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The Twilight Zone (1959 — 1964)
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Eadie
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 18, 2018 11:53 am    Post subject: The Twilight Zone (1959 — 1964) Reply with quote

Replacement head for Uncle Simon.


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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 18, 2018 6:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

We had a section for The Twilight Zone for years on both this version of All Sci-Fi and the old one that disappeared when the Free Forum web host crashed. But 95% of the posts were mine, with very few replies.

One day I decided that the lack of activity meant that our members agreed with me — the The Twilight Zone actually had very few actual science fiction stories compared to the total number of episodes which aired. And very few members had anything to say about those episodes. Sad

Admittedly the ones which were science fiction are very good! But the threads I started for those episodes rarely attracted any replies.

Folks, do we need a forum dedicated to The Twilight Zone, or can we just add posts to this thread which Eadie has created?

I'll create a new forum for The Twilight Zone here on All Sci-Fi if I get enough request for it from our members to do so.

Say the word, folks! I'm listening. Very Happy

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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 18, 2018 7:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't think it's really necessary to give it it's own forum.

A thread here is sufficient. As a matter of fact, the SCIENCE FICTION THEATRE forum section should be rolled into the 50's TV forum section.

Just a thought.

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 19, 2018 4:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Gord Green wrote:
I don't think it's really necessary to give it it's own forum.
A thread here is sufficient. As a matter of fact, the SCIENCE FICTION THEATRE forum section should be rolled into the 50's TV forum section.

Yes, Gord, the Science Fiction Theatre forum has been kind of a bust, too, but I don't have a way to "roll it into the 50s TV forum section", so the only thing I could do is either delete it the way I did with The Twilight Zone forum or just leave it right where it is.

I guess I'll just leave it where it is. A least Science Fiction Theatre really is "all sci-fi".

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 19, 2018 4:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That works!
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 14, 2019 6:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I found an interesting video about The Twilight Zone. Enjoy!
________________________________



___________ The Origins Of The Twilight Zone


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~ The Space Children (1958)
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Eadie
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 20, 2019 6:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The original color painting in The Midnight Sun:



The eye piece from Forbidden Planet used in Third from the Sun:





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Eadie
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 06, 2019 5:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

On Thursday We Leave For Home BTS — James Whitmore Autographed picture:


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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 06, 2019 5:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

The old board had an extensive thread for On Thursday We Leave for Home, and I still have the impressive screen grabs I created for it.

I think I'll make a post about it. After all, the survivors have been living on what looks like "Altair 4" (for obvious reasons), and they're rescued by the C-57-D. Very Happy

Here's a few of the screen grabs I made. Some of them were actually made with my digital camera about six yeas ago right from my TV before I found out that making screen grabs was easier than picking my nose!

Boy, was I slow to figure that out, eh? Rolling Eyes

This story could be considered an "alternate universe" version of what happened to the Bellerophon if there had been no Krell machine, no Id monster, and their ship had crash landed!











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~ The Space Children (1958)
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Bogmeister
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 11:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

____________

Episode #01 - Where is Everybody?

Air Date: 10/2/59 = written by Rod Serling - Directed by Robert Stevens



The place is here, the time is now, and the journey into the shadows that we're about to watch, could be our journey

. . . the first episode, the pilot episode . . .



Earl Holliman guest stars as a man first seen wandering on an empty road. In fact, everything's empty when he reaches a small town and there is still no sign of any other people.

When I first watched this a long time ago, my first thought at this point was 'uh-oh, one of those neutron bombs went off, getting rid of all people' — but why is this guy still around? Hmm . . . he's dead too, just doesn't know it. No?

That's the attraction of such an episode — it's a mystery and you need to find out what's what by the 10-minute mark . . . or you'll go bust.

There is a daring aspect to this one, being way back in the late fifties. Having just one character for most of the story was an unusual way to go back then. And, I do admit, I do get annoyed with Holliman talking to himself pretty quickly. But, it holds up well overall and was a fitting beginning to the famous show.

Note the use of mannequins, which figured prominently in a few later episodes. The reveal at the end is that Holliman's character is an Air Force officer involved in a sensory deprivation experiment. The thing is, it's going on 20 days so how does he do without food & water? — maybe it's some kind of intravenous intake . . .

I recently became aware of the true (unofficial) earlier pilot for the TZ show: The Time Element.

Trivia From the Zone: At one point, the man peruses a revolving book rack. All the books are the same one — The Last Man on Earth, presumably the novel by Richard Matheson, though it's titled I am Legend in our reality. It's the 1st film version in 1964 which was titled as The Last Man on Earth.

BoG's Score: 7 out of 10



BoG
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 11:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bogmeister wrote:
The reveal at the end is that Holliman's character is an Air Force officer involved in a sensory deprivation experiment. The thing is, it's going on 20 days so how does he do without food & water? — maybe it's some kind of intravenous intake.

BoG doesn't seem to remember this aspect of the story very well. Earl wasn't in a sensory deprivation chamber, he was inside a mock-up of a spacecraft interior as part of a test to see if a human could take the isolation of a long space journey.

Here's the climax.


___ Where Is Everybody? (part 6 of 6) 10/02/1959


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Bogmeister wrote:
I recently became aware of the true (unofficial) earlier pilot for the TZ show: The Time Element.

Wikipedia has a summary of the plot of that unaired pilot.
_____________________________________

"The Time Element" (1958)

Several years after the end of World War II, a man named Peter Jenson (William Bendix) visits a psychoanalyst, Dr. Gillespie (Martin Balsam). Jenson tells him about a recurring dream in which he tries to warn people about the "sneak attack" on Pearl Harbor before it happens, but the warnings are disregarded.

Jenson believes the events of the dream are real, and each night he travels back to 1941. Dr. Gillespie insists that time travel is impossible given the nature of temporal paradoxes.

