10 Great, Thought-Provoking TWILIGHT ZONE Episodes
Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone is one of my favorite shows of all time. It's one of the few shows that I watch on a constant loop. The series is filled with thought-provoking episodes, and some of the best episodes are ones that make you think about the implications of the story and what it means for the characters and how it relates to our own lives.
I wanted to point out ten of the best episodes of The Twilight Zone that have left a lasting impression on me, episodes that made me think about things long after it ended. I hope that you take the time to revisit these became many of them are still relevant even today. Hell, some are more relevant now than when they first aired!
The Eye of The Beholder - Season 2 Episode 6
Opening Narration:
Suspended in time and space for a moment, your introduction to Miss Janet Tyler, who lives in a very private world of darkness. A universe whose dimensions are the size, thickness, length of the swath of bandages that cover her face. In a moment we will go back into this room, and also in a moment we will look under those bandages. Keeping in mind of course that we are not to be surprised by what we see, because this isn't just a hospital, and this patient 307 is not just a woman. This happens to be the Twilight Zone, and Miss Janet Tyler, with you, is about to enter it.
The Eye of the Beholder centers on a woman named Janet Taylor who is recovering from multiple surgeries that are supposed to make her look like everyone else. When she wakes up, bandages cover her face and through most of the episode, she is waiting to remove the bandages to see her new face. However, she is horrified to see that she still looks "ugly."
What makes this episode so thought-provoking is the idea that we all have different standards of beauty and what one person may find attractive, another person may find repulsive. This episode makes you think about the way that we view beauty and the standards that we set for ourselves and others.
While the twist is surprising with the beautiful people are considered ugly and Janet is sad that the surgery didn't work, there is a happy ending for her. You see, the "beautiful" people are ruled over by a despot and the "ugly" Janet is exiled with those of her own kind and saved by the oppressive world of the beautiful people.
Closing Narration:
Now the questions that come to mind: "Where is this place and when is it?" "What kind of world where ugliness is the norm and beauty the deviation from that norm?" You want an answer? The answer is it doesn't make any difference, because the old saying happens to be true. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, in this year or a hundred years hence. On this planet or wherever there is human life – perhaps out amongst the stars – beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Lesson to be learned in the Twilight Zone.
The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street - Season 1 Episode 22
Opening Narration:
Maple Street, U.S.A., late summer. A tree-lined little world of front porch gliders, barbecues, the laughter of children, and the bell of an ice cream vendor. At the sound of the roar and the flash of light, it will be precisely 6:43 P.M. on Maple Street. This is Maple Street on a late Saturday afternoon. Maple Street in the last calm and reflective moment –before the monsters came.
The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street focuses on a neighborhood that is terrorized by a "monster." The residents of the neighborhood start to turn on each other as they try to figure out who the monster is. It's like The Thing meets The Andy Griffith Show.
The episode leans into the idea of how easily we can turn on each other when we're scared. This episode makes you think about the way that we react in times of crisis and how we're willing to believe the worst about people. It may be true that “the world is filled with Maple Streets.”
Closing Narration:
The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices... to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill... and suspicion can destroy... and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own—for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone.
Number 12 Looks Just Like You - Season 5 Episode 17
Opening Narration:
Given the chance, what young girl wouldn't happily exchange a plain face for a lovely one? What girl could refuse the opportunity to be beautiful? For want of a better estimate, let's call it the year 2000. At any rate, imagine a time in the future where science has developed the means of giving everyone the face and body he dreams of. It may not happen tomorrow, but it happens now, in The Twilight Zone.
Number 12 Looks Just Like You offers commentary on society’s obsession with physical appearance. The story centers on a young woman named Marilyn who is in a future society where at the age of 19, everyone has to go through a process known as "the Transformation," in which each person's body is changed to a physically attractive design chosen from a selection of numbered models.
This ensures that everybody looks the same, more or less, and there are no unacceptable “deviations.” Marilyn decides not to undergo the Transformation and everyone is confused as to why she won't conform.
The episode plays with the idea of leaders of society forcing people to conform to something they don't believe in or want. It makes you think about the way that we conform to societal norms and the pressure that we feel when we don't want to do what everyone else is doing.
Closing Narration:
Portrait of a young lady in love - with herself. Improbable? Perhaps. But in an age of plastic surgery, body building and an infinity of cosmetics, let us hesitate to say impossible. These, and other strange blessings, may be waiting in the future, which, after all, is The Twilight Zone.
Walking Distance - Season 1 Episode 5
Opening Narration:
Martin Sloan, age thirty-six. Occupation: vice-president, ad agency, in charge of media. This is not just a Sunday drive for Martin Sloan. He perhaps doesn't know it at the time, but it's an exodus. Somewhere up the road he's looking for sanity. And somewhere up the road, he'll find something else.
