Don Gordon who plays Salvadore Ross a troubled young man who has fits of rages. He soon finds out that human characteristics can be bought, sold, and exchanged like stock. There is one thing though…it’s a price steeper than money. Salvadore starts out as another Serling low life. A small-time man looking for shortcuts who only want things without giving back. His newfound power has no explanation, but I didn’t mind.
This is an episode about getting what you want and how essential it is to be true to yourself in attaining it. Sometimes it’s not about having it but how you get it. The acting is top-notch. Don Gordon went on to have 134 acting credits in 6 different decades. He also appeared in the Twilight Zone appearance since The Four of Us Are Dying. The character here is similar…cocky, slightly cruel, and short-tempered.
From IMDB Trivia: Based upon a short story of the same name, written by Henry Slesar and first published in the May 1961 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction by Mercury Press, Inc.
Kathleen O’Malley plays the nurse and J. Pat O’Malley played the older patient in the hospital. They were not related, however, when he began his career, he was known as Pat O’Malley, but when he arrived in Hollywood, he became known professionally as J. Pat O’Malley to avoid confusion with the actor Pat O’Malley who was, in real life, the father of Kathleen O’Malley.
The character of Salvadore Ross is 26, but the actor playing him, Don Gordon, was 38.
The $100,000.00 offer in 1964 would be the equivalent of about $896,000.00 in the year 2022.
This show was written by Jerry McNeely, Henry Slesar, and Rod Serling
Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:
Confidential personnel file on Salvadore Ross. Personality: a volatile mixture of fury and frustration. Distinguishing physical characteristic: a badly broken hand, which will require emergency treatment at the nearest hospital. Ambition: shows great determination towards self-improvement. Estimate of potential success: a sure bet for a listing in Who’s Who in the Twilight Zone.
Summary
Salvadore Ross is a volatile mix of violence and frustration. He’s not very bright and hasn’t made much of himself so far. He is very much in love with Leah Maitland though she has told him she doesn’t want to see him anymore. He thinks she won’t see him because her father doesn’t approve and that they both think she can do better. When he realizes he can actually exchange parts of himself, like his age, with others he sets out on a path to make himself more acceptable to both of them.
Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:
The Salvadore Ross program for self-improvement. The all-in-one, sure-fire success course that lets you lick the bully, learn the language, dance the tango and anything else you want to do. Or think you want to do. Money-back guarantee. Offer limited to…the Twilight Zone.
CAST
Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited) Don Gordon…Salvadore Ross Gail Kobe…Leah Maitland Vaughn Taylor…Mr. Maitland J. Pat O’Malley…Old Man Douglass Dumbrille…Mr. Halpert Douglas Lambert…Albert Rowe Seymour Cassel…Jerry (uncredited) Ted Jacques…Bartender (uncredited) Kathleen O’Malley…Nurse (uncredited)
The Long Morrow is a simple but complicated love story in the Twilight Zone. Robert Lansing and Mariette Hartley play Commander Douglas Stansfield and Sandra Horn respectively. They make the characers real and inject an emotional depth to their story. The Twilight Zone had some of the best casting of any show on television.
I would say it’s The Twilight Zone’s most romantic episode. This one is unbelievably poignant with the ironic ending. It makes you think about human spirit and the lenghs to which Man (and Woman) will go to realize an ultimate ambition. We are clever when we want to be but sometimes it doesn’t turn out the way we think it will.
To talk anymore about it would give the ending away. This is one you will have to watch.
Robert Lansing:I was a little reluctant to do the semi-nude thing in the ice block, but it was such a good idea, so visual, that I bypassed my own feelings and did it. I was wearing a pair of mini-trunks which today id wear on a beach.
From IMDB Trivia:
Both Robert Lansing (Commander Stansfield) and Mariette Hartley (Sandra Horn) later both guest star on Star Trek (1966), but not together. Robert Lansing played Gary Seven in S2E26 (“Assignment: Earth”), for a spin-off series that was not picked up. Mariette Hartley played Zarabeth in S3E23 (“All Our Yesterdays”) as a love interest for Mr. Spock.
This episode takes place in June 1987, in November 1987, from December 31, 1987 to January 1, 1988, on April 19, 1988, on May 1, 1988 and in 2027.
This show was written by Rod Serling
Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:
It may be said with a degree of assurance that not everything that meets the eye is as it appears. Case in point, the scene you’re watching. This is not a hospital, not a morgue, not a mausoleum, not an undertaker’s parlor of the future. What it is is the belly of a spaceship. It is en route to another planetary system, an incredible distance from the Earth. This is the crux of our story – a flight into space. It is also the story of the things that might happen to human beings who take a step beyond, unable to anticipate everything that might await them out there.
The narration continues after Stansfield is informed that his journey into space will take forty years:
Commander Douglas Stansfield, astronaut, a man about to embark on one of history’s longest journeys: forty years out into endless space and hopefully back again. This is the beginning, the first step towards man’s longest leap into the unknown. Science has solved the mechanical details and now it’s up to one human being to breathe life into blueprints and computers, to prove once and for all that man can live half a lifetime in the total void of outer space, forty years alone in the unknown. This is Earth. Ahead lies a planetary system. The vast region in between is the Twilight Zone.
Summary
Commander Douglas Stansfield is selected to be the first astronaut to go on a deep-space mission. He will be away for 40 years but for much of that, he will be in stasis, and on his return he will hardly have aged. Stansfield is a seemingly ideal candidate as he is single and has no close family. Prior to his departure however, he meets the beautiful Sandra Horn and they fall very much in love. Forty years later, Stansfield returns but it seems he and Sandra had their own way of dealing with the 40 years since they last saw each other.
Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:
Commander Douglas Stansfield, one of the forgotten pioneers of the space age. He’s been pushed aside by the flow of progress and the passage of years, and the ferocious travesty of fate. Tonight’s tale of the ionosphere and irony, delivered from the Twilight Zone.
CAST
Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited) Robert Lansing…Commander Douglas Stansfield Mariette Hartley…Sandra Horn George Macready…Dr. Bixler Ed Binns…General Walters William Swan…Technician
The first episode that was shown in 1964. America was going through a big change. JFK had been assassinated two months before and The Beatles were on their way the following month. This episode predates the movie Christine and The Car by decades. Edward Andrews plays Oliver Pope who is driving distractedly on a rainy day and runs down a boy on a bike.
The boy is badly injured, and Andrews runs when he sees no one around. He goes home, filled with guilt and paranoia. He is worried about a man who he thinks is after his job. At this point, his car begins to act out. At first, it flashes headlights. Then it’s the horn. Then the radio. No matter what Andrews does, the car continues to act out.
They could have played this one like a horror movie but instead, they built up suspense based on a guilty conscience.
Another good episode that was written by Earl Hamner Jr….the creator of The Waltons.
Earl Hamner Jr:All mechanical things frustrate me. Im like my friend, John McGreevey, the writer, who once cut himself with a sponge. I am afraid of and inept with all mechanical devices. Its kind of a love-hate relationship. I drive a Corvette which I love because it is so at odds with the image of John-Boy Walton as an old man. And of course it is a stunning machine. But at the same time, I do not trust it. It seems to have a life of its own, and sometimes when it will not start I suspect it is because it has some personal grudge against me.
This show was written by Rod Serling and Earl Hamner Jr.
Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:
Portrait of a nervous man: Oliver Pope by name, office manager by profession. A man beset by life’s problems: his job, his salary, the competition to get ahead. Obviously, Mr. Pope’s mind is not on his driving.
Oliver Pope, businessman-turned-killer, on a rain-soaked street in the early evening of just another day during just another drive home from the office. The victim, a kid on a bicycle, lying injured, near death. But Mr. Pope hasn’t time for the victim, his only concern is for himself. Oliver Pope, hit-and-run driver, just arrived at a crossroad in his life, and he’s chosen the wrong turn. The hit occurred in the world he knows, but the run will lead him straight into—the Twilight Zone.
Summary
On a rainy day, office manager Oliver Pope is driving home when he hits a newspaper boy with his car and promptly flees the scene. He puts the car in his garage but when his wife sees the lights flashing, she thinks they have an intruder. In fact, its just the car acting up. In the middle of the night, his car horn honks and when his wife takes it out the next day, it stops at the exact corner where the accident occurred. When his competitor at the office, Pete Radcliff, is arrested he thinks he’s home free. It’s apparent however that the car is going to continue acting up until Pope makes things right.
WARNING VIDEO CONTAINS SPOILERS
Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:
All persons attempting to conceal criminal acts involving their cars are hereby warned: check first to see that underneath that chrome there does not lie a conscience, especially if you’re driving along a rain-soaked highway in the Twilight Zone.
CAST
Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited) Edward Andrews…Oliver Pope Helen Westcott…Lillian Pope Kevin Hagen…Pete Radcliff Totty Ames…Muriel Hastings Michael Gorfain…Timmy Danbers, newspaper boy John Hanek…Policeman Robert McCord…Passerby
This is my second selection in the first round of the SlicetheLife TV Draft. And my choice is Fawlty Towers.
A great BBC sitcom…some have rated it as the best BBC sitcom ever.
The series is quick, well written and well-acted. The show was made in the mid and late seventies after John Cleese left the Monty Python TV series. I watched it when our PBS station carried it in the 80s.
There is not a bad episode of Fawlty Towers. John Cleese and his wife Connie Booth wrote all of the episodes. The scripts are solid and there is some physical comedy blended in with Sachs and Cleese. Cleese and Booth spent two-and-a-half weeks working out each plot before they wrote a single line of dialogue, generally spending the time most sitcom writers used for a whole series on a single episode.
There was a four-year gap between season one and two. That was because Cleese and Booth had divorced. They still wrote the second season together. The first season aired in 1975 and the second season in 1979.
Fawlty Towers centered around Basil… a rude, class-conscious hotel owner with a domineering wife Sybil a commonsense maid Polly, a Spanish waiter Manuel who could not understand English and took Basil’s abuse, and a retired senile military officer Major Gowen.
Cleese and Booth were inspired by the manager of a real Torquay hotel, Gleneagles, where they had stayed while filming Monty Python. They found the manager, Donald Sinclair, to be entertainingly rude. There were only 12 episodes made…two seasons with six episodes each. Instead of milking it dry they stopped at 12 because Cleese and Booth didn’t think they could write anymore up to the standards they set.
My favorite episode is the 6th episode of the 1st season called The Germans. The episode is a classic.
The Characters:
Basil Fawlty (John Cleese) – Basil seems to spend most of his life alternating between fawning over any guest who he perceives as being worthy of his attention, and then trying to berate them when they didn’t quite have the social standing, he first thought they had. Basil’s trouble is that he thinks his hotel is a higher-class establishment than it really is. The real thorn in his life is his wife Sybil. For all of his bluster, Basil can quickly be brought into line with a curt “Basil!” or two from Sybil. Basil never could stand up to his evidently better half.
Sybil Fawlty (Prunella Scales) – She spends her time keeping a tight rein on her husband Basil. She never misses an opportunity to close off an avenue of pleasure for Basil, such as betting on the horses. She can be domineering and controlling but with Basil you can’t blame her.
