Have you ever gone down a Twilight Zone rabbit hole?

Every New Year's Day as a kid. It's just great writing.

What's your favorite so far OP?

R2, The Martian Zoo episode called People are Alike All over. An astronaut lands on Mars and sees people who look like him and he thinks everything will be okay, but they've put in a zoo. I also liked Long Live Walter Jameson.

The writing is wonderful. Smart and eerie.

Have you ever smelled my asshole?

Great writing, unusual situations, good casts, eerie premise, unforgettable theme song, and Rod Serling!

One of the best TV series of all time. None of the remakes will ever live up to the original.

I have often wondered why the remakes have never caught on. What is missing from the remakes that was in the original? Or maybe it was just a show that was a product of it's time and can't be replicated.

R8 poorly directed, poorly acted. Stories poorly chosen.

The Twilight Zone was deeply tied to social criticism and the politics of the Cold War.

During its original run, the scifi/horror genre was just a couple decades old. So people were still seeing these stories and themes for the first time. They had been reading scifi anthologies and stories, for example the Cthulu mythos, and seeing scenarios that were truly scary. Now for the first time, these stories were appearing in visual form on the small screen, in your own home. Yikes!

Unfortunately it's 2023 and we've seen about a million supernatural/scifi/alien/paranormal TV shows produced since the original Twilight Zone. We're used to it, which is kind of sad. Nothing is thrilling. I actually got more thrill a month ago when those "unidentified objects" were being spotted over the US for a week. Of course I walked around town wearing a Tshirt that said "I'M READY" with a UFO above it 🤣

I record and binge watch the NY marathon on the SiFI channel. It is so well written.

And the show still can scare the shit out of me, just like when I would watch it on Friday evenings as a kid.

There's something so satisfying about the episodes where people turn out to be the playthings of aliens. It's really viscerally disturbing, but you're kind of left thinking it's very honest and kind of true. At least I am.

^For R2

Agree that the writing was strong, characters and stories were well done and memorable, and was done in a bygone era that cannot and should not be replicated. It’s such a treasure.

For anyone interested, Heroes & Icons is having a 3-day TZ marathon starting today at 12 noon eastern.

It was actually supposed to be about the ugliness of humanity, but Rod knew it would seem too preachy so he made it take place in a fictional world called Twilight Zone

R11, SyFy shows shortened versions. MeTV has been showing full versions, in order (except for season 4, the one hour episodes), for years. Season 4 is on Paramount+. MeTV also doesn't show 'The Encounter,' a season five episode with George Takei and Neville Brand continuing to fight WWII.

Just watched "Jess Belle" again, an hour-long episode in Season 4 where a backwoods girl (Anne Francis) makes a fateful bargain with a witch (Jeanette Nolan, having a ball as the local sorceress). I love how TTZ combined romance, horror, tragedy, and social commentary in episodic morality plays. There were a few moments in the early seasons of "American Horror Story" that came close to achieving that combination, but the curse of most Ryan Murphy productions--start promisingly, end disastrously--took hold.

There's a marathon today on the SyFy channel.

Such a great series. I think Black Mirror is the only series that can rival TZ.

Wish it into the cornfield.......

[quote]Great writing, unusual situations, good casts, eerie premise, unforgettable theme song, and Rod Serling!

And that crisp black&white photography, beautifully lit. The poetic dialogue.

Where are the monsters due?

[quote]R8: I have often wondered why the remakes have never caught on. What is missing from the remakes that was in the original? Or maybe it was just a show that was a product of it's time and can't be replicated.

A lot of people haven't seen the later series.

And people have difficulty evaluating things on their own merits, but only in comparison to something else. The original series elicits a lot of nostalgia.

The 1985-89 revival was quite good, especially its first two seasons, but these were created in a one-hour format, and that's a bit difficult to justify in syndication. (The same thing happened with 'Night Gallery'.)

There’s an incredible Bluray box set of the complete episodes. Many episodes with commentary, some episodes with more than one. A real argument for physical media.

R22? I read that story long before I saw the Twilight Zone episode, and I'm very glad I did.

I read lots of science fiction as a child and young adolescent. Lots of the Twilight Zone writers were actual published sci-fi writers who had written classic short stories already. That's why the series was so good.

The title of that story was It's a Good Life. I posted it at the link if you want to read it.

R27 is a bad lesbian, a very bad lesbian!

Also it’s fun seeing well-known actors such as Robert Redford, Agnes Moorhead, and Jack Klugman playing different sorts of roles than we know them for.

The twists at the end didn’t hurt, either. Everyone lives a twist.

How do you spell "loves"?

No

I only watch 227

DL fave “To Serve Man” is at 1:00 a.m.

It’s…it’s a cookbook!

I should’ve posted “Spoiler Alert” at R32. My bad!

PlutoTV has a dedicated Twilight Zone channel in their Classic TV category. Original TZ, 24/7, 365 days a year.

You don’t need SyFy or MeTV.

R34: Are the PlutoTV episodes complete, or have they had time shaved off for commercials?

Thanks R27 I had read the story, too.

It's...it's a cookbook!

There's a marathon on SciFi Channel today.

You're a bad man, a very bad man!