While on the couch, Jenson falls asleep once again but this time dreams that the Japanese planes shoot and kill him. In Dr. Gillespie's office, the couch Jenson was lying on is now empty. Dr. Gillespie goes to a bar where he finds Jenson's picture on the wall. The bartender tells him that Jenson had tended bar there, but he was killed during the Pearl Harbor attack.

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Bogmeister
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 12:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

____________
Episode #07 - The Lonely

Air Date: 11/13/59 written by Rod Serling Directed by Jack Smight

PLOT: In the future, convicted men are sent off-world to lonely asteroids to serve out their sentences. One such man is Corry (Jack Warden), who is in the 4th year of a 50-year sentence.



Though only in his 4th year of exile, Corry is already feeling the harsh effects of solitude and loneliness. He's desperate when the supply ship arrives, which comes around every few months. He's hoping for at least a few hours of companionship.

But the crew have to leave right away. The commander (John Dehner) takes pity on Corry and leaves him a box. Inside are the parts to build a robot which looks exactly like a real woman. Corry is initially repelled and continues to be hostile about the whole concept, even after he builds the robot, for she represents a mockery of a real female. But soon, he begins to develop feelings for "Alicia" . . .






This episode always disturbed me a bit, especially the ending. I suppose it's because I looked on Alicia (Jean Marsh) as a real woman, just as Corry does. Maybe it's the performance by Marsh — there's no real evidence that she's anything but a real woman — until the end, that is.

This kind of challenges all our perceptions about what is real, in terms of feelings and emotions, and what is illusion — and what are simply our delusions. There was a similar use of a robot in the episode I Sing the Body Electric. It also suggests that emotions can be manipulated with a panacea, a replica of reality, and we don't really know the difference.

Trivia From the Zone: One of the hostile crew who arrive briefly at the asteroid is played by Ted Knight, who went on to the Mary Tyler Moore Show.

This was ranked the 11th worst episode by Buzzfeed, mostly due to an abusive depiction of women — but the point is she is not a woman.

BoG's Score: 7 out of 10



BoG
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scotpens
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 12:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud Brewster wrote:
"The Time Element" (1958)

Several years after the end of World War II, a man named Peter Jenson (William Bendix) visits a psychoanalyst, Dr. Gillespie (Martin Balsam). Jenson tells him about a recurring dream in which he tries to warn people about the "sneak attack" on Pearl Harbor before it happens, but the warnings are disregarded.

Jenson believes the events of the dream are real, and each night he travels back to 1941. Dr. Gillespie insists that time travel is impossible given the nature of temporal paradoxes.

While on the couch, Jenson falls asleep once again but this time dreams that the Japanese planes shoot and kill him. In Dr. Gillespie's office, the couch Jenson was lying on is now empty. Dr. Gillespie goes to a bar where he finds Jenson's picture on the wall. The bartender tells him that Jenson had tended bar there, but he was killed during the Pearl Harbor attack.

The story sounds vaguely familiar. It has similarities to "Perchance to Dream" (season 1, episode 9) and "King Nine Will Not Return" (season 2, episode 1).
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 12:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bogmeister wrote:
This was ranked the 11th worst episode by Buzzfeed, mostly due to an abusive depiction of women — but the point is she is not a woman.

Not only is this one of my favorite episodes, it's one of the few truly "science fiction" stories in the entire series.







There are so few episodes that fit that description that I ended up giving my Twilight Zone box set to my daughter, All Sci-Fi member Ticket2theMoon.

I've seen all the episodes several times over the years, and I'd watched my favorites (mostly the sci-fi stories) often enough that I finally decided the box set was just taking up space.

But it's hard to understand how anybody would rank The Lonely on the 11th worst episodes! Shocked

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Bogmeister
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 1:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

____________
Episode #08 - Time Enough at Last

Air Date: 11/20/59 written by Rod Serling, based on story by Lyn Venable Directed by John Brahm

PLOT: A timid bank clerk named Henry Bemis (Burgess Meredith) who loves to read finds himself as the sole survivor after a nuclear war . . .

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____________________

No matter how many times I watch this episode and the ending, it always gets to me. I'm guessing that it might have also been quite personal to Rod Serling (who adapted it from a short story), being on the subject of reading and quirky individualism.

I'm not sure what to make of the scene where Bemis is accused by his boss of being "a reader" as if it's a crime. I suppose it bluntly emphasizes how Bemis is at odds with the rest of society — he's the oddball, the odd man out. Usually, society has no use for such individuals, and the individual — being in the minority — loses out. But in this one, Bemis seems to beat the odds.

Well . . . he seems to. This the Zone, after all.

__

There's no parallel to Meredith's rendition of Bemis here, even in TZ. His mannerisms and the unique personality he projects are one-of-a-kind. This was Meredith at his peak. He was in 3 other TZ episodes, and so in some ways is the TZ actor.

Therefore, in some ways, this becomes the ultimate TZ episode. You can't forget Bemis and his trajectory during the course of the story and, if you haven't seen it before, you are baffled by where this is all going. Most of my favorite Zone episodes involve group interaction — several actors playing off each other.

This is the rare one with a single actor carrying the ball.

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But it's that sucker punch of an ending — the quintessential TZ style, but more. Usually these endings are designed to be a comeuppance for some unethical individual. We cheer those, too, of course.

In this one, the character is a harmless, even likable poor Joe. That's what makes it so gut-wrenching. Life really is not fair, also in the Zone this reminds us, and bad things also happen to good people — unlike the preachy, predictable tales of most TV fare. This one rises above all that standard stuff. So, in so many ways, this is the ultimate TZ episode.

BoG's Score: 9.5 out of 10



BoG
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