Polly Sherman (Connie Booth) – She probably has more common sense than anyone in the hotel. She struggles to calm down Basil, placate Sybil, and to instruct Manuel.
Manuel (Andrew Sachs) – Poor Manuel takes Basil’s abuse constantly. He was the waiter, bell-boy, porter, and all around do anything guy. Basil hired him with the intention of teaching him English because he’s cheap, but due to Basil’s only rudimentary grasp of Spanish it goes wrong.
Major Gowen (Ballard Berkeley)- A very forgetful retired Major who is a constant guest at the hotel.
Miss Gatsby and Miss Tibbs (Gilly Flower and Renee Roberts,) – They are two sweet natured spinsters who have taken a fancy to Basil, feeling that they need to take care of him.
The Ring-A-Ding Girl is in the top ten of my favorite episodes. Maggie McNamara plays Bunny Blake and the character just sparkles. Bunny Blake is a little self-centered but likable. She is what you would think some stars of the 50s and 60s would have been like. It was written by Earl Hamner Jr…. the Waltons creator. He went on to write eight Twilight Zones. Some of his episodes are classics.
Bunny visits her sister in Howardville. The Founders Day picnic is the same day but Bunny has other ideas. You can see something is bothering her so she goes down to the TV station. She announces that she wants to do a one-woman play at the High School Gym. Everyone is upset because they think she is so full of herself that she is wanting people to come to see her and not go to the Founders Day picnic. Is she just full of herself because she is a big star? She has her reasons, and we find out at the end.
I cannot reccomend this one enough. It has a very original story.
IMDB Trivia
Bunny says to her sister Hildy, “Remember when we used to lie in bed on rainy nights and call to each other when we were kids?” This detail was inspired by the writer Earl Hamner Jr. and his seven younger siblings calling out to each other every night when they were children. It later served as the inspiration for the Walton children bidding each other goodnight at the end of every episode of The Waltons (1972), which was created by Hamner.
The headline of Bud’s newspaper, the Daily Bulletin Sports, reads “Jockey Banned from All U.S. Tracks.” This newspaper was a prop created for the earlier episode The Twilight Zone: The Last Night of a Jockey (1963).
The house set was previously used in The Twilight Zone: Living Doll (1963).
This show was written by Rod Serling and Earl Hamner Jr.
Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:
Introduction to Bunny Blake. Occupation: film actress. Residence: Hollywood, California, or anywhere in the world that cameras happen to be grinding. Bunny Blake is a public figure; what she wears, eats, thinks, says is news. But underneath the glamour, the makeup, the publicity, the buildup, the costuming, is a flesh-and-blood person, a beautiful girl about to take a long and bizarre journey into The Twilight Zone.
Summary
Actress Bunny Blake receives an invitation from her sister, to return home. She arrives on the same day as the town’s annual picnic, and feels a sense of dread. She doesn’t get much cooperation and takes matters into her own hands.
Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:
We are all travelers. The trip starts in a place called birth, and ends in that lonely town called death. And that’s the end of the journey, unless you happen to exist for a few hours, like Bunny Blake, in the misty regions of the Twilight Zone.
CAST
Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited) Maggie McNamara … Barbara “Bunny” Blake Mary Munday … Hildy Powell David Macklin … Bud Powell Betty Lou Gerson … Cici Vic Perrin … State Trooper (Jim) George Mitchell … Dr. Floyd Bing Russell … Ben Braden Hank Patterson … Mr. Gentry Bill Hickman … Pilot
Ed Wynn plays Sam Forstmann, a sweet older gentleman who is attached to a grandfather clock. Although he is sent to a psychiatrist, Sam remains unshakable in his conviction that when the grandfather clock he has owned all his life comes to a stop, he will die. In the fifth season I’ve stated on more than one review that some episodes remind you of earlier ones. Ninety Years Without Slumbering reminds me of Nothing In The Dark with Robert Redford about the older lady who is afraid to die. The Twilight Zone is started to repeat itself a little during this season. I will say though with different results and the best episodes are still up there with the best of the series.
I like this episode. Ed Wynn carries this show. Carolyn Kearney and James T. Callahan play Marnie and Doug Kirk fine but they are a back drop to the legend Ed Wynn. Wynn also appears in an earlier episode called One For The Angels.
When George Clayton Johnson handed the story in called Tick of Time…William Froug had assumed the producer’s role. He was not pleased by Tick of Time. He paid Johnson, then hired another writer, Richard deRoy, to entirely revamp the script. The original story had a darker ending, and some say it would have fit the story more. Johnson never worked with Froug again and never submitted another Twilight Zone.
Clocks are made by men, God creates time. No man can prolong his allotted hours, he can only live them to the fullest—in this world or in the Twilight Zone. That is one of my favorite narrations Rod Serling presented.
This show was written by Rod Serling, Richard De Roy, and George Clayton Johnson
Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:
Each man measures his time; some with hope, some with joy, some with fear. But Sam Forstmann measures his allotted time with a grandfather’s clock, a unique mechanism whose pendulum swings between life and death, a very special clock that keeps a special kind of time—in the Twilight Zone.
Summary
Sam Forstman is an old man who lives with his granddaughter Marnie Kirk and her husband Doug. Sam lives a simple life and doesn’t sleep much anymore. He’s usually up at all hours tinkering on his grandfather clock, something that worries Marnie as his attention to the timepiece verges on the obsessive. The reason for that however is quite simple: he is convinced that should the clock ever stop, he will die.
Someone again had fun with this preview…beeping out words to make it sound like Ed Wynn was swearing.
Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:
Clocks are made by men, God creates time. No man can prolong his allotted hours, he can only live them to the fullest—in this world or in the Twilight Zone.
CAST
Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited) Ed Wynn … Sam Forstmann Carolyn Kearney … Marnie Kirk James T. Callahan … Doug Kirk William Sargent … Dr. Mel Avery Carol Byron … Carol Chase Dick Wilson … Mover #1 Chuck Hicks … Mover #2 John Pickard … Police Officer
This one dishes out some Twilight Zone poetic justice to one of the characters. Patrick O’Neal plays Harmon Gordon who marries a much younger woman and then fails to keep up with her. He seeks an experimental serum from his brother Raymond that Raymond is heistant to give him. The serum is designed to make people younger but it has not been tested enough.
Ruta Lee plays Flora Gordon and it’s clear that why she married Harmon. Harmon acts blind to the way Flora treats him but Raymond sees through the situation. I don’t feel a lot of sympathy for Harmon because he had to know what he was geting himself into. The ending is a twist that I didn’t see coming the first time I watched it.
It’s not in the upper class of the Twilight Zone but not a bad one to watch.
From IMDB:
Until episodes became available on VHS and DVD, this was one of four “lost” episodes of The Twilight Zone (1959) that were not included with syndication packages during the 1960s through the 1980s. The other three were The Twilight Zone: Miniature (1963), The Twilight Zone: Sounds and Silences (1964), and The Twilight Zone: The Encounter (1964). This episode, “Miniature,” and “Sounds and Silences” were excluded from the package because of lawsuits that had been filed claiming those episodes were plagiarized. “The Encounter” had drawn complaints of anti-Japanese prejudice and epithets expressed by one of the characters. The episodes were finally re-released for broadcast television in a 1983 special hosted by Patrick O’Neal, the lead actor of “Fountain”.
This show was written by Rod Serling and Lou Holtz
Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:
Picture of an aging man who leads his life, as Thoreau said, ‘in quiet desperation.’ Because Harmon Gordon is enslaved by a love affair with a wife forty years his junior. Because of this, he runs when he should walk. He surrenders when simple pride dictates a stand. He pines away for the lost morning of his life when he should be enjoying the evening. In short, Mr. Harmon Gordon seeks a fountain of youth, and who’s to say he won’t find it? This happens to be the Twilight Zone.
Summary
Harmon Gordon is now quite elderly but is married to Flora, an attractive woman some 40 years younger than him. She’s something of a gold digger and is now quite bored with her marriage. Harmon turns to his younger brother Raymond, a medical doctor who has been experimenting with cellular regeneration. Raymond’s experiments to date have been on lab animals and he’s reluctant to help Harmon as he has no idea what effect his youth serum might have on him. In the end, he administers his serum and by the next day Harmon is a new man, so to speak.
It happens to be a fact: as one gets older, one does get wiser. If you don’t believe it, ask Flora. Ask her any day of the ensuing weeks of her life, as she takes notes during the coming years and realizes that the worm has turned: youth has taken over. It’s simply the way the calendar crumbles…in the Twilight Zone.
CAST
Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited) Patrick O’Neal…Harmon Gordon Ruta Lee…Flora Gordon Walter Brooke … Dr. Raymond Gordon
I like this one a lot. You learn some history and enjoy some Time Travel. Warren Oates, Randy Boone, and Ron Foster play three National Guardsmen on war game maneuvers on June 25th, 1964, near the Little Big Horn battlefield where, in 1876, General Custer held his famous last stand with the 7th cavalry against an army of Sioux, which led to their massacre. They find a canteen that appears brand new…but it was from 100 years ago.
As for the characters…There’s the true believer, the sergeant, who seems to have an unbelievably detailed knowledge of the historical event and the greenhorn kid. They all play their parts well. You will not see a lot of locations in this episode but you see the characters, even the skeptic, turn true into believers.
If I would have graded this on a personal scale…it would be a 5. I’m not sure it would be that for everyone. The funny thing is…the 5th season had some known classics and a few not graded so high. Two of those (near the ned) are two of my favorites but I try to grade this more on a masses scale when possible. The 5th season was a roller coaster.
From IMDB Trivia
The tank used is an M3A3 Stuart light tank.
Captain William Benteen, who is mentioned several times, previously served as the namesake of James Whitmore’s character in The Twilight Zone: On Thursday We Leave for Home (1963).
This episode takes place on June 25, 1876 and June 25, 1964.
The Battle of Little Bighorn occurred June 25-26, 1876 near Crow Agency, in Bighorn County, Montana. This is in the south central part of the state of Montana.
This show was written by Rod Serling
Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:
June twenty-fifth 1964—or, if you prefer, June twenty-fifth 1876. The cast of characters in order of their appearance: a patrol of General Custer’s cavalry and a patrol of National Guardsmen on a maneuver. Past and present are about to collide head-on, as they are wont to do in a very special bivouac area known as….the Twilight Zone.
Summary
A National Guard tank crew on war games suddenly find themselves back in time to June 25, 1876, the day General Custer fought and lost to the Sioux at the battle of the Little Big Horn. They report what they’ve seen and heard but the officer-in-charge is more than a little dubious about what they claim. They return to the area, and when the attack begins, they join the fight. When the commander goes to locate them, he finds something else entirely.
***Before you watch this…they had a bit of fun beeping words to make it sound bad. It is funny I will admit. This is the only one I could find that is not a drawn out review…like the one you are reading!***
Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:
Sergeant William Connors, Trooper Michael McCluskey, and Trooper Richard Langsford, who, on a hot afternoon in June, made a charge over a hill—and never returned. Look for this one under ‘P’ for phantom, in a historical ledger located in a reading room known as the Twilight Zone.
