Episode 12 - What You Need

Original Airdate: December 25, 1959

Plot: A seedy character tries to exploit a benign old man who gives people exactly what they need with his powers of foresight. When he asks for too much, he meets a violent end.



If it sounds like a simple premise, that's because it is. The Twilight Zone Companion glazes over this episode, citing "lackluster direction and performances" as the issues it suffers from. The original story from which Serling adapted it had the psychic old man as a scientist who invents a machine that shows possible futures for individuals. He then provides objects for the individuals that will guide them towards the best possible future.

... come to think of it, this reminds me of the Philip K. Dick story Paycheck, which they made into a Ben Affleck movie. Damn, this is the second time in 12 episodes that it feels like PKD ripped off Twilight Zone. I hope it wasn't intentional.

Back to the point, I'm glad that Serling decided to go with a paranormal explanation to the old man's foresight as opposed to a pseudo-scientific one. Mysticism trumps fake science in most cases of fiction, and the paranormal has been described as "science that we don't understand... yet."

In my rarely humble opinion, the problem with this episode wasn't the direction or acting, but the screenplay itself. I thought the two main actors were terrific, considering the basic lack of compelling dialogue and character development present. As I watch these episodes again for the first time in years and really consider them, I'm finding myself less and less impressed with Serling's material. (I only hope that some Serling devotee doesn't toss a brick through my window for that comment.) My hands-down favorite episode so far was from a Beaumont script. Still, it's early in the game; Serling hasn't even been on camera yet!



After the show's first week of absence (probably for a holiday special), this episode aired on Christmas day, 1959. While not explicitly seasonally themed, I couldn't ignore the element of gift giving and the score that plays throughout that seems to take something from God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. Something else that occurred to me was that the bar in the first scene was the same set from the previous episode, with a few cosmetic changes. I'm sure we'll be noticing a lot more reused sets going forward.

That wraps it up for 1959! It's been a blast watching The Twilight Zone week-by-week, "the way it was meant to be seen." Enjoy SyFy's New Year's Marathon, and join me next week as we boldly step into the 1960's!

Episode 11 – And When The Sky Was Opened

Original Airdate: December 11, 1959


Plot: An astronaut just returned from space is nearly driven mad when all traces and memories of his fellow astronaut seem to vanish. Soon he follows suit.



Rod Taylor really carries this piece on his shoulders. His delivery and expressions seem genuine in his given situation, sullied only briefly when he walks directly through a plate-glass door with very little effort and no negative side effects. Who could have guessed that within four years he would play the leading man in both The Time Machine and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. At 80, he still gets in front of the camera on occasion, most recently playing Winston Churchill in Inglourious Basterds. He was also a recurring character in Walker, Texas Ranger, a show which really deserves its own blog...



One effect that didn't go over well was where Taylor is supposed to be looking in a mirror but not seeing his reflection. It probably looked fine on television sets which overscan so that not all of the sides are visible, but I watched it on my computer which displays all of the data on the disc, so I could clearly see part of his arm in the frame. A sloppy mistake that probably went unnoticed until long after the set was torn down and the actors had departed. Time to call in George Lucas for a digital touch-up.

Hands down my favorite episode title. "And When The Sky Was Opened": it's so elusive, like a phrase plucked from the middle of a sentence. What happened then, and what happened before? That's really the questions you're left with after watching this episode, and at first I felt cheated. No explanation for the disappearance of the three astronauts is offered or even hinted at. In the beginning it's mentioned that they seemed to have disappeared for 24 hours prior to their crash landing on Earth; that, too, is never touched on again. Serling's reasoning was that the rest of the story was so spooky that any ending tacked-on would have been overshadowed. I disagreed until I read what Zicree had to say about it in The Twilight Zone Companion:

"... the episode was made in a different era. We know that when astronauts go into space they don't cease to exist – we've done it. But when Serling wrote the script, no one could be certain what would happen when men first ventured into space. In his script, he was trying to capture that dread of the unknown..."

That was my error: I forgot to consider the Zeitgeist. In a show packed with dialing for the operator, 30 cent beers, sending telegrams, and smoking cigarettes, I forgot that this was a decade before manned space exploration. Much like last week's episode, the spirit of the time plays a large part in being able to relate to the material.

Sometimes when I'm reading The Twilight Zone Companion I feel like I'm back in an English class, with Zicree telling me exactly what to think about each installment. Unlike the bulk of my English classes, though, I never have to shake my fist at him, arguing that not every story is a parable for the life of Jesus. Do they just hand out English degrees?



Back to the point, considering that space travel probably seemed like a pipe dream to 1959 audiences, I see how the ending works now. Taylor's euphoric expression just prior to his disappearance makes me think of a sublimation into heaven, or nirvana. Still, I would have solidified the idea with an extra line, something like, "I see it now. We were never meant to leave the Earth. This is our place; this is!" But alas, I'm not the writer.

Yet.

Episode 10 – Judgment Night

Episode 10 – Judgment Night
Original Airdate: December 4, 1959


Plot: An amnesiac German on a British steamship in 1942 tries to remember who he is and why he's so sure that the ship is doomed. Helpless, he realizes that the ship is about to be sunk – by the U-boat that he commands!



I try my best not to read anything about the episodes before I watch them. Not The Twilight Zone Companion, not the back of the DVD, nothing. Many of the episodes I've seen, but in my early teen years and my memory's crap. I feel this is the most authentic way to watch, because viewers in 1959 would have gone into the show with little clue what it was about. As such, I found the beginning of this episode exasperating: who is this guy? Why's he so nervous? Does he know the other characters? As I got into it, though, I realized that was the point. Tension builds in the viewer because he/she is just as out of the loop as Lanser (the German.) It's to Serling's credit as a writer that he didn't start out with Lanser running along the deck shouting, "where am I?!"



The best part of the episode is the spectacle of it. The exteriors are a convincing steamship with a rolling fog and very noir lighting. I kept thinking that it looked too high-budget for a TV show, and the Companion confirmed that the set was constructed for the film The Wreck of the Mary Deare. Stock footage of an actual submarine crew in action was used to emphasize the U-boat near the end and is pretty effective, though the cinematically-minded will notice that the film speed on that footage doesn't match the rest of the episode flawlessly.



I can't say that I agree with the episode's message. Lanser's subordinate comes to him and expresses remorse for the lives extinguished on the steamship, but Lanser is heartless on the matter. I'm not familiar with maritime codes of conduct in wartime, but isn't sinking ships exactly what they got on the U-boat to do? The ship had been part of a convoy at one point but was carrying civilians, as well as people involved with the war effort aboard. Was the point in sinking the ship to take away a ship from the enemy, or to kill potentially threatening people? Sure, killing people is wrong, but they were fighting a war. Maybe thinking objectively about WWII was beyond the purview of 1959 audiences... or perhaps there's some deeper meaning in my siding with the villain.