The Twilight Zone at 50!

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jim48

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I just read this at Yahoo! Has it been fifty years?!!


.50 years later, 'Twilight Zone' bridges time
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AP – A New York State historical marker honoring Rod Serling's attendance at Binghamton Central School stands …
. Slideshow:'The Twilight Zone' .
By WILLIAM KATES, Associated Press Writer William Kates, Associated Press Writer – Tue Sep 29, 11:48 am ET
"There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call 'The Twilight Zone.'" — Rod Serling

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) — On a Friday night in October 1959, Americans began slipping into a dimension of imagination as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. They've really never returned.

"The Twilight Zone," first submitted for the public's approval by a reluctant CBS, has resonated with viewers from generation to generation with memorable stories carrying universal messages about society's ills and the human condition.

Like the time-space warps that anchored so many of the show's plots, Rod Serling's veiled commentary remains as soul-baring today as it did a half-century ago, and the show's popularity endures in multiple facets of American pop culture.

"I'm interested in the escapist ideas, the psychological nature of the stories," said Lauren Chizinski of Houston, a first-year graduate student in sculpting at Syracuse University who is among two dozen students taking a class on show and its 50th anniversary.

"The Twilight Zone" has been exulted in mediums such as pinball and video games and The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror ride at Disney theme parks.

The original show — which ran just five seasons, 1959-1964 — led to a feature film by Steven Spielberg and John Landis in 1983, and is reportedly soon to appear again on the silver screen from Leonardo DiCaprio's production company.

It's also resulted in short-lived television series in the 1980s and in 2002, and has been the subject of scores of books, Web sites, blogs, comic books and magazines and a radio series. It's even inspired music from the Grateful Dead, Rush, Golden Earring and Michael Jackson.

"Even people who have never seen 'The Twilight Zone' know about it," said Doug Brode, who is teaching the Serling class at Syracuse and teamed with Serling's widow to write "Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone: The 50th Anniversary Tribute."

With quality writing, acting and production, "The Twilight Zone" pioneered a genre, said Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.

"The whole idea of 'The Twilight Zone' jumped off the television screen and became a catchphrase, a buzzword for something much beyond the TV show itself," Thompson added. "When you say Twilight Zone, it's its own genre. The X-Files was working in 'The Twilight Zone' genre."

Its signature theme song even became part of popular language, allowing people to describe unusual or inexplicable moments with a simple "doo-doo doo-doo," Thompson said.

CBS has no plans to observe the show's 50th anniversary, said spokesman Chris Ender. The show has enjoyed nearly uninterrupted popularity through television, syndication and DVD releases and is under license to air in 30 countries, he said.

The Syfy Channel regularly broadcasts The Twilight Zone and plans a 15-show marathon Oct. 2.

Anniversary observances are planned in Binghamton, N.Y., where Serling grew up and went to high school; at Ithaca College in New York, where Serling taught from 1967 until his death in 1975, and which keeps Serling's archives; and at Antioch College in Ohio, where Serling was a student — met his wife, Carol — and later taught.

"I don't think he would have thought in a million years that Twilight Zone would be having an important 50th birthday or that it would still be on," said Carol Serling, who will attend the celebrations in Ithaca and Binghamton.

"Through parable and suggestion, he could make points that he couldn't make on straight television because there were too many sacred cows and sponsors and people who said you couldn't do that," she said, referring to the networks' reluctance to deal with contemporary issues in its prime-time programming.

There were 156 episodes filmed for the original series; Serling wrote 92 of them and other contributors included Richard Matheson and Ray Bradbury, two of the deans of science fiction writing.

In a time on television when suburbia was idealized in popular shows such as "Ozzie and Harriet" and "Make Room for Daddy," Serling offered a mixture of fantasy, science fiction, suspense, horror — and the show's trademark macabre or unexpected twist.

Serling had already earned acclaim for his television writing ("Requiem for a Heavyweight," "Patterns,") but found himself fighting CBS to get "The Twilight Zone" on the air. Serling would have repeated conflicts with network censors throughout his career.

In 1958, CBS bought Serling's teleplay, "The Time Element," which he hoped would be the pilot to his weekly series. The story was about a bartender who keeps waking up in Pearl Harbor knowing the Japanese will be attacking the next day but unable to convince anyone he's telling the truth.

But CBS shelved the series after buying it because the studio didn't think there was much commercial value in science fiction. Bert Granet, producer of the weekly CBS anthology series "Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse," stumbled on the script and wanted it. He bought it for $10,000.

The story aired on Nov. 24, 1958, and became the Westinghouse series' biggest hit, garnering more audience reaction than any previous episodes. CBS finally decided to take a chance on Serling's series.
 
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starsinmyeyes44

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Cool! Too bad I have to work on Friday, but I'll watch the marathon when I get home.

One of my favorite shows.
 
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jim48

Guest
starsinmyeyes44":h34o9cxe said:
Cool! Too bad I have to work on Friday, but I'll watch the marathon when I get home.

One of my favorite shows.

I know. Now let's hear from more Zone fans! I've written this before and I'm writing it again: Get The Twilight Zone Companion by Marc Scott Zecree. I read it when it was first published in the early '80s. He's updated and revised it a couple of times. This is the book on Zone!
 
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a_lost_packet_

Guest
I loved the Twilight Zone. Great episodes, every one!

