How rebooted classics of the Twilight Zone might look now.
WITH A TWILIGHT ZONE REBOOT COMING, WHAT DO WE HAVE TO LOOK FORWARD TO?
The Twilight Zone is coming back to TV. Earlier this week, CBS announced it was rebooting the best television series it ever produced. But before we dive into this new iteration, though, it’s important to quickly recognize how important the old version of the show was.
The Twilight Zone was Black Mirror nearly 60 years ago. It had all the makings of a show people weren’t ready for, with ideas and projections of the future and alternate universes most people couldn’t conjure up in their most wild imaginative states. It floored people — and still does today.
Except, instead of releasing 13 episodes over a five-year-span like Black Mirror has, Rod Serling’s epic chunk of a series churned out 156 in nearly the same amount of time. Serling, the show’s creator, was somehow able to spin a never-ending ball of yarn, creating new stories at a frenetic pace.
It was entirely ahead of it’s time, but also a perfect representation of the fears with which folks in the 1950’s and 60’s lived. The Twilight Zone reflected the problems in modern society by capitalizing on themes of isolation and loneliness, supernatural horror, the unknown and the previously unexplored.
With the recent success of Black Mirror, the announcement that Jordan Peele and CBS are gearing up for a Twilight Zone reboot should come as no surprise to anyone. With Black Mirror and Amazon’s new Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, there couldn’t be a more appropriate time to bring back Serling’s swirling, sci-fi noir exploration of alternate realities.
And what a perfect choice of creator to helm this updated version (which CBS plans to put on its streaming service, CBS AllAccess). With his 2017 directorial debut, Get Out, Peele proved himself capable of creating a horror film that was wildly entertaining and insanely profitable, while also commenting powerfully and thoughtfully on racial problems in today’s America. Peele has four more social thrillers already planned, hinting, perhaps that he shares a vision similar to Serling’s, one which could deliver an accurate portrayal of our modern collective fears.
With all that being said, it’s impossible not to think what former ideas Peele might choose to replicate in the new version of the show. There are so many classic episodes he could expand on, or bring into the 21st century.
EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
An ageless tale about a woman who goes through facial reconstruction surgery several times just so she can participate in her community, Eye of the Beholder showed the vanity deeply entrenched in our society. It is set in a world where our contemporary beauty standards are instead viewed as uniform ugliness, and vice versa. The episode is named exactly for the message Serling sought to hand out.
An updated version would fit all too perfectly into our imageobsessed society.
WHERE IS EVERYBODY?
The first episode Sterling ever made was about an isolated man who wakes up in a ghost- town. After a vigorous exploration, the soldier is shown to be in a hallucinatory state. In reality, he was in a sensory-deprived training practice, preparing to be an astronaut. The episode explored the importance of companionship, and how a lack of it can hinder one’s ability to live and think clearly.
An obvious update of this version could include social media in some format, and the isolating effects those outlets can have on someone’s mental health. Maybe someone hallucinates that they are wandering through an endless loop of picture-perfect, lonely landscapes, only to have it later revealed that they were merely dreaming about Instagram.
IT’S A GOOD LIFE
It’s A Good Life could be a giant metaphor for the Donald Trump era. Who knew that when Rod Serling wrote this story about a maniacal six- year- old child with power far too great for him, that it would be relevant today? A boy who inappropriately reacts to the slightest of insults and uses his strength in irrational ways. Does that sound at all familiar?
THE HITCH- HIKER
In the 1960’s version, a young woman’s drive across country becomes slowly haunted with the recurring sight of a hitchhiker everywhere she goes. After she stops off to call her mother, we are shown the truth: the woman died in a car accident several days ago, and the hitch- hiker is a personified version of Death stalking her.
One of the most bone-chilling episodes of The Twilight Zone would be perfect for a modernhorror remake.
NIGHTMARE AT 20,000 FEET
If you watched this episode during your highly impressionable childhood years, you likely became scared of several things all at once: Flying in planes, giant moss- covered monsters and the possibility of paranoia.
Now, imagine seeing that monster that shook you at a young age with today’s CGI effects? And imagine a budding young star like Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya being the one to play the paranoid character that William Shatner made famous back in the 60’s.
STOPOVER IN A QUIET TOWN
Stopover In A Quiet Town was a hidden gem in Twilight Zone’s stash of jewelled episodes. A couple wake up hungover in a town they’ve never seen before, one made up of props and with the echo of a little girl’s laughter as the only voice anywhere near them. In the end, it is revealed that the couple has been transported to a different world, where they are merely toys in a little girl’s play area.
Now, this might be a bit of a stretch. But imagine Peele and CBS updating this story to somehow display this couple living in a simulated- reality, one they don’t know they’re existing in much like the couple in Serling’s original story. By the end of the episode, their realization could terrifyingly come to them. It would accurately display the growing conspiracy fears some have that we are all, in fact, living in simulated realities.