Test 1, 2, 3.

I skipped watching last year, and only did 6 episodes this year. I'm getting too old for marathons I think. There was supposed to be a Special Feature of an interview with Burgess Meredith that I was going to watch for variety, but the DVD menu just sent me back to watching the episode. Not sure if the issue is the DVD or VLC or my computer which is also getting too old for marathons.
The Four of Us Are Dying is up whenever I get around to it.

Only watched 8 episodes today, half of which were new to me (including one with very pretty music: Come Wander with Me).

George Takei joined Shatner, Nimoy, and Doohan in the pre-Trek TZ role club in The Encounter, but the ending didn't quite work because the Twilight Zone shouldn't have been punishing Takei's character for his father's misdeeds. Like the racist murderer white guy totally deserved it, but Takei's character was already feeling guilty about something that wasn't his fault, so I'm not sure what they were going for?

The Brain Center at Whipple's was making me think of the recent Kerblam! episode of Doctor Who though as always, The Twilight Zone technically did it first.

Ended 2018 with the last episode to air in 1964, The Bewitchin' Pool

Ending on a disappointing note this year with Caesar and Me. Evil dummy retread that is not nearly as good as the early episode. It's not even creepy- partly because the guy the dummy talks to isn't creeped out by it. He's reluctant to commit the crimes the dummy is suggesting, but like not disturbed by the talking dummy aspect at all which makes it feel less threatening even though the dummy is still walking and talking on it's own.

There's also the continued tradition of TZ time travelers going about changing the past all wrong in Spur of the Moment. (Terrorizing your younger self such that she's too scared to listen to you isn't going to get her to make better choices.)

21 episodes watched at least 12 of which I hadn't seen before.

Next year starts with The Jeopardy Room, and likely finishes out the series as there's only 8 episodes left plus a Serling biography special.

Early Season 5 includes Shatner vs. TheThingOnTheWing and the Talky Tina episode.

I ended on The Old Man in the Cave-- I could never quite figure out why they'd be more upset that he's a machine than some random old dude. Like the computer would be more likely to be accurate and less likely to lie because he wants the food for himself.

Next year starts with Uncle Simon.

All of the episodes were new to me because they tend not to show the hour-long ones in the marathons, though I think I did see part of Jess-Belle at some point because I have vague memories of a woman turning into a big cat (my faulty memory replaced the leopard with a panther for some reason).

Valley of the Shadow had transporters, replicators, and force fields in small town America. It also had James Doohan, appropriately enough. He wasn't one of the main players, but he gets more lines than Nimoy in the Dean Stockwell/Yellowface episode.

He's Alive was very relevant to current events in terms of the influence of Hitler and his ilk. Like, I can totally buy that Donald Trump communes with the ghost of Hitler. (I had actually been thinking when I was watching various "Christmas Carol" adaptations that the 3 spirits deal wouldn't work on Trump because he's too terrible.)

Printer's Devil allowed for geeking out over a linotype machine that the devil rigs such that what you type into it occurs. Meredith Burgess always seems to show up in the book geekery episodes. I mean this was a newspaper technically, but printing press stuff is bookish, and then he's a Librarian in another episode, and the guy who just wants to read all the time in yet another episode.

No Time Like The Past wasn't a highlight, per se, but it's worth mentioning because of incompetent time travel shenanigans. This guy goes back in time to try to stop major tragedies, but he goes about it all wrong. Showing up in Hiroshima on the day of when you don't even speak Japanese isn't gonna help anybody. Nor is showing up on a ship just before it's about to be torpedoed. No one is going to believe you when you try to warn them about these things. The botched Hitler assassination at least felt more like the point they were trying to make about the past being unalterable. So finally, he goes back to 1881 to stay because he thinks it's simpler times or whatever, and okay. So you know that a fire is started by a kerosene lantern thrown from a runaway carriage. Therefore your focus should be the damn lantern and putting it out (he literally could have just grabbed it and blown it out). Not once again trying to convince someone to do a weird thing (unhitch the horses) that they're never going to do. And definitely not trying to unhitch the horses yourself because that's what leads to the runaway carriage in the first place. So basically they undermined their point about the past being inviolate by having the time-traveling protagonist be a complete and utter dip.

Ended with The New Exhibit wherein the curator of murderous wax figures becomes a murderous wax figure, as you do.

Only 11 episodes total, but since they're hour-long ones that's actually about how many I usually watch.

Next year will start with Of Late I Think Of Cliffordville.

With 4 new to me episodes and 2 classics (The Dummy and I Sing The Body Electric).

Then started in on the first two episodes of season 4 which were both an hour each. They were good, but the extra time led to a loss of tension/urgency. Not surprised to learn that network interference/douchebaggery is to blame for the length change.

(and then I couldn't write this post last night because of internet interference-- maybe it doesn't like being routed through the Twilight Zone)

23 episodes.

Next year starts with Valley of the Shadow.

Q: What are you doing New Year’s, New Year’s Eve?

A: Watching so many episodes of The Twilight Zone that by the time midnight rolls around, Rod Serling will be narrating my brain.

Starting off with One More Pallbearer.

