The Original Concept For THE TWILIGHT ZONE Episode "Nightmare At 20,000 Feet" Wasn't Much of a Nightmare
Here’s an interesting fun bit of Twilight Zone trivia that was recently pointed out to me that I thought I’d share. The Twilight Zone is one of my favorite shows of all time and the William Shatner episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" is a classic!
The episode focused on a passenger on an airline flight who notices a hideous creature walking around the wing of the plane while it is in flight and eventually starts tearing it apart. Everyone on board thinks the passenger is losing his mind.
Well, it turns out the original concept for this episode wasn’t really much of a nightmare. It was more like a very cool, lighthearted dream. The episode was directed by Richard Donner and written by Richard Matheson. During an interview with the Television Academy Foundation, Matheson shared the original concept for the story, saying:
"I was on an airplane, and I looked out, and it was all these fluffy clouds. And I thought, gee, what if I saw a guy skiing across that like it was snow? Because it looked like snow. And then, when I thought it over, that was not very scary, so I turned it into a gremlin out on the wing of the airplane. And it was published as a novel at first, and then I sold it to 'Twilight Zone.'"
Yeah, having a gremlin outside on the wing of a plan was a much better and more creepy choice. When I was a kid, whenever I flew on an airplane I would always look out on the wing to see if there was a gremlin out there walking on it. Luckily, I never saw one.
Matheson’s "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" was first published as a short story that appeared in the 1961 horror anthology "Alone by Night," edited by Michael and Don Congdon. Rod Serling picked it up for The Twilight Zone, and later on, George Miller also remade it as one of four main segments in The Twilight Zone: The Movie. Most recently, it was remade again for Jordan Peele’s The Twilight Zone reboot series. It was titled “Nightmare at 30,000 Feet” and it starred Adam Scott.