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something I've been meaning to ask you since June or so

I just kept forgetting and this reminded me.

What's your favorite Twilight Zone episode?

Comments

Local sheriffs track an alien through the snow into a diner and try to determine which person is the alien.

"Walking Distance" hands down, although "A Game of Pool" and "Night of the Meek" are a pretty close second.

The one where Burgess Meredith is holed up in a library basement when the Russkis attack with nukes.

Oh, and that one with Agnes Morehead fighting the little spacemen (turns out she's a giant and they're American astronauts). Trivia: she never speaks a word of dialogue in the episode.

To Serve Man

Ooo, that's a tough one.

I have always been partial to "Masks," the one with the scheming relatives at the Mardi Gras party.

Equally enjoyable was the one where the rich guy dies and the only way his niece can inherit is if she cares for his pet android (that episode had the best insults: "You bovine monstrosity! You angular turnip!" and so on).

"Eye of the Beholder" is of course also good.

The one where the son of the boxer watches his dad lose a fight on TV, but he loves his dad so much that he re-imagines it so that his dad wins. In order for him to make that permanent, he has to get his Dad to believe that he won the fight. But when his Dad comes home, he refuses to believe.

Oh yeah, "The After Hours" freaked me the hell out, too.

Guy in the library with the broken glasses, definitely. Eye of the Beholder a close second for me.

My favorites (with my most favorites first):

"Five Characters In Search of an Exit" - It had me guessing right up until the end, the first time I saw it. In addition, it's classic, simple and had excellent writing.

"Occurence on Owl Creek Bridge" - The last episode of the Twilight Zone. It was made in France, and they bought the short film to help bring the series in under budget. Like "The Invaders", there's almost no dialouge in this one, and you don't see the ending coming at all.

"A World Of His Own" - This one is about a man who can create anything he wants, including people, just by recording a description of them in his tape recorder. Rod Serling, in his first on-screen appearance, closes the show, but is destroyed when the man throws a segment of tape marked "Rod Serling" into the fireplace. The humor of the whole piece, and the self-referential humor at the end was well done.

"Eye of the Beholder" - What can I say that hasn't been said about this episode?

"Back There" - Russell Johnson (Professor from Gilligan's Island) goes back in time and tries to stop Lincoln's assassination.

"The Silence" - This is the one where one man bets a loudmouth that he can't stay quiet for a year. I like the writing on this one.

"It's A Good Life" - Bill Mumy is great in this, especially for someone as young as he was at the time.

"Mute" - A very complex story about a girl who can't speak, because her parents raise her to communicate only telepathically. Ann Jillian plays the little girl in this amazing and well-told tale.

"The Jeopardy Room" - A WWII-era story in which Martin Landau has three hours to find and disarm the bomb in his room, and can't leave the room until he does.

"Masks" - The episode where a rich man's greedy and selfish relatives are forced to wear masks until midnight, or be excluded from the will.

Although these aren't from the original Twilight Zone, there is a connection:

From The New Twilight Zone, I love the episode, "Yesterday Was Monday". Two people actually slip "backstage" in time, where the minute of 11:37 is being "built".

I also like the "Scary Door" - Futurama's parody of the Twilight Zone:

A: "A casino where I win! I must be in heaven! A casino where I always win? I must be in hell."

B: "No, you're on an airplane!"

A: "There's something out on the wing, you've got to believe me!"

B: "Why should I? You're Hitler!"

-----and the other "episode" of it------

A: "At last! I have all the time to read books!"

(glasses slip off)

A: "Well, my eyes aren't that bad. At least I can still read the large print books."

(his eyes fall out)

A: "It's a good thing I learned to read Braille."

(his hands fall off)

It's a Good Life-with Billy Mumy and People Are Alike All Over-with Roddy MacDowell. The first because of the consequences of unrestrained power and the second from consequences of hubris.

To Serve Man

The Monsters on Maple Street

Ditto Library/Nukes story.
The worst of all possible worlds.

I've always been partial to the one with William Shatner and the little fortune cookie machine in the diner.

But my favorite's probably the one where the guy makes a bet that he won't talk for a year.

The episode where the guy thinks he's in heaven because he has everything his heart desires. Then he finds out that no spontaneous or unexpected things happen, the world just falls in his lap. He's miserable and says he'd rather not be in Heaven. His host asks him, "What makes you think this is Heaven?" I don't know why I liked it so much, but it had a good moral lesson that I remembered.

