Notable Episodes

The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street

  • Original Air Date: 03/04/1960

  • Written by: Rod Serling

  • Starring: Claude Akins, Jack Weston, Barry Atwater, Jan Handzlik, Mary Gregory, Anne Barton

"The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street," is easily one of the most well-known episodes of the series, and for good reason. It exemplifies some of Serling's best writing.

After what is at first taken to be a meteor speeds overhead, Maple Street experiences a total power failure— appliances, telephones, even cars. Pete Van Horn sets off on foot to find out the cause, but Tommy, a young reader of sci-fi, says he knows human-looking aliens have infiltrated Maple Street. At first, this is laughed off, but when Mr. Goodman's car inexplicably starts up for a few seconds, suspicion falls on him— bolstered by the fact that a neighbor has seen him looking up at the stars late at night.

As evening falls, Steve Brand tries to get others to remain calm. But when a mysterious figure walks toward them in the dark, panic breaks out. Charlie Farnsworth grabs a neighbor's rifle and fires, killing the menace, who turns out to be the returning Pete Van Horn. Madness prevails. Charlie is accused of being the alien, then Tommy. As the lights of various houses flash on and off, full-scale rioting breaks out. From nearby, two aliens watch these events unfold. One explains to the other that by manipulating electricity, it is easy to turn neighbor against neighbor. Maple Street is typical— and only the beginning...

A Game of Pool

  • Original Air Date: 10/13/1961

  • Written by: George Clayton Johnson

  • Starring: Jack Klugman and Jonathan Winters

"Jesse Cardiff, pool shark, the best on Randolph Street, who will soon learn that trying to be the best at anything carries its own special risks...In or out of The Twilight Zone."

Alone in Clancy's pool hall, Jesse voices his dearest wish: that he be allowed to play the late Fats Brown and prove that he, not Fats, is really the world's greatest pool player. Fats appears and challenges Jesse to a game— with Jesse's life as the stakes. A game of skill, nerve and bluff commences, with Fats seeming to hold the upper hand. But at last, Jesse has only one easy ball to sink to win the game. Fats warns him that he might win more than he bargains for, but Jesse disregards this and sinks the ball. After he dies, however, he realizes the meaning of Fats's words: it is now he who must wearily rise to every challenge from ambitious players on Earth.

To Serve Man

  • Original Air Date: 03/02/1962

  • Written by: Rod Serling

  • Based on the short story by: Damon Knight

  • Starring: Lloyd Bochner, Richard Kiel, Susan Cummings, Theodore Marcuse

"Respectfully submitted for your perusal— a Kanamit. Height: a little over nine feet. Weight: in the neighborhood of three hundred and fifty pounds. Origin: unknown. Motives? Therein hangs the tale, for in just a moment we're going to ask you to shake hands, figuratively, with a Christopher Columbus from another galaxy and another time. This is the Twilight Zone."

The Kanamits arrive on Earth with seemingly one purpose in mind: to aid mankind in every possible way using their superior technology. They end famine, supply a cheap power source and provide defensive force fields. Armies become obsolete. Although some distrust them, the Kanamits appear totally altruistic, a fact supported by a Kanamit book left at the U.N. Once translated, the title reads To Serve Man. Thousands book passage to the Kanamits' home planet, including Michael Chambers, a U.S. decoding expert. Meanwhile, however, his assistant Pat is trying to translate the Kanamit book's text. As Chambers prepares to board the ship, Pat frantically rushes up. She's succeeded in her attempts— To Serve Man is a cookbook! Chambers tries to escape, but a Kanamit forces him into the ship, which then blasts off. Helplessly, Chambers finds himself bound for another planet— and some alien's dinner table.

Time Enough At Last

  • Original Air Date: 11/20/1959

  • Written by: Rod Serling

  • Starring: Burgess Meredith, Vaughn Taylor, Jacqueline deWit, Lela Bliss

"Witness Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers. A bookish little man whose passion is the printed page but who is conspired against by a bank president and a wife and a world full of tongue-cluckers and the unrelenting hands of a clock. But in just a moment, Mr. Bemis will enter a world without bank presidents or wives or clocks or anything else. He'll have a world all to himself— without anyone."

Mild-mannered and myopic, bank teller Henry Bemis loves to read, but neither his shrewish wife nor efficiency-minded boss give him much chance. Sneaking into the vault on his lunch hour to read, he is knocked unconscious by a mammoth shock wave. When he comes to, he discovers that the world has been devastated by a nuclear war and that he, having been protected by the vault, is the last man on Earth. He decides to commit suicide, but at the final moment his eyes fall on the ruins of a library. For him, it is paradise. Gleefully he piles the books high, organizing his reading for the years to come. But as he settles down to read the first book, his glasses slip off his nose and smash, trapping him forever in a hopelessly blurry world.

"The best-laid plans of mice and men— and Henry Bemis, the small man in the glasses who wanted nothing but time. Henry Bemis, now just a part of a smashed landscape, just a piece of the rubble, just a fragment of what man has deeded to himself. Mr. Henry Bemis...in The Twilight Zone."

Eye of The Beholder

  • Original Air Date: 11/11/1960

  • Written by: Rod Serling

  • Makeup: William Tuttle

  • Starring: Maxine Stuart, Donna Douglas, William D. Gordon, Jennifer Howard

"Suspended in time and space for a moment, your introduction to Miss Janet Tyler, who lives in a very private world of darkness, a universe whose dimensions are the size, thickness, and length of a swath of bandages that cover her face. In a moment we'll go back into this room and also in a moment we'll look under those bandages, keeping in mind, of course, that we're not to be surprised by what we see, because this isn't just a hospital, and patient 307 is not just a woman. This happens to be The Twilight Zone, and Miss Tyler, with you, is about to enter it. "

Lying in a darkened hospital room, her head entirely wrapped in bandages, Janet Tyler, whose hideously abnormal face has made her an outcast all her life, waits to see if the last treatment has succeeded in making her look normal. This is her eleventh hospital visit— the maximum allowed by the state. If it is a failure, she will be sent to a village where others of her kind are segregated. Unseen by her, only heard, the shadowy figures of her doctor and her nurse come and go.

On televisions throughout the hospital, the leader of the state speaks of "glorious conformity," as Miss Tyler's bandages are gradually removed. Revealed, her face is extremely beautiful. The doctor draws back in horror. The treatment has been a failure! As the lights are turned on, we see the faces of the others: misshapen, asymmetrical, like something out of a nightmare. Crying hysterically, Miss Tyler runs from her room, down several hallways, and finally into a room where she comes face to face with another "freak"— Walter Smith, a strikingly handsome man in charge of an outcast village in the north. He has come to take her there. Gently, he assures her that she will come to have a sense of belonging and that she will be loved. He advises her to remember the old saying: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

"Now the questions that come to mind. Where is this place, and when is it? What kind of world where ugliness is the norm and beauty the deviation from that norm? The answer is, it doesn't make any difference. Because the old saying happens to be true. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, in this year or a hundred years hence, on this planet or wherever there is human life, perhaps out among the stars. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. A lesson to be learned...in The Twilight Zone."