An episode about the people who died in the Civil War that contains zero black people and no mention of slavery whatsoever. Unless they were walking by in the background and I just missed them? I really don't think that's the case though.

And then an episode with Peter Falk and some other white guys in brown face being all judgey about the political turmoil in Central America. And the point/moral of the episode could definitely have been accomplished with just white dudes being white dudes.

So I'm starting to wonder if there isn't a reason that these episodes tend to get left out of the SyFy channel marathons. Or they just played them when I wasn't watching. Because I wouldn't expect the SyFy channel to be very sensitive to that sort of thing. And I'm pretty sure I saw the Dean Stockwell yellow face episode on TV. Which, again, made a good point that could have been made without yellow face. Like, the irony of it being Dean Stockwell is that they could have established him as having swapped bodies or whatever with a Japanese actor by doing the Quantum Leap look in the mirror and see a reflection that is not your own trick.

As suspected, The Silence was not a Doctor Who reference despite his ability to go back and make it one. I actually think I've seen it before because it's one of those ones that seems familiar and then I remember what the twist is halfway through.
I definitely have not seen Shadow Play or The Mind and The Matter although I kept nitpicking the latter to the point where I realized the moral was directed at me and I just refused to accept it. Because it's a guy who basically wishes all the people away and then he's lonely, but like he goes to work and is bored like of course you're bored you're at work at an insurance company with no one to insure, go do something fun you idiot. So then he wishes the people back but makes them all like him which is dumb and he realizes it and puts everything back the way it was, but seriously if you can change the world with your mind, why not make there be less people? Which then gets tricky because which people get to stay and which ones go, so leave the people there and just make it so you don't have to commute on the crowded train or cram yourself in the crowded elevator (and I relate to the hatred of crowds so much) because you don't have to work at all. Like give yourself a nice house somewhere uncrowded such that you can avoid people when you want to and go see them when you get lonely. It's not an all or nothing proposition, dammit. There are ways to avoid people without removing them from existence. So yeah, I maybe related to the guy's motivation a bit too much, if only he hadn't been so ridiculous on the execution (and I do realize that part of the point is that no matter how you change things, it'll still be messed up in some way, see The Lathe of Heaven, but stop telling me I ought to like people, Mr. Serling, you're not the boss of me!)

I've been spamming my tumblr with the opening narrations of all the episodes of The Twilight Zone I've been watching. As you do.


books-are-bigger-on-the-inside

Starting off with some Shatner. A very good place to start. The fortune teller ep not the thing on the wing one, but the premise is similar in terms of Shatner losing his shit while his wife wonders why she married him.

Season 1 Disc 4

2 episodes I've never seen before including one with an immortal except he's not so much immortal as that he never ages cuz he totally dies from a puny bullet (and not even in the head).

And the Twilight Zone-y twist of "People Are Alike All Over" is that rather than being reassuring as it's meant by the character who says it, it is in fact the scariest fucking thing ever because have you met people? I mean getting put in a zoo isn't even that bad compared to some of the fucked up things human beings do to each other.

3 more episodes I haven't seen and what seems like a lot of episodes scored by Jerry Goldsmith, but maybe that's just because I'm more likely to notice his name.

Onwards to Disc 5!

2 unseen episodes including one with an elaborate set up of the guy has no reflection (he's not a vampire, but he thinks he's dead) in the mirror only to have him have a reflection in a glass window in the same scene. They make up for it later with an epic shot framing (I'm sure there's a technical film term for it but hell if I know) where as this other guy reveals that he's the Angel Gabriel (no not that one) and the shot is like just so he's standing under this circular lamp like a halo, and it was really cool (or I'm just easily impressed, whichever).

"Mr. Beavis" is the first episode with an alternate intro (ie not the one in my icon that I also used for a calligraphy project), and Rod Serling uses the word discombooberated in the narration which I assume is related to discombobulated?

The Hoboken Zephyrs: Robot Pitchers don't pump gas.

The Winter Warlock! (aka Keenan Wynn)

And finally two episodes of Season 2, neither of which I'd seen before.

I'll most likely watch more tomorrow since Iowa doesn't really do Mummers, but I also have calligraphy homework to get done, so I won't be as marathony.

( Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start. )

Let me sum up: 20 episodes of Rod Serlingy goodness with 6 of those never before seen by me. And as an added bonus, I didn't get interrupted by wrestling (for shame, SyFy, for shame!).


*Okay, 99.9% less because they've got ads for other CBS shows on at the time like Wanted Dead or Alive starring Steve McQueen and The Danny Thomas Show.

1. Bootsie, my TZ marathon snuggle buddy.

2. Somewhere in the Twilight Zone there is a filing cabinet, and in the drawer marked "S", there is a folder designated "Serling, Rod". The contents of that folder? Pure AWESOME.

3. Shatner shatnering the hell out of thing on the wing.

4. Five episodes I've never seen before.

5. And the moral of the story is: "Do not fuck with a librarian."

Because I am a super dorky nerdy geek-thing.

Because bad special effects are somehow more palatable in black and white.

Because Rod Serling is a strangely attractive man.

Because the Twilight Zone marathon on SciFi is a holiday in its own right.