"It's a Good Life", "To Serve Man", "Eye of the Beholder", "One For the Angels", "In Praise of Pip", "The Invaders", "The Midnight Sun" are all top notch episode for sure. I really like the nightmarish quality of "Perchance to Dream" which features a frightened man visiting a psychiatrist's office absolutely terrified of falling to sleep. "I Shot an Arrow into the Air", a kind of forerunner perhaps to PLANET OF THE APES, is a dark story of survival as four crew members of a crashed space expedition must try and survive on what is apparently a barren, desolate asteroid.

[ER]

The Twilight Zone just might be the finest show in television history. Way too many good episodes to cite, but one I always particularly liked was The Changing of the Guard.

[hotspur]

There was an episode about a guy with a suitcase full of odd things that he gives to people, just before they need them: bus tickets, a leaky fountain pen, etc.  It was one of the first ones I saw, I really liked it and I've never seen it since.

[Raffine]

There was an episode about a guy with a suitcase full of odd things that he gives to people, just before they need them: bus tickets, a leaky fountain pen, etc.  It was one of the first ones I saw, I really liked it and I've never seen it since.

The title of that one is, funny enough, "What You Need".

Some great episodes not mentioned, I think:
Walking Distance - A business man revisits the small town of his youth.
The After Hours - A young woman goes to a department store to purchase a thimble.
A Nice Place to Visit - A small time crook is given everything he desires by the mysterious Mr. Pip (Sebastian Cabot).
The Hitch-Hiker - A woman driving across country keeps seeing a mysterious hitchihiker. Written by Mrs. Bernard Herrmann (Lucille Fletcher)!
The Howling Man - A traveller aids a mysterious man kept captive by an order of Monks.
Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up? - A group of bus passangers are standed in a diner by a snowstorm, but one of them may not be what he or she seems...

One episode that's considered by 'The Experts' to be one of the lesser ones, but one I really like is Five Characters in Search of an Exit. That's the one with the Army officer, the ballerina, the clown, the hobo, and the bagpiper trapped in a mysterious, featureless room.

[JaseSF]

Good stuff Raffine 

You mentioned a lot of memorable goodies there. I especially liked "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?", "Five Characters in Search of an Exit", "The Howling Man" and "Walking Distance" myself.

A couple of more goodies not yet mentioned:

"Where is Everybody?" - the pilot in which a man finds himself suddenly in a deserted world.

"Night of the Meek" - a Christmas themed episode that sees a drunken Santa (played by Art Carney) find redemption from a msyterious sack that gives people what they most want for Christmas.

"A Kind of Stopwatch" - An endlessly talkative blabbermouth finds a stopwatch which seems capable of stopping and restarting the world!

"Number 12 Looks Just Like You" - a woman actually wants to keep her face when she turns 19 instead of accepting the state funded Transformation that will give her whatever beautiful face she might desire...just like everyone else does.

Actually there's even more goodies from this series that deserve mention.

[WilliamWeird1313]

My personal favorite is The Obsolete Man. Burgess Meredith is one of my favorite actors, and Time Enough Last is great n' all, but I always preferred The Obsolete Man, which I feel doesn't get enough due (as opposed to Time Enough, which EVERYONE brings up ANY time you're talkin' 'bout Twilight Zone).

[WingedSerpent]

My personal favorite is The Obsolete Man. Burgess Meredith is one of my favorite actors, and Time Enough Last is great n' all, but I always preferred The Obsolete Man, which I feel doesn't get enough due (as opposed to Time Enough, which EVERYONE brings up ANY time you're talkin' 'bout Twilight Zone).

There are a few that people bring up probably just because they are well known episodes.  And there were plenty of under-rated and over rated episodes.  I personally was never a big fan of "It's a Good Life". 

Another one I like is one where a cowardly, low level crook has a conversation with his better half in a mirror.  In the end, the better half takes over, and the man goes out to live (we assume) a better more productive life.  This show was know for being macabe, but there were a few epsidoes that were actually postitive and gave a sense of hope.

[peter johnson]

I think the cowardly, low-level crook is Mickey Rooney, who also was alone in his hotel room for "Last Night of a Jockey" -- Rooney sure could act, a fact overshadowed by some poor role choices/bad agents during his career --

"The Obsolete Man" has Fritz Weaver as the judge -- what a great cast the ol' Zone had!!

Ever see the one with Robert Redford as the Angel of Death?  Priceless! 

peter johnson/denny crane

[316zombie]

okay, maybe y'all can help me out.can anyone tell me what the differences are, if any, between buying the"collection" boxes,the"definitive edition "boxes, or the individual volumes? i haven't seen anything ob imdb that shows any major differences,although it was about a year ago that i checked.