Oy, gevalt, again with the lists??? 

Yes, indeed,  and it signifies a feverish recent Twilight Zone jones that as yet to be quenched.  I was thinking about the concept of the "top 10",  especially as it relates to something so impressively consistent as The Twilight Zone.  It seemed to me that,  with such a huge catalogue of good programmes,  that the penultimate 10 should be just as good, and, if anything,  more compelling for it's subtlety.  I was totally right.  These selections are just as beloved as my previous list,  and they beg the question, "why not do a 'top 20' list in the first place?".  A fair point,  but this is about the distillation of feeling,  and one can't get too picky about the details,  hahaha...

                        #20  KICK THE CAN

This is a childhood fave of mine.  As a 50 year old,  I laugh at myself back then;  I pitied old people for being old,  or being spent,  and really for the endless, dull waiting around for the inevitable.  In my way I was being magnanimous,  feeling sorry for those people who had lost what I had in abundance,  This episode really focused those feelings.

At this time of my life, this idea of elderly people playing kick the can to regain their lost youth is in no way possessing;  I'm fine where I am.  But, and its a mighty big but,  how will I feel in twenty more years?

      #19 STOPOVER IN A QUIET TOWN

One of the creepiest episodes in it's own way;  a fast-living couple recover from an alcoholic bender,  waking up in a town with no residents in sight.  It's no fun for them,  or the viewer, the entire way.

I had a day like this once, in Bellingham, Washington.  I got up,  the roommates were gone,  the neighbors were silent,  and no matter where I went,  there were not even cars on the street.  It was fifteen minutes before I saw even a single sign of life...it was a nasty wee chunk of time,

                     #18  ONCE UPON A TIME

The first time I saw this,  at maybe eight or nine years old,  I had no idea who Buster Keaton was;  it took a decade or more to reverse-engineer his identity, only to realise that the humourous elderly buffoon in this classic episode was actually a nostalgia figure at the time of this production.  I think of seeing the elderly Don Rickles on the Jimmy Kimmel show late nights. It brought back my memories of him on television during my childhood in the 70's, and I believe this Twilight Zone must have brought similar feelings of Keaton's silent films to people my age in 1961.  Great fun.

                          #17  THE SILENCE

This is a fun episode,  with a favourite theme of the show...that man who talks too much, and thus, must be punished.  There's also the setting of the gentlemen's club,  which shows up periodically.

The crux of this story, to me,  is the inherent humanity that exists even in those that society shuns;  that isolation that leads other members of the same society to believe that they can mistreat them with impunity.  Add to that the lengths that people will go in desperate situations, and you have a really dramatic setting. 

                  #16  DEAD MAN'S SHOES

A little corner fave of mine since childhood,  this story of a dead gangster's return for vengeance is a tidy and compelling ghost story with an almost M. R. Jamesian flair.

The only issue with the show is the casting of Warren Stevens as the hobo-turned-mafioso's avatar;  while he makes a wonderful 60's gangster,  he is far too 'put together' to be a convincing bum.  He does, however,  rock this episode quite hard...he's amazing.

                     #15  THE LAST FLIGHT

A time travel show featuring a lost WWI fighter pilot???  Deal me in!  This story of time, cowardice, and redemption is a lesson in friendship for the ages.    Being a WWI buff,  this really appeals;  though the "future" to which the pilot travels is very much in the past (both occurred before I was born),  it really shows how much of a different world that pilot came from than my own.

Watching a time traveler travel to a time that is in my history is a twist that adds to the fun.

      #14  THE ODYSSEY OF FLIGHT 33

Another in the "plane slips through time genre",  which,  to me at least, never gets old.  Having traveled quite a bit by plane,  I'll admit to hoping for such a trip many times on long flights!  The only issue,  for me,  with time travel in this manner,  is that there is no control over the destination.  Dinosaurs are fine,  the 1930's are also fine,  but if I'm going to be stuck with a bunch of strangers, I want to at least be in the gilded age when I do it!

A great script and a great cast makes this one to fully enjoy.

                           #13  THE HUNT

This one is close to my heart.  I grew up on a farm,  in the country,  I play banjo,  I had a faithful hound....the whole thing.  I'm also a fan of the Appalachian horror stories of the southern historian Manly Wade Wellman (a contributor to the show, even),  so this story of an old man, his dog and the Devil really hit home with me.

I remember roaming through the forest with my dog Smokey as a young teen;  I very much saw goblins and devils behind every tree!  Good thing Smokey was around...a faithful dog is a treasure.

#12 THE LAST RITES OF JEFF MYRTLEBANK

Another couplet in this little top ten poem of mine.  Another Appalachian ghost-type tale.  James Best is brilliant here as a son/neighbor/sweetheart returned from the dead...but is he the same?  It's actually very creepy in it's way.

The framework of the pacing is very sophisticated for such a simple story;  there is very much a strong push and pull tension between scenes.  I really like this feel, too.  The Appalachians are ripe for stories of this sort.

                         #11  BACK THERE

Well,  here it is,  the episode that kicked off this second list!