Walking Distance is one of my favorites. In the episode, a man named Martin ends up finding himself in his hometown from when he was a child and finds that everything is just as it was when he was a child. As Martin walks to the town park, he is startled to see himself as a young boy, carving his name into the bandstand exactly as he did years ago.
Scholars of the Twilight Zone, along with Serling’s daughter Anne, believe it was one of the most autobiographical and personal episodes for Serling. He always dreamed of going back to Binghamton, his hometown, where he had often enjoyed the carousel at the park near his home. So this episode was his journey back to the simpler times of his childhood.
The episode plays with the idea of nostalgia and how we often look back at our childhood fondly. The episode makes you think about the importance of memories and how our memories can shape who we are. Martin is the original manchild: so desperate to stay in the past that he's willing to derail his future.
Closing Narration:
Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice-president in charge of media. Successful in most things but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives—trying to go home again. And also like all men, perhaps there'll be an occasion, maybe a summer night sometime, when he'll look up from what he's doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of the people and the places of his past. And perhaps across his mind there'll flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. And he'll smile then too, because he'll know it is just an errant wish, some wisp of memory not too important really, some laughing ghosts that cross a man's mind, that are a part of the Twilight Zone.
The Obsolete Man - Season 2 Episode 29
Opening Narration:
You walk into this room at your own risk, because it leads to the future, not a future that will be but one that might be. This is not a new world, it is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advances, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like every one of the super-states that preceded it, it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace. This is Mr. Romney Wordsworth, in his last forty-eight hours on Earth. He's a citizen of the State but will soon have to be eliminated, because he's built out of flesh and because he has a mind. Mr. Romney Wordsworth, who will draw his last breaths in The Twilight Zone.
The Obsolete Man is another one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes. In the episode, a man named Romney Wordsworth is put on trial by the government because he is deemed "obsolete." His professed occupation as a Librarian is punishable by death as the State has eliminated books.
Romney doesn't go down without a fight, though, and as he is waiting to be blown up on live TV, he delivers an epic speech about the importance of knowledge and how it can never be replaced, and in the process, he gets the best form of revenge on the Chancellor.
Closing Narration:
The chancellor, the late chancellor, was only partly correct. He was obsolete. But so is the State, the entity he worshipped. Any state, entity, or ideology becomes obsolete when it stockpiles the wrong weapons: when it captures territories, but not minds; when it enslaves millions, but convinces nobody. When it is naked, yet puts on armor and calls it faith, while in the Eyes of God it has no faith at all. Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man...that state is obsolete. A case to be filed under "M" for "Mankind" - in The Twilight Zone.
Death's Head Revisited - Season 3 Episode 9
Opening Narration:
Mr. Schmidt, recently arrived in a small Bavarian village which lies eight miles northwest of Munich... a picturesque, delightful little spot one-time known for its scenery, but more recently related to other events having to do with some of the less positive pursuits of man: human slaughter, torture, misery and anguish. Mr. Schmidt, as we will soon perceive, has a vested interest in the ruins of a concentration camp—for once, some seventeen years ago, his name was Gunther Lutze. He held the rank of a captain in the SS. He was a black-uniformed strutting animal whose function in life was to give pain, and like his colleagues of the time, he shared the one affliction most common amongst that breed known as Nazis... he walked the Earth without a heart. And now former SS Captain Lutze will revisit his old haunts, satisfied perhaps that all that is awaiting him in the ruins on the hill is an element of nostalgia. What he does not know, of course, is that a place like Dachau cannot exist only in Bavaria. By its nature, by its very nature, it must be one of the populated areas... of the Twilight Zone.
Death's Head Revisited is a powerful episode of The Twilight Zone the story of which centered on a former SS officer named Gunther Lutze who visits the Dachau concentration camp a decade and a half after World War II. While there, he smugly and sadistically recalls the torment he inflicted on the inmates. He is then haunted by them and when called out for his inhumane actions, Lutze just says he was following orders.
Lutze ends up being put through the same horrors he imposed on the inmates in the form of tactile illusions, including being shot by machine guns at the gate, hanging by the gallows, and tortured. He is left with these final words, "This is not hatred. This is retribution. This is not revenge. This is justice. But this is only the beginning, Captain. Only the beginning. Your final judgment will come from God."
What makes this episode makes you think about the lasting impact of war and how the victims of war never really heal or rest.
Closing Narration:
There is an answer to the doctor's question. All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes – all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God's Earth.
The Masks - Season 5 Episode 25
Opening Narration:
Mr. Jason Foster, a tired ancient who on this particular Mardi Gras evening will leave the Earth. But before departing, he has some things to do, some services to perform, some debts to pay—and some justice to mete out. This is New Orleans, Mardi Gras time. It is also the Twilight Zone.
