Living in a Twilight Zone
“The barrier of loneliness: the palpable, desperate need of the human animal to be with his fellow man. Up there ... is an enemy known as isolation.”
So goes creator and host Rod Serling’s closing narration from the debut 1959 episode of The Twilight Zone, aptly titled Where Is Everybody?, in which a man loses his grip when there is no human companionship to be found anywhere.
Six decades later, The Twilight Zone’s themes on the human condition ring eternal.
TIME ENOUGH AT LAST
One person’s mass-casualty event is another person’s opportunity to finally get a little reading done. Burgess Meredith plays the clerk who hides in his bank’s vault to read, thus surviving a nuclear attack. He is left gloriously alone — just himself and stacks of books to happily devour. The twist, of course, is to watch his step — isolation isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
THE MONSTERS ARE DUE ON MAPLE STREET
Do humans help or harm each other in times of crisis? Serling’s Maple Street is first presented as a benign slice of modern society, but suspicion of an alien among these neighbours sparks fearful finger-pointing and conflicts escalate. When panic sets in, the monsters, of course, can be ourselves. “There are weapons,” Serling says in voice-over, “that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices.”
THE LONELY
How close do we grow to our devices in times of isolation? Imagine, if you will, a convict played by Jack Warden serving his solitary confinement truly alone on an asteroid. Once his penalty appears to be a life sentence, the prisoner is given a “female” robot that he develops feelings for. An intervention is required to remind him that he has come to love a companion made of nuts and bolts. Sometimes, it seems, the illusory warmth of our machines must be destroyed.
THE MIND AND THE MATTER
Jean-paul Sartre said “hell is other people,” and the office worker (Shelley Berman) in this episode would agree. He can’t stand all the crowding, whether it’s along the subway commute or in the lunchtime cafeteria. Yet when he lives his dream to eliminate all people, the loneliness makes for an awfully empty life.
THE SHELTER
What will cause even the best of friends and spouses to turn on each other? In this story, dear old pals gather for a party, but a UFO sighting and talk of a possible nuclear attack drive a wedge between the cosy neighbours. A doctor, for so long a healer, must weigh the prospect of loved ones perishing outside his bomb shelter. What is harder when self-preservation is at stake: a reinforced shelter door or the human heart?
THE WHOLE TRUTH
As global leaders play politics, what becomes of a man who must tell the truth? In this episode, a used-car salesman (Jack Carson) loses his ability to traffic in lies. But, like a clever politician, the salesman can still bend the facts to his favour in this Cold War tale.
WHERE IS EVERYBODY?
What if everywhere you turned — to movies, to the kitchen, to the streets outside — you could not find another person? A man in an air force flight suit (Earl Holliman) seems to be living that “existence.” Serling surely knew that mental duress could be the toughest test.