CAST
Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited) Ron Foster…Sgt. William Connors Randy Boone…Pvt. Michael McCluskey Warren Oates…Cpl. Richard Langsford Greg Morris…Lieutenant Woodard Jeffrey Morris…Finnigan Wayne Mallory…Scout Robert Bray…Captain Dennet Lew Brown…Sergeant Jacques Shelton…Corporal
Probe 7, Over and Out sets up a situation filled with a number of dramatic possibilities. This is an episode that could have been an hour long to explore more avenues. It reminds me of the episode Two but goes a different route. The acting in this one is very good as always. Richard Basehart plays Colonel Adam Cook who just crash landed on a planet. His ship is beyond repair, and he doesn’t have hope his home planet will help him. He does have communication with his General back home but the General has bad news of a Nuclear war coming.
There will be no help for Colonel Adam, but he has a new world to explore. He meets up with Antoinette Bower who plays Norda. Norda is also stranded on this planet. There is a language and personality barrier that they will have to cross. It’s a good Twilight Zone that could have been better with a little more exploration.
From IMDB Trivia
Norda refers to the apples as “seppla,” which is an anagram of “apples.”
This was the first episode of the series to air since The Twilight Zone: Uncle Simon (1963) two weeks earlier. The Twilight Zone: Night Call (1964) was to have been shown on November 22, 1963, but the broadcast was canceled due to the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas that day. It was eventually shown on February 7, 1964.
Much, if not all, of Norda’s language is simply backwards-English. For example, “em” for “me” and “ouy” for “you”
This show was written by Rod Serling
Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:
One Colonel Cook, a traveler in space. He’s landed on a remote planet several million miles from his point of departure. He can make an inventory of his plight by just one 360-degree movement of head and eyes. Colonel Cook has been set adrift in an ocean of space in a metal lifeboat that has been scorched and destroyed and will never fly again. He survived the crash but his ordeal is yet to begin. Now he must give battle to loneliness. Now Colonel Cook must meet the unknown. It’s a small planet set deep in space. But for Colonel Cook, it’s the Twilight Zone.
Summary
Astronaut Adam Cook crash lands on an Earth-like planet several light-years away. His ship is badly damaged and beyond repair. He manages to contact his home base but they have little encouragement for him. They don’t have a replacement spacecraft to rescue him and the security situation is such that they may soon be at war. Cook readies himself to make a home on his new world when he discovers another inhabitant, a human-like female from another world. As they learn to communicate, he learns her name is Eve Norda and together set off to begin a new life
***WARNING…VIDEO SPOILERS***
Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:
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.
CAST
Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited) Richard Basehart…Colonel Adam Cook Antoinette Bower…Eve Norda Harold Gould: General Larrabee Barton Heyman: Lieutenant Blane
This is not a top drawer Twilight Zone episode. On the surface… the problem is no relatable character and absolutely no sympathy. Uncle Simon is a sick, mean, and vindictive old man. He was being cared for by Constance Ford who plays Barbara Polk. Uncle Simon is quite mean to Barbara but she stayed for 25 years putting up with it. You have to wonder why Barbara is still there taking his abuse for years. As you watch you start finding out why.
Its a sad story about two sad people, both of whom make it a point to say everything thats on their mind but by this point. Uncle Simon tells Barbara at one point “You are the only woman I know who looks as if, underneath her clothes, she wore clothes.” That perfectly described the bland Barbara. I wanted so much to feel pity for Barbara…and in some ways I do but her reasons for being there are to inherit the mansion and money. You just get the feeling she wasn’t there for the right reasons.
There is one bright spot. Robby the Robot makes an appearance in this one. Robby has 30 screen credits from 1956 Forbidden Planet to 2014’s The Big Bang Theory.
From IMDB:
The Twilight Zone: Probe 7, Over and Out (1963), the next episode of The Twilight Zone (1959), would not air for two weeks. The broadcast of the following week’s episode on November 22, 1963, which was to have been The Twilight Zone: Night Call (1964), was canceled due to the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas that day.
Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet (1956) is used in this episode. However, the dome portion of his head has been altered. This is one of many instalments to use props from “Forbidden Planet”, since the series was frequently filmed at MGM, which kept the film props in use for many years.
This show was written by Rod Serling
Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:
Dramatis personae: Mr. Simon Polk, a gentleman who has lived out his life in a gleeful rage; and the young lady who’s just beat the hasty retreat is Mr. Polk’s niece, Barbara. She has lived her life as if during each ensuing hour she had a dentist appointment. There is yet a third member of the company soon to be seen. He now resides in the laboratory and he is the kind of character to be found only in the Twilight Zone.
Summary
Barbara Polk takes care of her elderly and mean-spirited uncle Simon. He is a scientist who spends much of his time in his basement laboratory but when he’s not there, he seems to take great pleasure in demeaning his niece. She can’t wait for him to die and doesn’t hesitate to tell him so. When he does die, things are… not quite what she expected.
Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:
Dramatis personae, a metal man who’ll go by the name of Simon, whose life as well as his body has been stamped out for him; and the woman who tends to him, the lady Barbara, who’s discovered belatedly that all bad things don’t come to an end, and that once a bed is made, it’s quite necessary that you sleep in it. Tonight’s uncomfortable little exercise in avarice and automatons, from the Twilight Zone.
CAST
Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited) Cedric Hardwicke … Uncle Simon Constance Ford … Barbara Polk Ian Wolfe … Schwimmer Robby the Robot … Robotic Uncle Simon
As far as the rating on this one. I was in between 4.5 and 5…it could go either way. It is a great episode.