"The Dummy"... next to coulrophobia (fear of clowns), automatonophobia (fear of ventriloquist dummies or wax statues) is one of my biggest phobias. I'm pretty sure this episode was the basis for Magic (1978, Anthony Hopkins and Ann-Margret), which also scared the crap out of me. (I can't even watch that stupid episode of "Scooby Doo" in the haunted theater without freaking out)

The Agnes Moorehead one, of course - classic.

But the one that has stuck with me for years was where a little girl's parents heard her crying out during the night and went to check on her, and couldn't find her, although they could hear her calling to them....somehow she had slipped through some sort of space warp in the wall by the bed and was trapped in there; they could hear her dog barking, too.

Eventually they call their good friend (who just happened to be a physicist - a bit corny for Serling standards, but still....) who figured out where the "hole" was; the father went in, tied to a rope and rescued his daughter.

Something about her hearing her calling for Mommy and Daddy, so alone and frightened..."Daddy, come get me! Where are you? It's dark in here..." I totally believed that something like this could truly happen.

One of my favorites is 'Living Doll. That's the one with the 'Talking Tina' doll. Watching Telly Savalas trying to saw that doll's head off without success was really creepy.

'Eye of The Beholder' of course is a classic.

"People Are Alike All Over" is the one with Roddy McDowell where his ship crash lands on Mars. When he sees them for the first time, the Martians are indeed human, and they appear extremely friendly. The Martians present Conrad with a house built exactly like one on Earth. Conrad is left alone inside, but soon he realizes that the house has no windows and all the doors are locked. Suddenly, a wall slides upward, revealing that Conrad is actually in a zoo. It's funny when he starts freaking and the people watching him pull back in fear.

I don't remember the name, but the one where this poor old lady is tormented by small alien creatures with tiny weapons, and at the end of the show it shows the spacecraft and it has "USAF" painted on the side.

Agnes Moorehead, "The Invaders"

Burgess Meredith, "Time Enough at Last".

and this link pointed out at least 7 episodes I do not remember... and I should remember em all..

http://www.rodserling.com/pubstz.htm

Nightmare at 20,000 feet.
Night Call.
Time Enough At Last.
The Odyssey of Flight 33.
Will the real Martian please stand up?
Kick the Can.
Eye of the Beholder
The Monsters are due on Maple Street.

I tried to cpme up with a couple but this list pretty much covers it.

Again, the library/eyeglasses one.

I don't know their titles, but...

The couple who wake up in a neighborbood, with no other people, and later we find they're in a child's playbox.

The neigborbood that turns on each other because they think one of them is an alien. Later we find that Aliens have started to fool with the humans, anticipating they'd do just that.

The starship captain that is the 'Governor' of the stranded colony, who tries to convince his people not to go back to Earth.

The efficency expert who converts his entire company to computers.

The hitch-hiker.

Time Enough At Last.

Death's Head Revisited. I've only seen it once. They don't show it anymore for some reason.

"Five Characters in Search of an Exit," just because it's so wild and then leaves you smacking yourself at the end for not having known it sooner.

"A Game of Pool" also gets honorable mention.

I have only seen a few episodes, which I need to correct. But my favorite one of the few I've seen is the one where the guy picks up a phone, accidentally dials his home number, and the phone is answered by himself. Can't find it in the listing, except under the new TZ. I'm pretty sure it was an old one as well.

I've never cared for Twilight Zone. It's my "Beatles", if you get my meaning.

I'm just not a fan of anthologies, especially serious ones. By and large, TZ episodes are mostly serious. Weird, but serious.

The ride at Walt Disney World, however, is the cat's ass.

"I Of Newton," from the 1985 series, which is finally out on DVD. Short, sweet, and utterly classic.

"It's a GOOD Life"

"Twenty Two" - "there's always room for one more". LOVE that line

What does Heavens to Mergatroid mean anyway?

My favorite - because I still remember how it made me move my bed away from the wall as a kid - was "Little Girl Lost," the one where the girl accidentally falls into another dimension through a portal in the bedroom wall. (Clearly, I'm not the only one to've been influenced by this episode: it's served as both object of a Simpsons parody and as part of the inspiration for Poltergeist).