The TWILIGHT ZONE

1. US tv series (1959-64). A Coyuga Production/MGM. Created Rod SERLING, also executive prod. Prods were Buck Houghton, Herbert Hirschman, Bert Granet, William Froug. Writers included Serling (91 episodes), CharlesBEAUMONT, Ray BRADBURY, Earl Hamner Jr, George Clayton JOHNSON, Richard MATHESON. Dirs included Jack Smight, Stuart Rosenberg, John Brahm, Ralph Nelson, Buzz Kulik, Boris Sagal, Lamont Johnson, Elliot Silverstein, Don Siegel, William Friedkin, Richard Donner, Joseph Newman, Ted Post. 5 seasons, 156 episodes (138 each 25 mins, plus 18 in season 4 each 50 mins). B/w.TTZ, hosted by Serling with a rasping voice and a thin black tie, was an anthology series - perhaps the most famous ever on tv. Most of the playlets were pure fantasy, but a number were sf. The very first episode, "Where is Everybody?" by Serling, has a young man waking in a small town to find it deserted, with signs that the inhabitants had left only moments before. The denouement reveals that the situation has been implanted in his mind as part of a study conducted by space scientists into human reactions to loneliness. Sting-in-the-tail plotting was standard on TTZ.Overall the series was thoughtful and fairly original, though it certainly had its fair share of CLICHES. Episodes varied in quality, many of the better sf ones being written by Matheson: 3 of these were "Steel" (1963), in which Lee Marvin is the manager of a robot boxer who is forced to take his machine's place in the ring after it breaks down, "Little Girl Lost" (1962), about a child who falls into a dimensional warp under her bed, so that her parents can hear her crying but cannot reach her, and "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" (1963), with William SHATNER as a man on an airliner who keeps seeing a mysterious creature -invisible to others - playing on the wing; as in most of Matheson's work, PARANOIA is eventually vindicated and the creature is proved to exist.Another sf episode was Bradbury's "I Sing the Body Electric!" (1962), about a robot grandmother.Short-story versions of some of his TTZ scripts appeared in 3 books by (or ostensibly by) Serling: Stories from The Twilight Zone * (coll 1960), More Stories from The Twilight Zone * (coll1961) and New Stories from The Twilight Zone * (coll 1962) - the latter two possibly being by Walter B. GIBSON - with selections appearing in From The Twilight Zone * (coll 1962) and all 3 being reprinted in 1 vol asStories from The Twilight Zone * (omni 1986). Two collections ghosted by Walter B. Gibson are Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone * (coll 1963) and Rod Serling's Twilight Zone Revisited * (coll 1964), both assembled in Rod Serling's Twilight Zone * (omni 1984). A book about the series is Twilight Zone Companion (1982; rev as The Twilight Zone Companion: Second Edition 1989) by Marc Scott Zicree. TTZ received 3 HUGOS (1960-62) as Best Dramatic Presentation.TTZ was fondly remembered - indeed, it could hardly have been forgotten, the episodes being repeated endlessly in syndication for the next 20 years. This resulted in an anthology feature film prod and partly dir Steven SPIELBERG, Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), mostly updatings of some of the old scripts. Then came a new TTZ tv series (2). The title was used also for a horror/fantasy magazine, Rod Serling's TheTwilight Zone Magazine (1981-9), whose editors included T.E.D. Klein (1947-) and Tappan King (1950-), and which published some weird fiction of high quality. 2. US tv series (1985-7). CBS TV. Based on 1. Executive prod Philip DeGuere. Supervising prod James Crocker. Prod Harvey Frand. Creative consultant Harlan ELLISON. Story editor Rockne S. O'Bannon.Writers included Ray BRADBURY, Alan BRENNERT, Crocker, DeGuere, Ellison, David GERROLD, George R.R. MARTIN, O'Bannon, Michael REAVES, Carter SCHOLZ. Dirs included Wes Craven, Tommy Lee Wallace, Theodore Flicker, Joe DANTE, Gerd Oswald, Martha Coolidge, Allan Arkush, Peter Medak, Jim McBride, Paul Lynch, Noel Black. 2 seasons. Season 1: 24 50min episodes, each containing 2-4 stories. Season 2: 12 episodes, some 50min and some 25min. There were 80 stories in the 36 episodes. Colour.

   In the mid-1980s US tv turned back, for a while, to the anthology format, especially for series of fantastic stories - AMAZING STORIES was another. Few had any prolonged success. This new series of TTZ dramatized several well known sf stories, including "The Star" (1955) by Arthur C. CLARKE and stories by Robert SILVERBERG and Theodore STURGEON, but the majority of playlets werebased on original scripts, some also by sf writers, though as with the original series the emphasis was on fantasy rather than sf. Good directors were used and the quality was quite high, but the series was axed after 2 seasons. TTZ was quickly re-edited into half-hour segments for syndication, when a further 30 stories were dramatized (executive prods Mark Shelmerdine and Michael MacMillan), with substantially lower budgets,and shown along with the 80 stories from the 1985-7 series.

   PN/JB