#15. The Twilight Zone 💖
What do you get when you have an excellent science fiction writer with an easily recognizable voice, a series of timeless anthology stories, a premise of another dimension, and a theme song that sends shivers down your spine? If you answered The Twilight Zone, you deserve a gold medal. The Twilight Zone is considered by many to be classic science fiction and I for one consider it to be timeless. Rod Serling wrote some of the best Science fiction on television and created a legacy that many sci-fi writers have tried to replicate on Television or Film. Each episode of The Twilight Zone is unique and is self-contained and had some sort of twist that would affect the everyday world around its main characters, for better or worse. Great episodes include It’s a Good Life, The Silence, The Masks, What’s in the Box, The Fever, Living Doll, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, To Serve Man, Walking Distance, and The Monsters are Due on Maple Street.
If I had to pick my personal favorite episode of the entire series, then it would have to be Time Enough at Last starring the late Burgess Meredith. That episode tells the story of Henry Bemis, a spectacled bank teller who loves reading books but can never find enough time to extensively read. He loves reading books so much that the people around him despise it, even his own wife. One day while on lunch break, Henry goes down and shuts himself in the bank vault to read with no interruptions when the world outside the vault is suddenly destroyed by an H-Bomb. Being the only survivor, Henry goes outside and explores the world but finds himself overcome by loneliness even though he would be able to survive on unlimited resources. Henry contemplates suicide when he finds the city’s public library and discovers that almost all of the books haven’t been destroyed. Henry sorts all the books he’ll ever be able to read and proclaims that he has time enough at last to read. Just as Henry is about to read his first book, he accidentally nudges over, and his glasses fall off and completely shatter. Henry is devastated and proclaims that it was unfair, and he finally had enough time.
The episode ends with him crying over his broken glasses and sealed fate. That episode is my reason for putting The Twilight Zone as timeless, each episode like that can have some sort of twist or scary ending that changes the main character for better or worse. Time Enough at Last is my favorite episode because of it’s ending, there’s more to living life than reading or my case watching shows.
The Twilight Zone is considered by me to be timeless because it has so many good episodes that can relate to today’s history. Some of the episodes have made bold predictions that have come true today like having computers do all of our work and living in a virtual reality world. I have a personal history with The Twilight Zone as I’ve watched a lot of episodes throughout middle school and high school and I still remember them to this very day. The Twilight Zone needs to be watched more by other people because it has some the best original Sci-Fi you will ever watch.
One of my very favorites! Your review is spot on with me💖