Go no further, if ye be not of great nerdly quality! Turn back, young errant knight, if statistics, charts and graphs be not thy thing, if numbers bore ye or waffling to the nth degree doth send thee into a coma.
Thou hast been warned. If thou art of stout heart and firm brain, proceed at thine own risk. If thou dost take no heed of these warnings, and doth possess not the stomach for such arcane knowledge, then
Statistics
I thought it might be interesting to look at some numbers, so here they are.
Quality of episodes
Based on my own rating system, here’s how they break down in season one:
A++
6
A+
6
A
13
A-
5
B+ or below
5
Admittedly, those are only based on my personal ratings, but overall this is still impressive reading. What we can see is that of the thirty-five episodes of season one, thirty of them all rated at the very least an A, and 12 rated A+ or higher. On the other end of the scale, a mere five fell below the high watermark I’ve come to expect of this series, and even though it doesn’t differentiate, I can tell you that only two of them were miserable C ratings. That’s pretty much unheard of for a show starting off, especially one tackling a premise that had been, pretty much untouched up to then. Try this with even the original
Star Trek and I guarantee you’ll get a lower figure of top quality or even very good episodes. It’s often hard for a show to find its feet, and its audience, in its first season, but from the outset
The Twilight Zone seems to have captured the imagination of its viewers, and would only go - mostly - from strength to strength as it was renewed for future seasons.
Themes
This is just a general thing. As each episode can be said to have, as shown in the reviews, several themes, I’m just choosing the main, overarching one (time travel, justice, crime etc) on which to base these.
Alienation: 26
Of course I’m going to explain and detail this figure.
Note: since i have a pain in my, um, face writing episode titles, I’m just going to use the abbreviations here. I’m sure it’ll be clear enough.
So…
WIE? The astronaut feels alienated here because he appears to be alone, cannot contact anyone and everyone around him seems frozen in time. From the beginning, a dark, scary, unsettling atmosphere is laid down which, while it will not be prevalent in every episode, will permeate the larger majority of them. Sometimes, as here, the alienation will be shown for what it is, something not necessarily to be frightened of, and sometimes, it will not.
MDOD: Surely the main character here feels alienated? Laughed at, abused, drunk most of the time and trying to get drunk the rest of the time, he has a memory of the man he used to be, but nobody cares and it seems unlikely to him that he will ever be that man again.
TSMS: Barbara feels cut off from the world (truth is, she has cut herself off from it) and unable to face a cruel and changed outside, where nothing is how it used to be. She longs for the old days, and feels a stranger in this time.
WD: Our man here feels a stranger, too, in his own past, unable to make anyone understand or accept who he is, unable to change that past, longing for it yet knowing it to be long gone. He’s like a ghost, flitting through the memories of his own childhood.
EC: Bedeker I guess feels a kind of alienation too, possibly twice: the first time when he thinks he is dying of everything under the sun, then when he makes his deal and finds nothing can kill him, but more to the point, nothing can excite him any more. Hard to feel any sympathy for the selfish old bastard though.
TL: A man who certainly feels alienated, in every sense of the word, is Corry, imprisoned on his own personal asteroid without another human being to keep him company.
TEAL: Hard to say whether Henry Bevis feels alienated, but given that nobody wants to hear about his books, I guess you’d have to say yes. He certainly feels that way after the world is destroyed and he’s the only person (apparently) left alive.
PTD: Edward Hall feels very alienated, as nobody will believe he is being hunted in his dreams by a psychopathic murderer.
JN: Although he doesn’t initially know why, Lanser feels he should not be where he is, and knows something terrible is about to happen. He can’t explain this to anyone or get them to understand, so in his fear he is alone.
AWTSWO: Forbes feels a growing sense of alienation and fear, as his memories don’t tally with anyone else’s, and events seem to be changing at a rapid rate.
ISAAITA: The crew all feel alienated, having crashed and believing themselves lost on some asteroid millions of miles from home.
THH: Unable to convince anyone of the sinister intentions of the hitch-hiker, Nan Adams feels increasingly alienated and alone.
TLF: Thrown forward in time, Lt. Decker feels very alienated and out of place in 1960.
TPT: Able, through no fault of his, to see which of the men are to die, Fitz becomes alienated from his comrades, a pariah among them.
MI: Millicnet Barnes feels scared and isolated as weird things continue to happen around her, and even her new companion will not believe her.
TMADOMS: One by one, each suspect becomes alienated - literally - from his fellows as suspicion falls upon them.