The setting, initially a gentleman's club (another couplet in the poem), after a debate about the possibilities of changing the past,  our chap is given the opportunity to do just that. 

So well done.

Our man here ended up in the same situation as most time travelers who try to save Abraham Lincoln from death...complete failure.  There's something about time that simply does not want to give up this particular ghost!

Ok,  that's it,  I promise.  Any more than this,  and I might as well write about the entire series!

It's rare for me to give the personal approval to a later incarnation of a beloved something.  The "new" this-or-that,  and so forth.  To me, the thing is the thing,  and once the line has been broken,  any later incarnation is a different critter, with all the responsibilities of any new enterprise;  it must make it's name in the world upon it's own merit.  Very rarely are the later things worthy of the original.  Ravi Coltrane is no John Coltrane,  The Phantom Menace is no A New Hope (I'll not mention the so-called "new" Star Wars catastrophe, which is basically a remake of A New Hope crossed with Driving Miss Daisy),  and, of course, the apocalyptically ill-considered remake of Ghostbusters...with an un-required gender-reassignment.

Sick-making, across the board.

Enter the 1985 horror/sci-fi anthology series,  The Twilight Zone.  I heartily admit from the start that it doesn't deserve the name;  it has so little to do with the Rod Serling original in either tone or execution that any name would have done,  and that, overall,  it doesn't rise above the level of watchable..  I'm sure the producers were,  as producers have done in the past, capitalising on the credibility of the original franchise.  Normally it would scratch at my soul with daemonic fervor,  but for a few very charming episodes.  A Message From Charity is one of those,  and is the most charming of all.

Based on a short story by pulp magazine writer William M. Lee,  it is a unique combination of the classic time travel and mental telepathy themes  Set in both colonial America and "modern" times (1985 seems like 1885 at this point), the story centers around a lovely colonial teen girl named Charity Paine (she was preteen in the story), and a handsome, but bookish, teen named Peter Wood.  In their respective eras,  each is seriously ill from a common source;  a bacterial infection from the local water.  During this illness,  each is somehow connected to the other telepathically through the ages;  what others mistake for delerium is actually what each is seeing in the other time in a fever state.  When the illness subsides,  they discover each other,  and they begin to converse.  It's love at first sight.

Peter Shares his modern world with Charity,  and they bond over innocently sensual experiences. He eats ice cream, and she tastes it;  he drinks a little wine with his father at dinner, and she gets tipsy, leading her father to believe her to be ill again.  They see each other in mirrored surfaces (he through a bedroom mirror,  and her on the surface of a pool at the edge of a brook),  and a sweet first love emerges.  The downside of this sharing quickly becomes a danger to Charity, as the future things she recounts to a female friend brings her into the reach of a witch trial...both Peter and Charity will have to think fast to get out of the grip of the magistrate, wot?

Kerry Noonan as Charity and Duncan McNeill as Peter were both brilliant.  Noonan was amazingly demure and strong in equal measure, and McNeill played the earnest and open young fellow with a likeable energy.  James Cromwell,  a character actor in a number of major films (L.A. Confidential springs to mind),  was very good as well, atop a small, yet charismatic cast.  Kerry Noonan is an instructor at a university these days,  after what seems to have been a small acting career.  This is the sort of story that blesses even a short career;  she was the perfect choice for this part. 

I was really impressed with the concise and clean progression of the story.  It has really become one of my oft-watched TV episodes, those that I put on when bored and in need of a pleasant time-passer.  I highly recommend it for a lazy Sunday afternoon,  especially if it is raining, and cold enough to sit under a light quilt in a well-favoured chair.

It will warm you up, of that I am certain.

I usually don't like to write about the most famous things in our culture...really, some things have simply been written to death. Why write about them, unless it's about a personal connection?  IMDB already has the details.   On the other hand, I do like making timelines and lists,  and I'm always looking for an excuse to do so.  I was going through my digital files of the complete Twilight Zone episodes, and I started to think about my favourites. It was odd, but a few were quite personal. Most, in fact, resonated with various aspects of my inner self quite closely, and have been favoured since I was age 8-10. These fit in with my general affinity with the subjects of time travel, immortality, alternate/parallel universes, and so on.

Here's my list of favourite episodes, in order.

                     # 10  IT'S A GOOD LIFE

This final episode would make the top of many 'best of' lists, and for good reason. Bill Mumy plays that omnipotent little boy psychopath, Anthony Freemont, the little monster with the ability to read thoughts, create monsters, eliminate entire parts of the universe, and, chillingly, has the power to banish anyone he doesn't like into “the cornfield”. Like “Living Doll, this episode is truly scary, and it doesn't get any less so over the years. In the later incarnation of the Twilight Zone, he reprised his role in 'It's Still a Good Life'. As a kid I also imagined having such powers, from levitation to mind reading, but it became terrifying when I imagined those things given to someone else. A good lesson here.

