I’ve been rewatching The Twilight Zone though Pluto TV. What do you think of TTW? What are your favorite episodes? Why has the original show become more iconic than other anthologies?
I’ve never carved out time to intentionally watch the show, but by circumstance I have seen a great number of episodes. I do have some favorites but I don’t know their names (other than Eye of the Beholder, I think that’s its title).
I watched two episodes of the newer series and thought it was pretty bad. It’s been a while, but IIRC I think they were too on the nose with their messaging, and the episodes themselves ran for too long which ruined the punch that the classic series had.
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Another classic I’m familiar with but never watched. I’ll get around to it one day 
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Another classic TV show & one that formed an early influence on me in my love of sci-fi & horror.
So many brilliant episodes. Once again like Quatermass some themes seem over familiar now, but many ideas & plots that have influenced a lot of subsequent tv & movies had their genesis here.
However, I would advise against binge viewing. Watching a lot of episodes in a short space of time does highlight how some plot tropes were recycled.
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I’ve definitely watched some Twilight Zone, as well as Outer Limits, but I also remember reading a book of all the Twilight Zone episode scripts back to back at one point, so it’s a little hard to pin down which of them I actually watched…
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One thing that ensures The Twilight Zone’s lasting power & influence is Rod Serling. He wrote 92 of the 156 episodes, & had creative control on choosing other writers.
I’ve read a few of his quotes over the years -
“Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are.”
“The writer’s role is to menace the public’s conscience. He must have a position, a point of view. He must see the arts as a vehicle of social criticism and he must focus on the issues of his time.”
He had very strong concerns over how human beings behave, how we treat each other -
“All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes—all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the earth into a graveyard, into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its rememberance. Then we become the grave diggers.”
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One thing worth mentioning is that Rod Sterling’s first attempt at science fiction was a script called “The Time Element” that was filmed and then shelved and was essentially The Twilight Zone. Later, someone found it in the vaults, unshelved it, and it was popular enough that he was able to do The Twilight Zone…
It’s possible to find it around. Don’t know the copyright status.
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Twilight Zone is a show I’ve seen the odd episode of - it probably used to be on one of those random channels when people actually used to, ya know, watch TV. I must have been young-ish when I watched it, and I don’t remember how many of them I’ve seen or what series they were from or whatever, only that I generally enjoyed them.
Except one that has haunted me since I watched it, from the 1985 run, To See the Invisible Man. I don’t know what that one stuck with me so much, but I do need to watch it again to see if it still freaks me out like it did when I was a child
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Watched one of my fondly remembered episodes, written by Rod Serling. This one was also remade for the 80s revival.
Breakout character, James Millhollin as Mr. Armbruster.
The show was very male dominated so this is a good one with a female lead.
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The Twilight Zone premiered in America on 2 October 1959, and its original five-season run lasted until 1964. The UK debut was in the Border region on 27 January 1963, but it was a year before it appeared in other ITV regions. As I was still learning to walk and talk at the time, I don’t recall watching that first UK run.
Apart from a one-off airing of the first-season episode I Shot an Arrow into the Air one night in the 1970s, I didn’t really get to see the series properly until 1983, when it was repeated on BBC2. At that time, the series came up in conversation with my then-boss, who recalled watching TZ first time around. “Even then, the stories seemed hokey and old-fashioned, and you could see the endings coming a mile off,” he told me, before going on to admit he enjoyed the series regardless.
Because of the lack of repeat screenings as I was growing up, my main childhood memories of The Twilight Zone are actually of the Gold Key comic book. There was an indoor market up the lane from where I lived, and one of the shops in there sold musty old books and comics. Every so often, I’d come home from the market with a small stack of Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, and Boris Karloff comics, which provided enjoyably spooky reading for wet-weather days.
(Ah, I thought I’d finished chatting here, but I can’t help being drawn back by a discussion about classic sci-fi. It’s my passion, you see—and I love talking about this stuff! Hope no one minds me sharing these memories. If so then sorry.)
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It’s good to have you back.
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I love hearing these stories & shared memories! 
I didn’t know about these comic books.
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I’ve never seen the Twilight Zone, but would love to give it a go - where can I watch it in the UK nowadays?
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https://www.justwatch.com/uk/tv-series/the-twilight-zone
(Justwatch is a good resource for trying to find where tv shows are available)
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