James Coburn (French) and John Anderson (Goldsmith) are terrific in this Twilight Zone episode. The Old Man in the Cave dwells on a small group of Atomic Holocaust survivors whose status quo is maintained by an unseen source that lives in a cave. Mr Goldsmith is the leader of this group and he is told what to do by this cave dweller.
Coburn’s character is the neighborhood bully with power. He swaggers in with his men and take over the group. He mock’s Mr. Goldsmith about the faith he has with the cave dweller’s instructions. Against Goldsmiths vehement objections, they distribute food and liquor branded contaminated by the Old Man in the cave. Resentful over their past restrictions, the townspeople force Goldsmith to open the cave. The “Old Man” is seen…but as what?
The ugly side of human beings is on full display in this episode. Humans without faith in something can be scared, frightened, and in turn… scary.
From IMDB: Based upon the short story “The Old Man” by Henry Slesar. Though it was copyrighted in 1962, the story went unpublished until 1980, when it appeared in the anthology Microcosmic Tales from Taplinger Pub. Co.
This show was written by Rod Serling and Henry Slesar
Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:
What you’re looking at is a legacy that man left to himself. A decade previous he pushed his buttons and a nightmarish moment later woke up to find that he had set the clock back a thousand years. His engines, his medicines, his science were buried in a mass tomb, covered over by the biggest gravedigger of them all—a bomb. And this is the earth 10 years later, a fragment of what was once a whole, a remnant of what was once a race. The year is 1974 and this is The Twilight Zone.
Summary
Ten years after an atomic apocalypse, a small group of survivors manage to eke out a very difficult existence. They’ve managed to survive in large part due to the advice they receive from an old man who lives in a cave outside of the town. Goldsmith acts as the intermediary and the old man’s advice on things like crops or the safety of a batch of old canned goods are usually correct. When four soldiers led by Major French arrive in the town, the social order is upended with the townsfolk attacking the old man’s cave but not really prepared for what they find inside
Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:
Mr. Goldsmith, survivor. An eyewitness to man’s imperfection. An observer of the very human trait of greed. And a chronicler of the last chapter—the one reading “suicide”. Not a prediction of what is to be, just a projection of what could be. This has been The Twilight Zone.
CAST
Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited) James Coburn … French John Anderson … Goldsmith Josie Lloyd … Evie, townswoman who says, “We already took chances. The old man told us not to plant on the north acreage.” John Craven … townsman who asks, “Been to the cave, Jason?” John Marley … Jason Uncredited (in order of appearance): Natalie Masters … townswoman Don Wilbanks … Furman
This episode launched a lot of horror movies like Child’s Play. It did have a future star…the great Telly Savalas as a stepfather named Erich Streator. Mr. Streator is not a likable character but yet you may have a little pity for him as the show goes along. He shows glimpses of being a decent human being but fails miserably with his role as a stepfather. You do have to look deep to find sympathy.
He has a great wife (Mary La Roche) and a stepdaughter (Christie) who loves her new doll. The doll can talk and move… “My name is Talking Tina and I love you very much.”
You have so much sympathy for his wife Annabelle…even without the doll. Some people might say that the episode is predictable but remember…there weren’t many shows out about talking dolls at the time…maybe none. There is no comedy in this one like the Chucky movies that came decades later. The doll is working as Christie’s protector…at least you think so. Is it all in Erich Streator’s head?
From IMDB:
June Foray, the voice of the “Talky Tina” doll, was also the voice of Mattel’s “Chatty Cathy” doll, upon which the doll in this episode was based.
Tina and Christie are both nicknames for Christina. The doll and the child share a name, so among many other interpretations it could be argued that the doll is a proxy through which Christie expresses hostility toward her stepfather and protects her shy, frightened mother.
According to The Twilight Zone Companion, this episode was written in one day by Jerry Sohl, even though credit was given entirely to Charles Beaumont.
The child actress who portrays Christie is credited as being the voice of “Lucy Van Pelt” in the classic TV special, “A Charlie Brown Christmas”.
This show was written by Rod Serling, Charles Beaumont, and Jerry Sohl
Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:
Talky Tina, a doll that does everything, a lifelike creation of plastic and springs and painted smile. To Erich Streator, she is the most unwelcome addition to his household—but without her, he’d never enter the Twilight Zone.
Summary
Erich Streater is upset when his wife comes home with her daughter Christie having bought her yet another doll. Christie loves her new Talking Tina doll but her stepfather takes an immediate dislike to it. Anytime he is alone with the doll, it spouts abusive comments to the effect that it hates him and that it’s going to kill him. He’s convinced that his wife is behind it all, something she vehemently denies. He tries to get rid of the doll but it always seems to reappear – and also seems intent on following through with its threats.
***WARNING…VIDEO SPOILERS***
Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:
Of course, we all know dolls can’t really talk, and they certainly can’t commit murder. But to a child caught in the middle of turmoil and conflict, a doll can become many things: friend, defender, guardian. Especially a doll like Talky Tina, who did talk and did commit murder—in the misty region of the Twilight Zone.
CAST
Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited) Telly Savalas … Erich Streator Mary La Roche … Annabelle Streator Tracy Stratford … Christie Streator June Foray … Talky Tina (voice) [uncredited]
Rod Serling was great at this kind of low-life character. They were not evil but just the bottom of society. Mickey Rooney plays Grady who was small in more ways than one. He was a jockey who was disqualified from racing and he blames everyone but the one responsible…himself. Mickey Rooney runs a gamut of emotions from rage to grief to terrible self-loathing and is credible throughout. He carries the show…although he must because he is the only actor in it. A bit of Twilight Zone justice is dished out at the end.
