5. The Invaders (Season 2, Episode 15)
‘The Invaders’ centres around an old woman (Agnes Moorehead) who is exhausted after the day, and is resting in her dilapidated shack. Upon hearing strange noises, she goes upstairs to face some tiny alien invaders (Douglas Hayes with the voice) who have arrived in what appeared to be a spaceship. They completely terrorise the poor woman, despite their size, but she gets back at them, killing one in the process, following which they flee the scene. It is the conclusion that reveals how remarkably the assumed status quo was reversed in the episode. Moorehead’s strictly visual performance deserves special appreciation for conveying the horror only through gesticulation.
4. The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street (Season 1, Episode 22)
This Season 1 episode didn’t shy away from the grotesque at all, a patent theme of ‘The Twilight Zone’ in years to come. However, its version of the grotesque didn’t lie in a foreign entity, but rather in humanity’s own moral failings. The rustic setting opens up to a band of residents who act irrationally and suffer from a crisis of faith in the event of strange electrical outbursts. As the show would go on to show, the source may have been otherworldly, but the horror certainly wasn’t.
3. Time Enough At Last (Season 1, Episode 8)
In all of recorded history, there can be no greater bibliophile than Henry Bemis (Burgess Meredith) whose pitiable life revolved solely around reading books. He gets ridiculed constantly by his wife (Jacqueline deWit) and his boss at the bank (Vaughn Taylor), the former of whom gets so exasperated by his habits, she inks over his poetry book and then tears it apart as a cruel prank. Things drastically change when the whole world is wiped out due to a nuclear blast, but Bemis is safe because he took his lunch break in the bank’s vault. He finally has “time enough at last” to read all the books he possibly could, but the magnificent ending only solidifies the reputation of ‘The Twilight Zone’ as a thought-provoking show.
2. The Eye of the Beholder (Season 2, Episode 6)
‘The Eye of the Beholder’ presents a masterly twist on the classic adage, as it shows Janet Tyler (Maxine Stuart, Donna Douglas) seeking facial reconstruction surgery for the eleventh time as part of a desperate attempt to look “normal.” Backed by Serling’s peerless writing and William Tuttle’s consummate makeup work, this episode is a scathing indictment of shallow beauty standards, and wonderfully but tragically asserts that beauty truly IS in the eye of the beholder.
1. To Serve Man (Season 3, Episode 24)
‘To Serve Man’ remains one of the most enduring and acclaimed episodes of ‘The Twilight Zone’ and with good reason. The plot centres around a mystifying race of aliens called the Kanamits (Richard Kiel, as all of them look alike) landing on Earth with the seemingly benevolent motivations of solving all of mankind’s afflictions.
After a hurried meeting with the United Nations, they leave a book behind. Its title is translated as “To Serve Man”, apparently in line with their actions. Michael (Lloyd Bochner) is a cryptographer hired to decipher the book, and in the meantime, things do improve on Earth, with hunger and energy shortages eliminated entirely. However, it is Michael’s assistant, Patty (Susan Cummings) who delivers what is widely considered to be one of the greatest twists of all time. The episode offers a detailed and frank outlook on trusting external powers for one’s own wellbeing, which has sizeable political and social implications, and makes for some terrific television.
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