In this episode, a group of wealthy family members are invited to a Mardi Gras party by Jason Foster, the weathly patriarch to a family horrible mean-spirited people. Jason explains that in order to recieve his inheritance, they have to wear grotesque masks until the stroke of midnight.
These masks have a voodoo curse that causes each person to become the idealized version of themselves, and when the masks are removed their faces are changed to look like the masks they were wearing.
This episode touches on the idea of appearances vs. reality and how we often present ourselves in a way that is different from how we really are. It also touches on the idea of greed and how it can lead to terrible things. This episode messed me up as a kid!
Closing Narration:
Mardi Gras incident, the dramatis personae being four people who came to celebrate and in a sense let themselves go. This they did with a vengeance. They now wear the faces of all that was inside them—and they'll wear them for the rest of their lives, sad lives now to be spent in shadow. Tonight's tale of men, the macabre and masks, on the Twilight Zone.
The Changing of the Guard - Season 3 Episode 37
Opening Narration:
Professor Ellis Fowler, a gentle, bookish guide to the young, who is about to discover that life still has certain surprises, and that the campus of the Rock Spring School for Boys lies on a direct path to another institution, commonly referred to as the Twilight Zone.
This episode follows Professor Ellis Fowler, an elderly English literature teacher at the Rock Spring School, a boys' prep school, who is forced into retirement after teaching for 51 years and feels he hasn't accomplished anything worthwhile. This is one of the most moving episodes that I remember.
Fowler is deeply depressed, and he contemplates killing himself on Christmas Eve next to a statue of the famous educator Horace Mann, with its quote "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." Before he can go through with it, though, He's called back to his classroom by a phantom bell, where he is visited by ghosts of several boys who were his students, all dead, several of whom died heroically.
These ghosts tell Fowler that he did make a difference in their lives and that he inspired them to do great things. The episode ends with Fowler's realization that his life has had meaning after all and he decides to live. It's a beautiful episode about finding hope in the face of despair.
Closing Narration:
Professor Ellis Fowler, teacher, who discovered rather belatedly something of his own value. A very small scholastic lesson, from the campus of the Twilight Zone.
Spur of The Moment - Season 5 Episode 21
Opening Narration:
This is the face of terror. Anne Marie Henderson, 18 years of age, her young existence suddenly marred by a savage and wholly unanticipated pursuit by a strange, nightmarish figure of a woman in black, who has appeared as if from nowhere and now, at driving gallop, chases the terrified girl across the countryside, as if she means to ride her down and kill her, and then suddenly and inexplicably stops to watch in malignant silence as her prey takes flight. Miss Henderson has no idea whatever as to the motive for this pursuit. Worse, not the vaguest notion regarding the identity of her pursuer. Soon enough, she will be given the solution to this twofold mystery, but in a manner far beyond her present capacity to understand, a manner enigmatically bizarre in terms of time and space - which is to say, an answer from... the Twilight Zone.
This episode of The Twilight Zone is brought up much, but it's actually quite haunting. The story centers on a young woman, Anne Marie Henderson, who is torn between two lovers. A well-to-do young man with a bright future ahead, the other a struggling young man from the wrong side of the tracks but with big dreams of making something out of himself.
She is set upon by a mysterious and terrifying woman dressed in black just hours before her marriage. Alternating between scenes set 25 years apart, she sees how things would have turned out with both of the men. The episode explores themes of regret and the danger of yielding to passion.
Closing Narration:
This is the face of terror. Anne Marie Mitchell, 43 years of age, her desolate existence once more afflicted by the hope of altering her past mistake - a hope which is unfortunately doomed to disappointment. For warnings from the future to the past must be taken in the past. Today may change tomorrow but once today is gone, tomorrow can only look back in sorrow that the warning was ignored. Said warning as of now stamped 'Not Accepted'- and stored away in the dead file, in the recording office... of the Twilight Zone.
The Old Man in The Cave - Season 5 Episode 7
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.
This was the first episode of The Twilight Zone scripted by Rod Serling. It tells a fascinating story set in a post-apocalyptic 1974, ten years after a nuclear holocaust in the United States. This is a cautionary tale about humanity's greed and the danger of questioning one's faith in forces greater than oneself. I like how it subverts common elements of the show.
Ten years after a nuclear war, a hamlet of survivors is discovered by a group of soldiers led by Major French, played by James Coburn. The "old guy in the cave" has kept these people alive, but French challenges the direction of their enigmatic leader. Of course, he learns a lesson.
What makes this episode so interesting is that it boosts faith in a higher power, a higher power that is pro-technology. That’s different for a series that features several stories about how technology will be the end of us.
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.
What are some of your favorite Twilight Zone episodes that made you think about things long after you watched them?