Best Twilight Zone Original Series Episode

[indy4 155]

These are a couple of my personal favorites. I think I would have to pick To Serve Man, it is brilliant, but A Nice Place To Visit is a close second. For those who don't remember them by their names, I've summarized all of the options here. Spoiler alert, for those who haven't seen the episodes.

And a happy belated Birthday to Rod Serling, born on none other than December 25!

Time Enough At Last: A man who loves to read, whose like begins to crumble and fall apart as people become frusterated at his wish to read, is the only survivor of a nuclear war. After a few days of wandering around in all the debris, he finally finds an entire stack of books from the library that survived, enough to last him several years. He rejoices, that there is time enough at last, before tripping on a step, causing his glasses to fall to the ground and break.

Nightmare At 20,000 Feet: William Shatner plays a man who just recovered from a mental condition on an airplane, where he believes there is a strange creature walking on the wing of the plane. Nobody believes him, and he is thought to be insane. In the end, it is revealed that the wing of the plane has been torn up by an unknown substance.

Living Doll: A doll is given to the daughter of a man who hates it. The doll suddenly starts speaking for itself, and when the man is in private, tells him that she is going to kill him. None of the family believes the man. The man almost goes crazy trying to destroy the doll, using a manner of things such as saws, blow torches, scissors, etc, but the doll won't die. After locking it up, the man goes to sleep, to be awakened to a loud noise, which draws him out of bed. He checks the barrel he hid the doll in, but she's gone. As he wanders through the dark house, he accidentally steps on the doll, causing him to trip and fall down the stairs, breaking his neck. His wife runs to see what happens, and finds the doll, who delivers one last, bloodcurling line: "My name is Talking Tina, and you'de better be nice to me!"

To Serve Man: Aliens arrive from far off with one goal: to serve man. A book that they always carry with them is left behind, and immediatly analysed. The title is decoded to say "To Serve Man." The aliens start taking passengers with them to their wondrous and amazing planet. As the main character is getting on one of the spaceships to take the trip, his assistant runs up and says: "The book...IT'S A COOKBOOK!" The man tries to escape, but to no avail.

Eye of the Beholder: A young woman is undergoing surgery to make her face "beautiful." As the outcome of the surgery is finally revealed, she seems to be a beautiful young lady. For some reason, the doctors and nurses tell here that "it didn'tt work." Suddenly, their faces are revealed to be pig-like faces, considered very ugly on earth. Finally, the lady is promised a planet where she can go and live where people are "like her."

Third from the Sun: A man, knowing that the world will soon be destroyed by a nuclear bomb, tries to desperatley have his family escape. They sneak aboard a spaceship, and as they are heading off, one asks where they are going. The man replies: "It the third planet from the sun...it's known as Earth."

A Nice Place to Visit: A robber is shot dead by the police, and awakes in Heaven, with his guardian angel. He doesn't know why he deserves to go to Heaven, but he doesn't care. He wins at everything, and he can have anything he wants. Finally, he becomes tired of winning, and asks his guardian angel if he can leave to go to "the other place" (I think they weren't allowed to say "Hell" on TV back then). The angel replies: "What made you think this was Heaven? This is the other place!"

The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street: Maple Street, your typical American street, is as peaceful as ever, until some strange things start to happen: a strange meteor like thing flies overhead, the power goes out save for one house, cars start to start themselves, and more. The people of Maple Street start to get worried that someone amongst themselves is an alien, and is responsible for this. As the strange things start to relate to certain people, fingers are pointed, greating a sense of paranoia and betrayal. In the end, a riot breaks loose, and there is much violence and death and chaos. It is revelaed in the end that aliens were in charge of all the strange occurences, but to actual kill the humans, they just let themselves become scared and angry. They plan to do the same to all streets, slowing eliminating the human race.

A Most Unusual Camera: A camera is found by two men and a woman that takes pictures five minutes into the future. They use it to cheat in gambling for sports. When they only have two pictures left, they start fighting over how to use them, and the two men accidentally fall out the window because of their wrestling. The woman is glad, for she can now keep all the winnings for herself, and decides to take a photo of the dead men lying on the ground. Suddenly, a waiter comes in a robs her, takes the camera, and observes that there are actually three bodies on the ground. The woman walks over to the window, trips on a wire, and falls to her death. The waiter laughs, then looks at the photo again and realizes that there are actually four bodies. In his shock, he falls to his death.

Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up?: During a snowstorm, two state troopers are investigating a crash and are led to believe that it was a UFO. They follow footprints leading from the crash site to a diner, where a group of passengers from a bus to Boston are waiting for word that a bridge up ahead is safe to cross. Though the only patrons of the roadside eatery are bus passengers, there is one more diner than there were people on the bus. There is mutual suspicion among the stranded travelers, as the passengers each try to guess which among them is the alien. When they get permission to go across the bridge, however, they all leave. Shortly, the businessman returns to the diner and tells the cook that the bridge collapsed and the bus and police car fell in killing all aboard the bus and the policemen. As the cook wonders how the businessman survived, he also notes that his clothes are not even wet. Soon the businessman unveils his third arm and stirs his coffee with his third hand, telling the cook that he is a Martian, and revealing that Mars plans to start a colony on Earth. Laughing, the cook tells him that he’s too late, and by taking off his paper hat and revealing his third eye, reveals that he is from Venus, which has already started a colony, and that the Martian invasion force has been intercepted.

Five Characters In Search Of An Exit: A clown, a soldier, a hobo, a ballet dancer, and a bagpipe player are trapped in a cylinder. They have aboslutley no recolection of who they are or how they got there. After several failed attempts to climb out, it is revelaed that there is a bin for kids to put toys into for Christmas donations, and they are really just toys.

The Dummy: A failing ventriloquist refuses to use a certain puppet, because it is alive. Nobody believes him, but his career depends on it. In the end, the puppet finds him and in a thrilling scene, the two transform and the puppet becomes a human with similiar features.

A World of His Own: A playwright describes his characters to a recorder, making them come alive. His wife sees him with one of his creations, and thinks he's cheating on her, so she yells at him. He tells her the truth, but she doesn't believe him. He opens a safe and reveals a bunch of tape that is labeled as his wifes. She laughs at him, thinking him crazy to think that she exists only because of some tape. She grabs the tape and throws it into the fire, to proove that he's wrong. She dissapears, so the playwright brings back his other creation, and lives with her forever. Serling closes the show by saying it is a tale of fiction. The playwright says he's wrong, grabs some tape labeled "Rod Serling", throws it in the fire, and Serling dissaperas. It was Serling's first appearance on the show, the only time he interacted with the characters, and the only time he closed the show instead of opening it.

A Stop At Willoughby: A man who rides a train to work every day falls asleep and dreams of a beautiful town called Willoughby. Every time he dreams of it, he is on a different train, and is given the oppurtunity to step off the train and onto Willoughby, but every time, he is too late. He finally resolves that next time he has the dream, he will step off onto Willoughby. Next time he dreams, he does, and he is very welcomed and having a wonderful time. Switch back to reality, and the train conductor is explaining to the police, "I don't know what happened. Mentioned something about 'Willougby' and jumped off the train!" The police are shown carrying his body into a car, and as the slam the door, the paint on the car doors is revealed to say: "Willoughby and Sons Funeral Services."

I Shot An Arrow Into The Sky: Three astronauts are stranded on a barren planet after their spaceship crashes. They have a very limited supply of water, so one of them kills the other two so he can have their water. As the first one is dying, he tries to tell them something about a telephone poll, but dies in the process. After the man has killed both his fellow astronauts, he hikes up a large hill, and sees a large city, with a sign saying "Welcome to Reno, Nevada!"

[pixie_twinkle 48]

Easy for me, this has to be Time Enough At Last. Perfect story, great ending, and the acting (Burgess Meredith) is superb. I disagree with some of your choices, and you missed out a couple of great ones. I would have included:

The Hitchhiker (Very creepy!)

It's A Good Life (Even creepier!)

The Silence (Another great story, a touch of Roald Dahl to this one)

[indy4 155]

Ah, those were also great ones, especially It's A Good Life! There were many other great ones that I left out, these are merely the best of the best (IMHO, of course).

