The Twilight Zone stands as one of the most important and influential television series of all time. Rod Serling mastered the art of writing dramatic television through this sci-fi and fantasy anthology whose episodes are still entertaining viewers six decades after their original air dates.
Many episodes dealt with social issues and human nature. While they help viewers understand the problems plaguing society in the late ’50s and early ’60s, many of the episodes are still relevant to today’s audiences, as the following ten entries will show. While many of these episodes are just as good today, we’re happy the series came back in 2019, with Jordan Peele as the narrator.
He’s Alive
Dennis Hopper stars in this episode as the leader of a fascist movement in the United States guided by a shadowy figure. Eventually, the enigmatic character reveals himself to be Adolf Hitler, who eventually convinces Hopper’s character to kill.
Rod Serling’s closing monologue warns that while Hitler may be dead, his spirit is kept alive everywhere where bigotry, racism, and white supremacy exists. Even though the main character loses his life, the hateful ideas will root themselves elsewhere.
The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street
When the electricity and most technology stops working in a quiet neighborhood, the residents slowly start growing suspicious of each other. They believe an alien is among them, and they each accuse each other of being one until violent confrontations break out.
By the end, the town is complete uproar as they start to fight, and the final scene reveals real aliens were behind the power outage, but they had no agents down below. Simply messing with the order of every day life caused society to break down. With stories about violent attacks based on the recent worldside events, this episode’s message isn’t too hard to believe.
Eye Of The Beholder
A woman just gets out of an operation to make her appear normal, only she is perfectly beautiful by our societal standards. However, she is upset and disgusted by the procedure’s failure, and the audience learns that people in this world have disfigured appearances, but our considered normal in their universe.
The melancholic ending sees the woman leave society with a man who also has the “disfigured” appearance, hoping she will find love and acceptance in the village where people like her go.
Time Enough At Last
This isn’t the last time Burgess Meredith appears on the list. In “Time Enough at Last” he plays a bookworm constantly put down by his obsession with books. While eating lunch in a bank vault, the world is destroyed by nuclear weapons. At first dismayed by this, he eventually finds a library and happily resolves to spend the rest of his life reading.
Unfortunately, his glasses break and he is left virtually blind. While we may abhor society at times and feel like it bogging us down, we ultimately cannot live without it.
The Brain Center At Whipple’s
A manager is constantly priding himself on how much of his factory’s workload is done by machines, leaving much of the human workforce out of a job. The joke is on him, though, as the conclusion sees him losing his position to a robot.
Machines replacing workers is still a hot button issue so many years after this episode. Technology is good, but society has to be careful about those left behind and without a means to live from automation.
Number 12 Looks Just Like You
Like “Eye of the Beholder,” this one also deals with beauty’s effect on society and conformity. A teenage girl refuses to undergo a transformation all people go through to make them look perfect. After being committed to a hospital, she is tricked into it, and comes out satisfied due to the operation also changing citizens psychologically as well.
When so many are trying to achieve one standard of physical appearance, one runs the risk of losing their individuality.
The Shelter
A gathering of friends is interrupted by the news of a potential nuclear attack. One friend, a doctor, has a shelter for him and his family, though his acquaintances insist on joining him. He says the shelter doesn’t have the resources to support all of them, but they refuse this reasoning and eventually break down the door before the radio announces the attack as a false alarm.
The damage is already done to the characters’ personal lives, however. Even in times of potential crisis, it is important to remain civilized.
The Obsolete Man
Burgess Meredith shows up once more as a librarian deemed obsolete and sentenced to death for his profession and belief in God. He chooses his method of execution as a bomb, and requests The Chancellor who condemned him come and meet him an hour before his death, which will be on live television.
The librarian locks the door to the room, dooming The Chancellor as well. Eventually, The Chancellor breaks down and evokes the name of God to let him out. The Librarian lets him out and dies alone, but The Chancellor is then deemed obsolete for professing a belief in God. Serling’s narration condemns any state that sacrifices human rights for the benefit of a state or government.
Two
In “Two,” a female soldier, likely from the Soviet Union due to the sparse Russian she speaks throughout the episode, and a male soldier from two different sides meet in a deserted down. While initially hostile towards each other, they realize there is no reason to fight anymore and after several tense moments, the two end the episode leaving the town together, despite the language barrier.
If only the two’s respective sides had realized the foolishness in their fighting sooner, the town in which the episode is set might still be standing and populated.
I Am The Night - Color Me Black
A town is covered in darkness as it prepares to execute a man who killed a bigot in self-defense. The guilty is unrepentant, and everybody in town is eager to see him hang, except for a reverend. However, even the reverend agrees to the execution hesitantly. The town hangs the culprit and daylight never comes, with the reverend reasoning that the hatred throughout the town caused the fog of darkness to appear.
These suspicions seem to be confirmed as the episode ends with more reports of darkness engulfing other parts of the world. Even if one is not directly pulling the trigger or killing someone, hatred makes us all culprits.
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