AWOD: Trapped in a world which seems to be a movie set, Arthur Curtis feels a growing sense of alienation.
PAAAO: By the end of the episode, Conrad certainly feels alienated - again, literally - when he realises he is an exhibit in a Martian zoo!
EX: Like Decker in TLF, Caswell feels out of place and out of time when he is snatched from 1880 and brought into 1960.
TBTW: Bolie must feel alienated in a world in which he can no longer compete, in which he is washed up and forgotten about.
ANPTV: On his arrival in “Heaven”, Valentine feels very alienated, wondering what’s going on and how he is somehow in this great place? By the end, his alienation has taken on an entirely different complexion!
NAAC: As she begins to be disturbed by the presence of Marky, Helen feels alienated too.
ASAW: Gart Williams feels very alienated, both by his high-pressure job and by his cold, unsympathetic wife.
APFT: Like Bolie in TBTW, Joey Crown feels cut off from his erstwhile passion, alienated in a world that no longer seems to want him.
MB: After his guardian angel resets the day, Bevis begins to feel progressively more isolated from the people who had been his friends.
TAH: Unaware she is a dummy, Marsha feels alienated as things seem to get weirder for her in the shop.
Locations other than Earth: 6 (with caveats, see below)
Surprisingly, not that many. Or maybe not that surprisingly.
The Twilight Zone was not, after all, billed or sold as a space or science fiction show, and while, as time went on and its popularity - and presumably its working budget - increased, there would be more forays out into space and onto distant planets, here we wait a long time, relatively speaking, before we even see a story set off our homeworld, and there aren’t too many following it. I suppose as well it might have been that Serling, or the network, wished to avoid driving away those who were not “into” sci-fi, and who assumed they’d be watching a show where spacemen in unconvincing silver suits battled equally unconvincing monsters and flew unconvincing rocket ships into unconvincing starfields.
The Twilight Zone was always - and continues to be - first and foremost, about the story and the characters, and most times these can be handled on Earth, even in the present, as well as out on some godforsaken rock in space.
TL: This is of course the first, set on a desolate asteroid being used as a prison for one man. It also features, unsurprisingly, the first appearance of space ships, and again unsurprisingly, they’re pretty standard as to what film sci-fi was visualising them as. This is also one of the only stories concerning robotics, but more of that later.
TFTS: Although we’re made believe this is Earth, we find out at the very end, indeed in the last words of the episode, that it is some unidentified alien planet from which the people are fleeing, heading towards our homeworld.
EL: Strictly speaking, an asteroid, but still not the Earth, though it’s made look just like it, for the benefit of the rich, um, inhabitants.
PAAAO: Following the trend of the times, this is set on Mars, the first
Twilight Zone episode to be based there.
ANPTV: Technically speaking, I suppose, you could include this one, though whether Hell is Earth depends I guess on your own personal beliefs and experiences!
APFT: And similarly, given that most of it takes place in Limbo, maybe this could be considered too.
Revenge and/or Justice: 11
Sort of interchangeable in a way, revenge and justice tend to be fairly recurrent motifs in the show, since, as Serling likes to moralise, most if not all of the characters either end up getting revenge or being revenged upon, or finding justice or being brought to justice, one way or another. The clear message here is: crime does not pay and your sins will eventually find you out, sometimes in surprising, even terrifying ways.
EC: Probably the first in terms of the latter, where a selfish narcissist gets what’s coming to him.
TEAL: You could say I guess that Bemis gets his revenge in this one, though it’s a two-edged sword for him.
PTD: Certainly seems to involve revenge, though for what I don’t know.
JN: Justice and revenge in this one, if you consider God - assuming you believe Him to exist - to be a vengeful one. Or maybe it’s just karma. Or the Great Pixie. Whatever.
WYN: Certainly a sense of justice here - not quite revenge, as who can imagine such an inoffensive, friendly little man wishing ill on anyone? - but the bad guy gets his comeuppance in the end.
TFOUAD: Definitely justice here, for a man who has used and abused both people and personalities for his own ends.
ISAAITA: Justice for the remaining astronaut, when he sees he has killed his friends for nothing, and perhaps revenge for them from the grave.
LLWJ: Revenge here takes the shape of a gun held by a spurned wife, ending a life that has spanned more than two thousand years.
EX: Revenge and justice both loom large here, for both victims.
ANPTV: As they do here, with the ultimate revenge and the ultimate justice meted out after death.
NAAC: Revenge is had by Helen on her mother’s murderer and justice is finally seen to be done, the most final justice of all.