Another Dimension

The Twilight Zone premiered on this date in 1959. The show's creator, Rod Serling, had been a successful TV writer for several years, penning hard-hitting dramas that often ran afoul of the censors.

The show ran for five seasons, and it gave audiences an early glimpse at many future stars, including Robert Redford, Julie Newmar, William Shatner, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper, Peter Falk, Ron Howard, Leonard Nimoy, Burt Reynolds Jonathan Winters, and Carol Burnett. It also featured Hollywood legends like Buster Keaton, Art Carney, Ida Lupino, Dana Andrews, and Mickey Rooney.

In 1997, the episodes "To Serve Man" (meaning #2 of serve in the Oxford dictionary) and "It's a Good Life" (a 6 year old with godlike powers and a cornfield) were respectively ranked at 11 and 31 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time. Serling himself stated that his favorite episodes of the series were "Time Enough at Last" (in which a bookish Burgess Meredith finally has time to read after the nuclear apocalypse and breaks his glasses) and "The Invaders" (in which aliens apparently but not actually 6 inches tall do battle against an enraged Agnes Moorehead).

By the late 1950s, Rod Serling was a prominent name in American television. His successful television plays included Patterns (for Kraft Television Theater) and Requiem for a Heavyweight (for Playhouse 90), but constant changes and edits made by the networks and sponsors frustrated Serling. In Requiem for a Heavyweight, the line "Got a match?" had to be struck because the sponsor sold lighters; other programs had similar striking of words that might remind viewers of competitors to the sponsor, including one case in which the sponsor, Ford Motor Company, had the Chrysler Building removed from a picture of the New York City skyline.

But according to comments in his 1957 anthology Patterns, Serling had been trying to delve into material more controversial than his works of the early 1950s. This led to Noon on Doomsday for the United States Steel Hour in 1956, a commentary by Serling on the defensiveness and total lack of repentance he saw in the Mississippi town where the murder of Emmett Till took place. His original script closely paralleled the Till case, then was moved out of the South and the victim changed to a Jewish pawnbroker, and eventually watered down to just a foreigner in an unnamed town. Despite bad reviews, activists sent numerous letters and wires protesting the production.

Serling thought that a science-fictional setting, with robots, aliens and other supernatural occurrences, would give him more freedom and less interference in expressing controversial ideas than more realistic settings. "The Time Element" was Serling's 1957 pilot pitch for his show, a time travel adventure about a man who travels back to Honolulu in 1941 and unsuccessfully tries to warn everyone about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor. The script, however, was rejected and shelved for a year until Bert Granet discovered and produced it as an episode of Desilu Playhouse in 1958. The show was a great success and enabled Serling to finally begin production on his anthology series, The Twilight Zone. Serling's editorial sense of ironic fate in the writing done for the series was identified as significant to its success by the BFI Film Classics library which stated that for Serling "the cruel indifference and implacability of fate and the irony of poetic justice" were recurrent themes in his plots.

In addition to serving as the designated on-screen smoker, Serling wrote or co-wrote 92 of the 156 episodes for the series. He, Charles Beaumont, and science fiction author Richard Matheson were responsible for 127 episodes. With one exception, Serling never appeared on camera in any first season episode, doing voice over narration only. Science fiction author Ray Bradbury contributed several scripts for the series but only one, I Sing The Body Electric, was produced.

In spring 1962, The Twilight Zone was late in finding a sponsor for its fourth season and was replaced on CBS's fall schedule with a new hour-long situation comedy called Fair Exchange. In the confusion that followed this apparent cancellation, producer Buck Houghton left the series for a position at Four Star Productions. Serling meanwhile accepted a teaching post at Antioch College, his alma mater. Though the series was eventually renewed, Serling's contribution as executive producer decreased in its final seasons. His artful narrations had to be shot back-to-back against a gray background during his infrequent trips to Los Angeles.

In November 1962, CBS contracted Twilight Zone (now sans The) as a mid-season January replacement for Fair Exchange, the very show that replaced it in the September 1962 schedule. In order to fill the Fair Exchange time slot each episode had to be expanded to an hour, an idea which did not sit well with the production crew. "Ours is the perfect half-hour show... If we went to an hour, we'd have to fleshen our stories, soap opera style. Viewers could watch fifteen minutes without knowing whether they were in a Twilight Zone or Desilu Playhouse," Serling responded. He later claimed, "I was writing so much, I felt I had begun to lose my perspective on what was good and what was bad".

Even under these conditions, the final season contained several shows that stand out, including "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," and "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," based on a short story by Ambrose Bierce, which won the 1962 Best Short Film Oscar.

In late January 1964, CBS announced the show's cancellation. CBS head Jim Aubrey, an inveterate bean counter, had been cutting its budget for years and finally got tired of it. But Serling countered by telling the Daily Variety that he had "decided to cancel the network". ABC showed interest in bringing the show over to their network under the new name Witches, Warlocks and Werewolves, but Serling was not impressed. "The network executives seem to prefer weekly ghouls, and we have what appears to be a considerable difference in opinion. I don't mind my show being supernatural, but I don't want to be booked into a graveyard every week." Shortly afterwards Serling sold his 40% share in The Twilight Zone to CBS, leaving the show and all projects involving the supernatural behind him until 1969, when Night Gallery debuted. He was unaware of the syndication gold mine it would become. Two episodes have never been in syndication (both from season five): "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (a French short film, aired twice per agreement with the filmmakers) and "The Encounter" (which was pulled after its initial showing, due to the racial overtones).

Season 1: There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call The Twilight Zone.

Season 2: You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead—your next stop, the Twilight Zone.

Season 3: You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Your next stop...the Twilight Zone.

Seasons 4 and 5: You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas; you've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.