This is another character that you won’t have much sympathy with at all. It is an impressive one-man show. Agnes Moorehead did this in The Invaders and was incredible.
This one is by no means a bad episode. It’s just not a classic one. I think the basic story was done better in Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room, another episode of a self-pitying loser being lectured by his alter ego.
From IMDB: With exactly one performer appearing–either in image or voice, not counting Rod Serling’s routine turn as host–this episode features the smallest cast of any in the series. Close runner-ups include The Twilight Zone: Where Is Everybody? (1959), The Twilight Zone: King Nine Will Not Return (1960), The Twilight Zone: Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room (1960), The Twilight Zone: The Invaders (1961) and The Twilight Zone: Two (1961).
This show was written by Rod Serling
Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:
The name is Grady, five feet short in stockings and boots, a slightly distorted offshoot of a good breed of humans who race horses. He happens to be one of the rotten apples, bruised and yellowed by dealing in dirt, a short man with a short memory who’s forgotten that he’s worked for the sport of kings and helped turn it into a cesspool, used and misused by the two-legged animals who’ve hung around sporting events since the days of the Coliseum. So this is Grady, on his last night as a jockey. Behind him are Hialeah, Hollywood Park and Saratoga. Rounding the far turn and coming up fast on the rail—is the Twilight Zone.
Summary
Grady is a champion jockey who has recently been banned from the sport owing to his participation in race fixing and the drugging of horses. He claims he is innocent and currently has an appeal with the racing commission but his agent isn’t hopeful. Suddenly, Grady begins hearing a voice – his own as it turns out, speaking to him from his own mind. As Grady rages over the unfairness of it all, he is granted his one true wish.
***WARNING…VIDEO SPOILERS***
Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:
The name is Grady, ten feet tall, a slightly distorted offshoot of a good breed of humans who race horses. Unfortunately for Mr. Grady, he learned too late that you don’t measure size with a ruler, you don’t figure height with a yardstick, and you never judge a man by how tall he looks in a mirror. The giant is as he does. You can make a parimutuel bet on this, win, place, or show, in or out of the Twilight Zone.
This is my first selection in the first round of the SlicetheLife TV Draft. And the envelope says……..Barney Miller.
I’ve watched Barney Miller at least 7 times through. Why is it my favorite show? It would be the writing, the acting, and that glorious dirty set that only got dirtier as the show went along. Another reason would be the continuity of the show. My pet peeve with shows is when you would meet someone’s “Uncle Joe” as his only uncle…and a season or two later…the same person never had an uncle. That is lazy writing and research…Barney Miller doesn’t have that. The show ran from 1975 to 1982 for 171 episodes.
You will see the same actor play different criminals (great 70s-character actors and actresses) but the storyline is set. Barney Miller was a comedy but also would dip in drama at times. Whatever was going on…the characters stayed true. It doesn’t hurt that the show had one of the best…if not the best theme songs. Dig that bass!
Many real life detectives were asked about the most realistic police show on television. Barney Miller was picked because they showed the drudgery parts like the paperwork involved that is a part of every policeman’s day. I’ve read where some officers today still say it is accurate in that way.
The guests on the show every week were usually the criminals they captured. They never had serial killers or anything like that (save for one episode when they were switched to homicide for that one show) …usually just people who caused a disturbance. You had every known petty criminal in the world on that show. Pickpocket, prostitute, madams, thieves, white-collar crime, and etc.
The jail cell in Barney Miller encapsulated the seventies and its times. The show could be topical about New York in the seventies. One episode has the squad listening to an actual speech given by President Ford only a few weeks before the show aired, in which he refused to bail out a near-bankrupt New York City while still committing aid to essential services like the police.
The show was ahead of its time. Barney Miller had diversity in the cast and guests. The diversity wasn’t there just to have diversity…it fit the story…it was never forced.
Danny Arnold created this show. He also wrote and produced some of Bewitched, That Girl, McHales Navy, and more.
Hal Liden has mentioned that they would film until 2-3 in the morning with script changes at the last minute. That was normal, not the exception. They had a studio audience at first but soon dropped that partly because of the script changes. The show never went down in quality. It was never a big ratings show because frankly, it was written well with subtle humor that it wasn’t as accessible as other shows.
If you haven’t given Barney Miller a chance…it’s worth one.
I’m going to list the characters in this show because it is such a character-driven show.
The characters are:
Barney Miller (Hal Linden) The man that leads with common sense and wisdom over his squad of quirky detectives and officers. Hal Linden has said that his character could not get as crazy as the other ones because the audience had to identify with him and have someone to compare the others to.
Det. Stan Wojciehowicz..”Wojo”(Max Gail) – An ex-Marine who fought in Vietnam who is sometimes naive and childlike but really looks to Barney as a mentor. Wojo is not always tolerant of people with different views than him but is a good detective but highly emotional.
Det.Ron Harris (Ron Glass) – A well-dressed man who lives beyond his means at times. He wants the finer things in life and can be a little snobbish at times but he is a good guy. As the show continued, he was trying to establish a writing career and he wrote the best-selling book called “Blood on the Badge” that sometimes disrupted the station but he would stay loyal to Barney even through their differences.
Sgt. Nick Yemana (Jack Soo) – A Japanese Detective that always had an answer, loved gambling and he would call his bookie often… and he made the coffee for the office…and supposedly the worse coffee ever…To me, he was one of the funniest characters on the show. Actor Jack Soo passed away while the show was in its 5th season in January of 1979. During that season the cast did a tribute show speaking as themselves and showed clips of Jack.
