Trollheart

Fear: 22

It’s not at all surprising that in a show like The Twilight Zone, though not marketed as scary really, fear plays a large part; whether it’s fear due to not knowing what’s going on (or indeed, knowing exactly what’s gong on!), fear of discovery, fear of consequences, fear of being stalked, fear of realising something you suspect and do not want to be true, the shadow of fear stalks through at least this season, and surely subsequent ones, like a giant stalking thing. Sometimes those fears are realised, sometimes shown to be nothing to worry about, and sometimes left slightly ambiguous.

WIE? Again, fear plays a large part here, escalating to paranoia and eventual mental breakdown, the result of enforced and prolonged isolation.

MDOD: Again, fear is a factor here. Initially not so much, as Denton is too drunk to care what’s done to him or what’s said about him, but when he finds the gun and begins to regain his self-respect, the fear that his old reputation will come looking for him, forcing him to kill again (or be killed) surfaces.

TSMS: Barbara fears that her best days are gone, and they’re not coming back, and wonders how she is supposed to survive in this strange new world, while her agent fears for her sanity as she closets herself away with her memories. There’s fear, too, when he finds her gone and can’t understand where she has disappeared to, until he sees her on the screen.

EC: Fear only plays a short part in this one, when Bedeker has himself convinced that he, a perfectly healthy man, is dying. Later there is no fear as he is invulnerable and immortal, though right at the end he does fear being incarcerated for “life”, nobody realising how long his life is going to be.

TL: Corry fears he will never get off the asteroid, and then at the end he fears that he will not be able to take Alicia with him.

TEAL: For a relatively short moment, Bemis fears being alone on the Earth, and contemplates suicide. He probably also quite rightly fears his martinet wife.

PTD: Hall fears he will be killed if he falls back asleep, but also fears remaining awake, knowing he cannot do so forever.

JN: Fear runs through this like water rushing into a sinking vessel, as Lanser’s fear grows, the hour of retribution once again at hand, though he cannot remember what it is he fears.

AWTSWO: Forbes fears as things he knows to be true change and warp, and people seem to be getting written out of time. He fears when he can no longer see his reflection in the mirror, and when Harrington vanishes from the phone box.

WYN: Peddot fears the influence of Renard, whom he knows is going to end up killing him.

TFOUAD: There’s fear - finally - when Hammer faces “his father” and realises he is going to die if he can’t again change his face.

TFTS: The two families fear both the approaching holocaust and also the chance that they will be caught and stopped in their escape.

ISAAITA: All the crew fear dying on this “lonely deserted asteroid”, little realising they are home in the desert and only miles from salvation.

THH: The fear is almost palpable as Nan Adams tries desperately to avoid the odd hitch-hiker who won’t leave her alone.

TLF: Decker fears what will happen if he does not go back in time and make things right.

TPT: Fitz fears looking into the eyes of his men, knowing he will see which of them is going to die.

MI: Millicent is terrified by the strange happenings, and the fact that a doppelganger is pursuing her.

TMADOMS: Fear rules the roost here, propelling the residents of Maple Street into a witch-hunt and turning them against their own. There are two types of fear in this episode: fear of the alien invasion and fear that one of the townspeople may be in league with them, or indeed alien themselves.

AWOD: Arthur fears he is in the wrong world, and will never get back to his own.

PAAAO: Conrad fears what they will encounter on Mars, fears when the hatch won’t open, has his fears assuaged only to have them come right back at the end when he realises he is trapped.

NAAC: Helen fears the strange girl, and then her mother’s murderer as she struggles against him.

TAH: Marsha fears that the shop seems very strange and the assistant is acting oddly. Deep down, she probably also fears that she has to go back to being a mannequin.

Loneliness: 12

Even if few of the episodes are set off-world, The Twilight Zone is mostly a lonely place, with one character struggling against the odds, or trying to make sense of a senseless situation, and you can be just as lonely on a deserted rock in space as you can be in a crowd of people at home.

WIE? Again we’re back to the pilot, where loneliness features heavily, though it’s mostly overshadowed by fear and panic.

TSMS: You would have to assume Barbara feels lonely, living in her own private world of past glories and old achievements.

TL: Not as lonely as Corry, of course, on his personal asteroid prison.

TEAL: Or indeed Henry Bemis, after the holocaust as he wanders the ruins of Earth. He must feel very lonely indeed; for a moment, he was about to have all the company fiction and other books can provide, and then in an instant it’s all snatched away, and he’s left alone, in every sense of the word.

THH: I’m torn as to whether or not to assume Nan suffers from loneliness. It’s a lonely business, certainly, driving across the states unaccompanied, but given the company that’s trying to join her, maybe she’s better off being on her own? Then again, given that the sailor won’t believe her story, maybe there’s a sense of being lonely there.

TPT: When you can tell who’s going to die and who’s going to live, it stands to reason people are going to want to steer clear of you, just in case.

MI: And when nobody believes you that something very weird and inexplicable is going on, that’s going to make you lonely too.