One thing I think was a strong suit of the Twilight Zone was that it was often a type of morality play. They also often were allegorical, dealing with topical issues of the day.

In short, they were like Star Trek. :) There is something immensely powerful about a story that has something to teach you instead of merely being entertaining. While the Twilight Zone was definitely interested in making good stories, a lot of them were more than that.
 
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ZenGalacticore

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Thanks for the news Jim. I don't have to work Friday, so I will check it out. Hopefully, they won't run the same 30 or 40 episodes-over and over- that they have run in the last 5 Twilight Zone marathons.

I'm 46. And I've heard people as old as 38 complaining that shows like TZ and Star Trek "always have to have a MORAL to the story"! Or "why does there have to be a 'moral' to the story?" What a shame.

What the hell is a story WITHOUT a moral revealed or perceived? What would 'Star Wars' (the original) be without a moral? 'Logan's Run'? Any story?

Zone Galacticore. :)
 
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crazyeddie

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a_lost_packet_":2pjlf0in said:
I loved the Twilight Zone. Great episodes, every one!

One thing I think was a strong suit of the Twilight Zone was that it was often a type of morality play. They also often were allegorical, dealing with topical issues of the day.

In short, they were like Star Trek. :) There is something immensely powerful about a story that has something to teach you instead of merely being entertaining. While the Twilight Zone was definitely interested in making good stories, a lot of them were more than that.

I liked The Twilight Zone, but I thought The Outer Limits was better science fiction. Some of their stories were incredibly moving. I suppose the former series was more accessible to the average TV viewer, but the latter was more satisfying to hard-core science fiction buffs, IMO.
 
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a_lost_packet_

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crazyeddie":3e1l10lc said:
...I liked The Twilight Zone, but I thought The Outer Limits was better science fiction. Some of their stories were incredibly moving. I suppose the former series was more accessible to the average TV viewer, but the latter was more satisfying to hard-core science fiction buffs, IMO.

If I had a choice between the two during the same viewing hour, I'd pick The Outer Limits for just the reasons you described.
 
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MeteorWayne

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I've been a TZ fan all my life. I preferred it to the OL because Rod made it take place in your mind, while the Outer Limits went more for cheap "monsters" and special effects (which weren't very good at the time). There were some good stories, but they were more fantasy than scifi.

Rod pointed out so clearly that the monsters were in our own mind, and they were much scarier than some guy in an ugly rubber suit.

Can't wait to see the marathon, hope they pick some of my faves.

Sure wish someone would buy me a Christmas present of the DVD set (hint,hint, Mom and Ann ;) )
 
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ZenGalacticore

Guest
Well said Wayne. I love both shows but TZ was definitely more sublime.
 
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jim48

Guest
Some of the best Outer Limits were in the show's second year, but I love the first year for the music and the weird photography... hand-held shots, blurry focus, odd camera angles and so on. My favorite is still the premiere with Cliff Robertson where the alien from another galaxy gets beamed into his home! I hope Sci Fi runs Zone un-cut, because they have a tendency to cut them.
 
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observer7

Guest
Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Star Trek, all had something to say about the human condition. Each had their own take on how best to deliver the message, but each showed us something unique about ourselves. You had to be able to follow the story and THINK about the message, something that far to many people are unable to do. They are limited to the story itself, without being able to appreciate the greater message. It seems that it is true that there are two types of people in the world, those who get it and the clueless. It's too bad that we have stopped eveloution by taking care of the clueless.

To quote a sig line that I saw here sometime ago; "STUPID SHOULD HURT"
 
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ZenGalacticore

Guest
One of my favorite TZ episodes was the one with the woman in the barn-like wooden house with the alien robots that land on her roof and she is terrorized. But the little robots at first aren't threatening her, she's just freaked out.

Of course, she turns out to be a member of a race of giants on another planet and the robots are from a space probe that we sent.

Serling, the set designer and the stage director did a great job of conveying the 'primitiveness' of the alien woman's abode with the shabby wooden interior and ancient kitchen and so forth.
 
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crazyeddie

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ZenGalacticore":29x9fc5p said:
One of my favorite TZ episodes was the one with the woman in the barn-like wooden house with the alien robots that land on her roof and she is terrorized. But the little robots at first aren't threatening her, she's just freaked out.

Of course, she turns out to be a member of a race of giants on another planet and the robots are from a space probe that we sent.

That episode featured Agnes Moorehead, the famous character actress from the stage and screen, and even radio (she played the principle character in the radio play, "Sorry, Wrong Number", which later became a movie starring Barbara Stanwyck)....but she was best known as Endora, the meddling mother-in-law witch on "Bewitched".

Speaking of which, one of my favorite TZ episodes featured Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery ("Two", season 3) as survivors of an apocalyptic war, in what must have been some of their earliest appearances on TV.
 
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ZenGalacticore

Guest
Yeah we all know who Agnes Moorehead is, but damned if I recognized her in that episode. No one could've played Endora better than her, except maybe Shirley McClaine.
 
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jim48

Guest
MeteorWayne":tl1n6sf0 said:
"To Serve Man" is on at 2 PM EDT :)

The Simpsons did a hilarious send-up of that on their very first Tree House of Terror! Halloween special back in 1989. George Noory had Bill Mumy and one of Serling's daughters on Coast to Coast a few nights ago. You might be able to streamlink it. www.coasttocoastam.com
 
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