Sgt. Arthur Dietrich (Steve Landesberg) – A one-of-a-kind character and my favorite on the show. Dietrich was a know it all…not in the usual way. He really knew about every statistic on any subject that came up. He was an intellectual but also could have fun with it. One of the funniest and deadpan characters I’ve ever seen on television. He never lost his cool in any situation.
Sgt Philip Fish (Abe Vigoda) – The senior member of the crew who was played by Abe Vigoda always looked older than he was at the time. It was a running joke about him having hemorrhoids, needing to go to the bathroom, being old, and delivering many marriage jokes. He would leave the show for a spinoff “Fish” officially in the 4th season. He would come back and make guest star appearances. He was the break-out star of the show.
Sgt. Chano Amenguale (Gregory Sierra) – He was Puerto Rican and would be very talkative and emotional. Whenever he was really upset, he would start speaking Spanish loudly. I really liked Sierra’s character, but he left after the second season.
Officer Carl Levitt (Ron Carey) – Levitt was a short overachiever and kept hounding Barney for a promotion. He would not be too subtle to Barney about his hard-working habits. The rest of the station would pick on him but all of them respected his hard work. He would fill in when a Detective was out. He finally got promoted at the end of the show’s run.
Deputy Inspector Frank Luger (James Gregory) – A totally old school superior who would drop by “the old one two” to talk with Barney. Luger never even tried to keep up with the times. He would tell Barney of the good old days…sometimes to Barney’s annoyance. Overall Luger was a great character who was brilliantly played by James Gregory.
Elizabeth Miller (Barbara Barrie) She was Barney’s wife who always wanted him to quit the force because she worried about his safety. She was on regularly at first but the show started to concentrate on the station rather than their home. She was involved in a story later on in the series when Elizabeth and Barney separated for a while…they eventually got back together.
Det. Janice Wentworth (Linda Lavin) She was a detective in the squad room who had a romantic interest in Wojo. Prone to excitement trying to prove herself in a room full of men. The writing for her character was great…it was realistic and always suited Lavin’s character. The character would have stayed on the show but Linda Lavin got her own show…Alice.
Ben Scanlon(George Murdock) – Scanlon worked in Internal Affairs and was the one bad guy in the show. He would try to find trouble when he visited…always wanted to find some wrongdoing to bring down the 12th Precinct because they had a perfect record.
I’ve searched on youtube for some different scenes…most of what they have is the “best of” each character. The good news is… youtube has many full episodes. I’m including the full episode of one the best….It’s called Hash. I’m also including the super theme song…again you gotta love that bass!
Richard Erdman plays Patrick Thomas McNulty who is an insufferable know it all bore. He is a self-proclaimed idea man…but not a good one. He is given a gift…a very special gift that he wanted to exploit. Mr. McNulty was given a stopwatch that could control time. This story is made for the Twilight Zone but it helps when you have sympathy for the main character. You don’t in this one but yet it still works. It does have a good Twilight Zone ending.
It reminds me a little of Time Enough at Last but not as good. Erdman does a great job playing McNulty because he is a convincing pain. The inspiration for the episode came from a book written by John D. MacDonald published a year earlier called “The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything”. Much later the book was made into a movie called The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything in 1980.
The biggest disappointment is Potts, he is the fellow that gave McNulty the stopwatch. The dialogue doesn’t give us many clues…its supposed to make Potts seem the kind of eccentric character who might give a total stranger a mysterious and magical device, but it plays very flat. Potts is no more than a plot device, the intention being to get the watch into McNulty’s hands as quickly as possible. It was a wasted opportunity in not exploring that charcacter.
The reason I bring it up is an early draft of the script featured an alternate closing shot: One of the “frozen” people, whom McNulty has just run past, turns to face the camera after McNulty vanishes around a corner. It’s Potts, who smiles and winks at us…indicating that, as with the watch he gave McNulty, there’s a lot more to him than meets the eye.
This show was written by Rod Serling and Michael D. Rosenthal
Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:
Submitted for your approval or at least your analysis: one Patrick Thomas McNulty, who, at age forty-one, is the biggest bore on Earth. He holds a ten-year record for the most meaningless words spewed out during a coffee break. And it’s very likely that, as of this moment, he would have gone through life in precisely this manner, a dull, argumentative bigmouth who sets back the art of conversation a thousand years. I say he very likely would have except for something that will soon happen to him, something that will considerably alter his existence—and ours. Now you think about that now, because this is The Twilight Zone.
Summary
After Patrick Thomas McNulty gets fired from his job, he goes to a neighborhood bar where his non-stop chatter drives all of the customers away. One of the last patrons in the bar has a gift for him: a stopwatch. It’s a strange gift and he has no idea what he might do with it. When he presses the button however everything around him stops. He returns to work the next day and tries to market it, but to no avail. He then returns to the bar and again drives everyone out the bar with his bombast.
Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:
Mr. Patrick Thomas McNulty, who had a gift of time. He used it and he misused it, and now he’s just been handed the bill. Tonight’s tale of motion and McNulty – in the Twilight Zone.
CAST
Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited) Richard Erdman … Patrick Thomas McNulty Herbie Faye … Joe Palucci, the bartender Leon Belasco … Potts, the drunk who gives McNulty the stopwatch Doris Singleton … Secretary to McNulty’s boss Mr. Cooper Roy Roberts … Mr. Cooper, McNulty’s annoyed boss Richard Wessel … Charlie, drinker in Palucci’s bar Ray Kellog … Fred, who delivers coffee to McNulty’s office Ken Drake … Daniel, last patron in Palucci’s bar who tells McNulty, “Come on fella, we’re trying to watch.” Sam Balter: … sports announcer on TV in Polucci’s bar Al Silvani … one of the drinkers in Polucci’s bar
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