                      # 9 LIVING DOLL

Who doesn't love this episode? The terrifying little girl's doll, Talkie Tina, takes control of a household and terrorises Telly Savalas (with hair, even!). “My name is Talkie Tina, and I don't like you”, is something that I never personally want to hear. Frightening to the extreme. I'll admit, for the record, that dolls and Ventriloquist dummies scare the tar out of me, most notably the trailer for the 1978 Anthony Hopkins thriller MAGIC, which scarred my ten-year-old brain for life.

                            Evil, evil, evil, EVIL!!!!

               #8   THE BEWITCHIN' POOL

A little girl and boy escape from their bellicose parents into a magical world beyond the bottom of their swimming pool. It's a Utopian children's realm; a mystical Mark Twain fantasy with fishing holes and forests, whose caretaker, the motherly Aunt T., makes pies and cakes, and doles out bits of wisdom to all in her charge. As a country boy with similarly bickering grownups around (divorcing just a few years after my first viewing of this episode), I often escaped into the forests with it's streams and ponds, looking for such a wonderful place

                  #7  TO SERVE MAN

                                It's a cookbook!

This episode is a futuristic display of the credibility of the saying, “beware Greeks bearing gifts”. An alien race comes to Earth, promising to lead humans into a perfect future, and they leave a book written in an alien language. Lloyd Bochner plays a code breaker brought in to decipher the tome. In a tragedy of timing, just as he boards a ship going to the alien home planet, he finds out what, or should I say, who, is on the menu. A great little science fiction treat!

Note to aliens: I taste bad. Move on.

                    #6  QUEEN OF THE NILE

A reporter goes to interview and Elizabeth Taylor-like actress, who is apparently supposed to be stunningly beautiful (I never thought so, but I've never found Taylor that attractive, either). As the episode continues, her mother is revealed as her daughter, and our curious chap is reduced to dust by an ancient Egyptian scarab, who has transferred the poor man's youth to our vamp...a former Queen of the Nile. The combo of ancient Egypt and immortality, I've loved it since early childhood.

Apparently the reports of her death were greatly exaggerated.

                      #5  LITTLE GIRL LOST

I really love this one. A little girl and her dog are lost in another dimension, having crawled through a (rapidly closing) hole in her bedroom wall. Her distraught parents enlist the aid of a physicist friend, hoping to bring their precious child back. A great story, which finds quite a bit of support in actual current science, not to mention current science fiction.

I've looked for inter-dimensional doorways ever since, but, as yet, I've not found one. Check back from time to time...just in case.

             #4  THE HOWLING MAN

Beware of ancient Gothic castles with hirsute Monks within, for they may contain the Devil himself!



Not much more needs to be said, wot?

            #3  A STOP AT WILLOUGHBY

The story of a man trying to escape the rigours of modern life into the past is an oft-repeated theme on the Twilight Zone; Rod Serling must have had these issues himself, I think. In this one, a man with a battleaxe of a wife and a torturer of an employer finds solace on his commute to and from work. As he naps on the train, he awakes each time to see the quaint, turn of the century town Willoughby; a beatific place of band concerts in the square, with the nostalgic slower pace of life that he so longed for. I myself have sought that (and even found it for a couple of years), so I sympathise with this poor fellow.

#2  LONG LIVE WALTER JAMESON

Immortality again! Walter Jameson, who has lived for two thousand years, is found out by a professor friend, the father of his current fiance. Walter reveals that eternal life is a drag, like a very long day made immortal. It's an amazing story, and very similar to my introduction to old time radio, in the form of Arthur Conan Doyle's story 'The Ring of Thoth' (which I wrote about HERE).

Though I don't know from experience, I disagree with Jameson; I would LOVE another few thousand years!

              #1  WALKING DISTANCE

And the final entry, here at last, is the king of the hill for me.   Martin Sloan (played by Gig Young) is a man burned out my big city life and his fast-paced career. In an escape burst, he ends up within walking distance of his home town. Of course, this being the Twilight Zone, he ends up walking into his own past, complete with his parents and his ten-year-old self. As the episode rolls on, the adage, “you can't go home”. Is made starkly clear. I initially enjoyed this for the time travel aspect, but as I've grown into middle age, I've witnessed the reality of the story.

Special shout out to Frank Overton, who plays his father.

This show is a cultural behemoth.  I have rarely met anyone that doesn't love it,  and I've met a great many who have confessed that it has had a profound impact on the way that they look at life.  I am one of those.  I've been made to see deeper into various episodes of my life,  and also,  from time to time,  have been able to inject a little magical spice into otherwise humdrum moments.  That a show can have that kind of effect on a person is a testament to Rod Serling and his amazingly sharp ability to tell a story.  After all, aren't our lives just stories, after all?  

Let's just hope that we're not on an alien menu anytime soon, wot?

ADDENDUM

                             (hypothetical)

                  #11  BACK THERE

I'm not saying that there is a number eleven on this list,  for, after all,  this is a Top Ten list,  but if there were,  it would have to be this one.   It involves a modern man, who, after a discussion about the nature of time travel and the changing of history,  gets the opportunity to do just that.  It's a common subset of the time travel mythos,   in which modern people show a strong desire to save the life of Abraham Lincoln. 

It really speaks to how pleasant his legacy is to the average American.