TMADOMS: Nothing like feeling lonely in a crowd, though, especially a crowd of people who just recently were your friends and neighbours.

AWOD: Arthur finds himself a lonely figure whom nobody will believe, somewhat like Millicent in MI.

LLWJ: It’s a lonely life when everyone around you keeps dying and you live on.

PAAAO: Space is a lonely place, but it’s lonelier yet when you’re stuck in a cage on your own on a strange planet.

APFT: And it’s lonely too when you’re thrown on the scrap heap and nobody wants your talents any more.

Robotics: 2

I hardly need to detail them, but given that the idea of robotics is approached from extremely opposite ends of the scale in each, maybe I will.

TL: A robot female is delivered to the prisoner to keep him company. He falls in love with it and in the end sees it as a real person when he is released, however in the end he accepts it is just a machine and must be left behind.

TMC: A robot baseball player is used by a crooked baseball coach to win games, but has to be fitted with a human heart and in so doing gains, for some reason, human emotions, making it useless as it no longer wishes to play baseball and hurt opposition players.

Spaceflight: 8

Not necessarily referring to off-world adventures, but any episode in which spaceflight is used, alluded to or even envisioned goes here. So we have

WIE? In which the astronaut is training for an imminent mission to the moon.

TL: Where supply ships land to deliver the goods needed to keep the prisoner alive (and presumably one brought him there originally too, and one takes him away at the end).

AWTSWO: Not technically spaceflight I guess, but close enough. The ship exits Earth’s atmosphere, and is said in the episode to be the first craft ever to do so.

TFTS: The two families steal an experimental craft capable of going into space, in order to escape the coming holocaust on their homeworld.

ISAAITA: Although we never see the spacecraft, we’re told the astronauts stuck in what they don’t know is the Nevada Desert have crashlanded after their spacecraft crashed.

EL: The spacemen arrive on the cemetery asteroid on their way back from a mission and land their ship there; they also end up being positioned, diorama-like, there in death.

TMADOMS: At the very end we see the aliens get into their spacecraft, having incited the residents of the street into a panicked, paranoid frenzy.

PAAAO: A rocket ship takes off for, and crashlands on, Mars.

Aliens: 4

Not terribly surprisingly, given a) the pretty low budget for the show, b) the embryonic nature of prosthetics and c) the fact that the show is not really about aliens, we don’t see too many, at least in the first season. The term aliens here does not include the likes of guardian angels, djinn or devils. Nor does it include Death, Fate, or men who can shapeshift or doppelgangers from a parallel universe.

TFTS: For the purposes of this category I’m including the Riden and Sturka family, who are, technically, at least to us, aliens.

EL: I’m unsure whether I should include Wickwire, as it was never explained just what he was, but I think on balance we can assume he was some sort of alien. I think he may have been a computer program. Um.

TMADOMS: Although we only see them at the end, the aliens invading are the impetus for all the hoo-hah that takes over Maple Street.

PAAAO: Our first Martians, even if they look like refugees from The Greatest Story Ever Told!

Insanity: 14

For our purposes here, insanity refers to either someone coming to the brink of, or actually going insane or thinking they are, or being driven to that point by another party.

WIE? At the end, the astronaut’s mind snaps due to the overwhelming pressure of loneliness and he goes mad. It is however only temporary.

TSMS: It’s never actually said out loud, but Barbara is slowly going insane as she sits in the dark and watches her old movies, wishing for the past.

TL: No surprise that Corry is pushed to the edge of insanity, living on his own for most of the year.

TEAL: It can reasonably be assumed that Bemis goes mad at the end, when his precious books are snatched away from him by a cruel twist of fate.

PTD: Did Hall go mad or did his heart just give out? I guess we’ll never know, but he was certainly approaching the precipice of madness.

AWTSWO: Forbes certainly feels he’s going mad, as nobody will believe him that there were three of them and now only he is left. Although not for long.

ISAAITA: Corey must go mad at the end when he realises they’ve been on Earth all along, and he didn’t need to murder anyone to survive.

THH: Nan wonders if she is going insane as the hitch-hiker closes in on her.

TF: You’d have to imagine that Franklin goes mad, as he believes he sees the one-armed bandit coming for him and ends up falling out of the window to his death.

MI: Millicent believes she is going mad, though by the time she has (somehow) figured out what’s going on she is, ironically, taken in as a madwoman by the cops.

TMADOMS: Paranoia is a kind of madness, and it infects almost everyone on Maple Street.

AWOD: Arthur thinks he is going mad, as everyone tries to convince him he is a drunken actor and not the man he thinks he is.

NAAC: Until her memories come back, Helen must think she’s going mad as the strange child seems to know so much about her.

ASAW: The jury’s out as to whether Williams went mad, just jumping out of the train, thinking he was entering Willoughby, or whether he really did somehow transfer his consciousness/soul there.

TAH: Marsha thinks she’s going mad, little realising she is not even human.

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