[artyjeffrey 20]

"Walking Distance." If you'd asked this one about ten years ago, I would've selected something like "I Shot an Arrow into the Air," or "Willoughby." But as I leave those teen years behind, the message of "Walking Distance" is pretty profound. Especially after you have a kid.

And Herrmann's score doesn't hurt.

[John Crichton 4]

Time Enough At Last: A man who loves to read, whose like begins to crumble and fall apart as people become frusterated at his wish to read, is the only survivor of a nuclear war. After a few days of wandering around in all the debris, he finally finds an entire stack of books from the library that survived, enough to last him several years. He rejoices, that there is time enough at last, before tripping on a step, causing his glasses to fall to the ground and break.

"Hey, my eyes aren't that bad, I can still read the large print books. Aaaagh! Good thing I can read braille. Aaaagh!"

[ChuckM 1]

I would say "Time Enough At Last" with "To Serve Man" coming in second.

[Red 75]

"Time Enough at Last"

"Eye of the Beholder"

"The Monsters are Due on Maple Street"

"The Howling Man" and "It's a Good Life" deserve mention as well.

[GoldsmithFanatic2000+ 0]

indy!!!

How could you leave out Little Girl Lost?! My personal all-time favourite episode, and I voted for it under "Other".

[indy4 155]

Eh, it's an okay episode. . . .

"Willoughby."

I forgot to add that one, that was a classic.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

Nightmare At 20,000 Feet.

Why? Probably because it's the only episode I've seen of The Twilight Zone.

[indy4 155]

You should defenetly see some more. The ones listed are all spectacular episodes, but there are other good ones out there.

Okay, after being reminded of Willougbhy and I Shot An Arrow Into the Sky, I had to put those up. They are truly classics in my mind.

[ChuckM 1]

Another pretty good one, although I don't know the name, is the one where the guy wrecks his car into an invisible wall, and ends up getting trapped in this town full of futuristic inventions.

[John Crichton 4]

Nightmare At 20,000 Feet.

Why? Probably because it's the only episode I've seen of The Twilight Zone.

That's one more than me. But I've watched The Scary Door a buch of times. Oh, and the Simpson's early Halloween up that ripped off that "cookbook" episode.

[indy4 155]

Another pretty good one, although I don't know the name, is the one where the guy wrecks his car into an invisible wall, and ends up getting trapped in this town full of futuristic inventions.

Are you sure that's not one of the new ones? Because I thought I had seen all the Twilight Zone Original Series (I taped them from the Sci-Fi Channel, so there's no way to know for sure), and I don't remember that one.

[Delorean90 42]

It's from the original series. That's actually one of the only ones I managed to catch when Sci-Fi had their annual New Year's marathon. I don't recall the title, though. Interesting episode, with a kind of bittersweet ending.

[BLUMENKOHL 1,068]

Undernourished Hitchcock vs. Hitchcock!

Alfred Hitchcock Presents vs. The Twilight Zone!

:::causing trouble:::

[Guest macrea]

These are all great episodes, so it's hard to choose. But any short list of great TZ episodes is incomplete without The Invaders! Brilliant visual storytelling carried entirely by the great Agnes Moorhead and Jerry Goldsmith. More than a terrific episode, it was terrific television and filmmaking.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

TV making, not film making....

[Delorean90 42]

Ah, yes! "The Invaders"! I had the fortune of seeing that and "Nightmare..." in the same night as a child with my father, and while there wasn't an explicit fear like one would get with a straight horror film or something, after that I do recall some uneasiness, especially when pulling back curtains, etc...

And the small town with the devices episode is "Valley of the Shadow."

[SomeNewGuy 0]

There's no possible way I could vote for one episode over another. Too many of them are too good.

[indy4 155]

And the small town with the devices episode is "Valley of the Shadow."

I Wikied that name, read Serling's intro, and immediatly remembered it. That is a good one, too.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

After reading the episode synopses, I can recall a lot of them, probably due to parodies and jokes and stuff. The only one I avidly remember seeing is Nightmare At 20,000 Feet, the one with John Lithgow though. I also remember one where there's this guy in a town and people want to lynch him because he's black, but he looks and says he's white.

[Red 75]

Those are both from Twilight Zone: The Movie.