Taking Sides: The Twilight Zone vs. The Outer Limits

The Twilight Zone: The Definitive Edition (Seasons 1 through 5) (Image, unrated)
While relying a bit too much on time travel and the whole who-are-the-real-aliens-in-this-episode trick, The Twilight Zone remains the standard in sci-fi anthologies. These five sets do the show justice, featuring Rod Serling sales pitches, an alternate version of the pilot, commentaries, radio dramas, and — most fascinatingly — Serling's own harsh assessment of a few episodes, courtesy of college lectures. Among his critiques: ''It was a failure,'' he says of the pilot. ''This has gotten bacteria on it with the years.'' About ''And When the Sky Was Opened'': ''Dumb, rotten, dumb, stupid, narrow, idiotic expository line that comes to you larded with bulls---.'' And my personal favorite (also about ''Sky''): ''That final scene was so bad and so obvious and so wrong that it left a slight skunk scent over what went before it.'' Smells good to me.

I wrote the post office about a Serling postage stamp but I haven't seen one yet.

If you think he deserves a postage stamp, sign here:
http://www.petitiononline.com/petition/petition.html

IT'S A COOKBOOK!

Even little children who have never ever seen the show know that this came from "The Twilight Zone".

That was the short film adaptation of Ambrose Bierce's An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge, which was also the 1964 Oscar winner for Best Short Subject, Live Action. It is included on the Season 5 DVD set.

Yeah, but the actual episode that punchline comes from is boring. I expect that the little children who actually watched the show were more shocked/horrified/scarred for life by the crazy shit that goes on in "It's a Good Life", and by the monster appearing at the window in "Nightmare" (and Shatner freaking out about it).

Closing Narration: "Portrait of a losing side, proof positive that you can't outpunch machinery. Proof also of something else: that no matter what the future brings, man's capacity to rise to the occasion will remain unaltered. His potential for tenacity and optimism continues, as always, to outfight, outpoint and outlive any and all changes made by his society, for which three cheers and a unanimous decision rendered from the Twlight Zone."

"I SAY IT'S DOGGEREL."

WALTER: You will not call the doctor. If you had any imagination at all, you'd find some way for me to get some excitement out of all?this. I've been in subway crashes, bus accidents, major fires. I've even drunk poison here. Nothing! You know what I think I'll do? I think I'll go up on the roof and I'll jump down the light well. Straight smack dab down the light well! Fourteen stories just for the excitement of it.
ETHEL: Walter, please, come back to the apartment. I'll make you potato pancakes. Remember, you used to always love potato pancakes.
WALTER: Ethel, you are a potato pancake. You're as tasteless as a potato pancake. Now leave me alone.

http://www.rodserling.com/binghamton.htm

I won't try arguing on behalf of Night Gallery as a whole, but there was one episode — with some nightmare carousel and a lot of fisheye closeups of the wild-eyed wooden horses, lots of heavy screechy music — that scared me out of my wits, and I guess really put me off the horror genre.

Best of Night Gallery and 80s Twilight Zone

shudder! so otm!

And YES Tim, the marathons on KTLA (now WB "network") were the best! Now that the WBs in a bit of money trouble and might be selling off some stations, might we see the return of the independent TV stations in metro markets????wonder if they would survive if revived??) but I digress.... the marathons were the best!!! KTLA had a huge archive of shows on Kine; don't know what happened to it all tho. Sad.

That wasn't Coburn-- that was Lee Marvin being a hard ass!

x-post: I know I did-- along with The Cold Equations, Mimsy Were the Borogroves, and all the other good stuff that was in that thing! I'm sorry that I got rid of my copy!

I nearly died.

The Outer Limits rules.

