(012) TWILIGHT ZONE FUN POST
IN THIS POST: a little rave, written by yours truly, about why I love The Twilight Zone so much, along with a picspam of my top ten Twilight Zone eps with commentary.
I've been watching The Twilight Zone since I was very small. My dad and I would always sit down together for the New Years' marathons, I'd often pop in one of our VHS tapes when I was bored, and I was always trying to explain to the other kids in my elementary school classes why it was so awesome (needless to say, they weren't especially impressed).
This show has had a huge impact on my life. It taught me to keep an open mind. It taught me to dream big. It taught me that nothing is impossible. It taught me that the human imagination has no bounds. It taught me that the farthest reaches of the galaxy, the murky depths of the sea, and the dark nooks and crannies of the human mind are all just a click of the remote away.
Picking ten episodes was nearly impossible for me. Chances are that if you asked me a week from now, a month from now, a year from now, that my choices would change. And that's okay. But these ten are episodes that I keep coming back to--because they shock me, because they enthrall me, because they empower me, because they act as a catalyst for my mind and my imagination. And because I love them.
These episodes are all on here for a number of reasons, but I mostly judged them by these three standards: their twist endings (because come ON, that's what makes The Twilight Zone what it is!), the inventiveness and creativity of the plot, and the sentimental value for me--because nothing quite matches the feeling of watching an episode and remembering curling up on your dad's lap when you were five watching the same story unfold.
Enough talking, now: onto the picspam!
HONORABLE MENTION: Death's Head Revisited
A former German SS captain returns to Dachau concentration camp and begins reminiscing on the power he enjoyed there--until he finds himself put on trial by those who died at his hands.
While I like the episode enough, it wasn't enough of a stand-out to make it to my top ten. However, Rod Serling's closing narration sticks with me to this day. It begins in response to a question asked by one of the characters in the episode--"Why does [Dachau] still stand? Why do we keep it standing?" As Serling says:
"There is an answer to the doctor's question. All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes--all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God's Earth."
10. Five Characters in Search of an Exit
Just a barrel, a dark depository where are kept the counterfeit, make-believe pieces of plaster and cloth, wrought in the distorted image of human life. But this added, hopeful note: perhaps they are unloved only for the moment. In the arms of children, there can be nothing but love. A clown, a tramp, a bagpipe player, a ballet dancer, and a major. Tonight's cast of players on the odd stage known as the Twilight Zone.
9. Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
The flight of Mr. Robert Wilson has ended now, a flight not only from point A to point B, but also from the fear of recurring mental breakdown. Mr. Wilson has that fear no longer, though, for the moment, he is, as he said, alone in this assurance. Happily, his conviction will not remain isolated too much longer, for happily, tangible manifestation is very often left as evidence of trespass, even from so intangible a quarter as the Twilight Zone.
8. The Invaders
These are the invaders, the tiny beings from the tiny place called Earth, who would take the giant step across the sky to the question marks that sparkle and beckon from the vastness of the universe only to be imagined. The invaders, who found out that a one-way ticket to the stars beyond has the ultimate price tag. And we have just seen it entered in a ledger that covers all the transactions of the universe, a bill stamped 'paid in full,' and to be found, on file, in the Twilight Zone.
7. The Midnight Sun
The poles of fear, the extremes of how the Earth might conceivably be doomed. Minor exercise in the care and feeding of a nightmare, respectfully submitted by all the thermometer-watchers in the Twilight Zone.
6. Probe 7, Over and Out
Do you know these people? Names familiar, are they? They lived a long time ago. Perhaps they're part fable, perhaps they're part fantasy. And perhaps the place they're walking to now is not really called 'Eden'. We offer it only as a presumption. This has been the Twilight Zone.
5. And When the Sky Was Opened
Once upon a time, there was a man named Harrington, a man named Forbes, and a man named Gart. They used to exist, but don't any longer. Someone - or something - took them somewhere. At least they are no longer a part of the memory of man. And as to the X-20 supposed to be housed here in this hangar, this, too, does not exist. And if any of you have any questions concerning an aircraft and three men who flew her, speak softly of them, and only in the Twilight Zone.
4. It's a Good Life
No comment here, no comment at all. We only wanted to introduce you to one of our very special citizens, little Anthony Fremont, age 6, who lives in a village called Peaksville in a place that used to be Ohio. And if by some strange chance you should run across him, you had best think only good thoughts. Anything less than that is handled at your own risk, because if you do meet Anthony you can be sure of one thing: you have entered the Twilight Zone.
3. The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street
The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and the thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own: for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone.
2. I Shot an Arrow into the Air
Practical joke perpetrated by Mother Nature and a combination of improbable events. Practical joke wearing the trappings of nightmare, of terror, of desperation. Small human drama played out in a desert ninety-seven miles from Reno, Nevada, U.S.A - continent of North America, the Earth, and of course the Twilight Zone.
1. The Eye of the Beholder
Now the questions that come to mind. Where is this place and when is it? What kind of world where ugliness is the norm and beauty the deviation from that norm? You want an answer? The answer is, it doesn't make any difference. Because the old saying happens to be true: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, in this year or a hundred years hence, on this planet or wherever there is human life, perhaps out amongst the stars. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. A lesson to be learned- in The Twilight Zone.
Sources:
Episode caps by me. Please ask permission if you want to use them.
created for the 10 things i love about you challenge at scifiland for teamantihero ♥