The Season 4 hour-longs really can't sustain the weight of the extra length tho. Watched more than a couple now and they always seem stretched out, thin...

plus the theme music = greatest theme music ever, surely?

ken l - i read "it's a good life" in the science fiction hall of fame

having spent the last two months watching the outer limits box with my wife, i've decided that the outer limits is better, and that comparing the two is like comparing douglas sirk to m night shyamalan

more on this later

basically andy-- nailed it upthread when he said that given an hour, the outer limits had much more to work with and aspired to much more. yes, the outer limits often boiled down to guys in skinny ties and army uniforms and lab coats standing around talking intensely about human nature. but there are so many inspired performances in the outer limits, so many wonderful scripts, so many elemental conflicts and fantastic sets. to me, the twilight zone is nothing but a bunch of twists. it's a quick setup followed by a minor payoff. but when the outer limits worked - and sure, about 1/3rd of the time it didn't - it was like watching a hitchcock or sam fuller movie in miniature. the outer limits dudes were always focused on using the monsters and situations as a way to talk about people and society and the conflicts of human nature that drove them and that makes it a show that can't just be reduced to a plot synopsis, and it makes it worth watching over and over again.

I think that the best TW episodes were better than the best Outer Limits episodes (and also about human nature/fear of the unknown or whatever), but that there are a lot more really lame TW episodes than there are boring Outer Limits episodes. But I've seen just about every Twilight Zone episode but only about half of the Outer Limits (including most of the ones that are supposed to be the best).

I have never watched more than a few episodes of Twilight Zone, so I have no well-formed opinion of it.

OTH, I watched Outer Limits when it was new. It never made a very deep impression on me, except the opening credits, which were ace. The program never measured up to the opening, though.

So recently a TV show called "One Step Beyond" popped up on Netflix streaming. It's aired from 1959 to 1961 and it's wonderful: creepy Twilight Zone-like stories that are all supposedly based on actual accounts. So it's TZ meets ghosts stories and urban legends. Awesome. I've been loving it.

I'm a bit of a TZ fanatic. And yet I don't think I've ever even *heard* of One Step Beyond, even though it pre-dates TZ by about a year and features an on-screen narrator doing the exact same schtick as Rod Serling. There are 96 episodes of this show. Wha-what?

p sure this was in syndicated reruns in ye olde tymes, but don't think i ever watched it.

Check Madness' great "One--Step---Beyonnnd"(sax bawls, ska grooves ensure). Some of the hour-long 60s and 80s T-Zones are good; ditto Outer Limits. The 80s versions of both maybe didn't have the 60s peaks, but in general more skillfully constructed suspense/atmosphere/action around the Teachable Moments, seemed like. Cool thread. ( Also, we've discussed some of the best Twilight Zone writers, like Matheson, Beaumont, and Bixby [who wrote the orig. "It's A Good Life"] on ILB's Rolling Fantasy etc)

Madness' track was based on the series announcer's tagline I think, but yeah been a long time since I've seen it too.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IRUCs_1sjY0/UNaW8Hj-w-I/AAAAAAAAAUU/XVB5pHukXdA/s1600/outer+limits+2.png

https://thiswastv.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/trent_consuelo_hand.png

never really saw the Outer Limits episodes growing up. heard about them, but that show was never syndicated quite as rabidly as TZ. bought a DVD set of Season 1 and downloaded the rest. it's doing my head in just how critical this show must have been, and the strongest episodes are among the weirdest television that ever aired: 'dont open till doomsday', 'the guests', & sure yes 'demon with a glass hand'

even the particularly underscripted, slow moving episodes still have at least one moment. try to even imagine what it would have been like to be one of the people tuning in halfway through 'a feasibility study' without any preparation, what in the lovely world is even happening there

https://archive.org/details/TheOuterLimits1963S01E32
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Outer_Limits_episodes

intersting choice now provided in the OP

Big yawning cat all the way, man!

The monster inside the 'Don't Open 'Til Doomsday' box feels so effing proto-Lynchian it isn't even funny.

I have way too many anthology show DVD sets and haven't delved far enough into any of them (although I have, naturally, seen a lot of random episodes on TV at some point or another) to make a definitive judgment about the superiority of one over another. Both of these shows are great when they're firing on all cylinders, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents is right up there with them.

(I figured the revive was regarding the impending Outer Limits blu-ray releases, which was just announced I think today.)

"... and the hand... my hand... told me what to do."

https://youtube/hSWMPbB-coY

"This episode [Demon With the Glass Hand] was first transmitted in the United Kingdom on BBC Two on Friday, 28 March 1980."

Cabaret Voltaire's album "The Voice of America" was recorded March-April 1980.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSWMPbB-coY