"Spoiler ahead"
When Lanser in "Judgment Night" grabs the binoculars to better see the U-boat that is about to open fire on the passenger liner Lanser is traveling on -- and sees himself standing on the deck of the sub.
That's a good one!
My favorite is when Mr. Chambers is boarding the Kanamit space ship and his assistant runs up and shouts, "To Serve Man, it's a cookbook!"
It makes no sense that humans could interpret an alien language as if were a code, but still, one of the scariest WTF endings!
Runner-up- Nan Adams calling home only to find out that she had died in a car accident. "I believe you are going MY way?"
Of a book full of death
Reading how we'll die alone
And if we're good, we'll lay to rest
Anywhere we want to go
"The Invaders" WTF moment is hard to beat.
How about "A World of Difference?"
Arthur Curtis, businessman, enters his office. He walks past a wall. He sits down at his desk. We, the audience, can no longer see the wall. Mr. Curtis tries to make a phone call but the line is dead. He gets up to ask his receptionist what the problem might be. We then hear someone shout "Cut." Arthur glances over at the wall he just past, which incidentally is where the sound came from. Only the wall is no longer there. Instead, a film crew is in its place. The crew is standing in a studio. And Arthur Curtis, businessman, is soon to discover he's a part of the crew -- specifically, an actor in the middle of a production called: "The Private World of Arthur Curtis."
In your house I long to be
Room by room patiently
All of the above are excellent ones!
How about the one where Billy Mumy is supposedly getting phone calls from his dead grandmother on his play phone?
And then his mother rips the phone from his hand and hears her voice! WtF!!
That scene scared the bejeezus out of me as a kid, and that one saw the mother's shocked reaction as she hears the dead grandmother's voice at the end of the line and the viewer knows who it is and DOES NOT hear the actual voice made the scene itself all the more shocking. This may be the best single "horror moment" of the entire series run.
Another scary scene, actually scenes, on the Zone also involve a strange voice from beyond: Night Call. There are a lot of scenes involving telephones on the TZ in which information is relayed and the viewer often has to infer and then sees and hears the consequences of what has been said. The end of Shadow Play is foreshadowed by a phone call.
Definitely on "Night Call". A very close 2nd place - those calls to the old lady in the middle of the night were really creepy. Nice touch with the ending also.
shareI agree guys. That was very shocking. It was a nice drama horror piece as she lost the love of her life and for one brief shining moment her hope rose as she thought he had returned to her.
shareYou already made a thread about it but one more pall bearer. For me it was shocking as you expect nuclear Armageddon and he walks out to find a wasteland only for it to be his hallucination. It really tricked me as the whole episode has him preparing for it, expecting it and showing the audience what he sees only to find out it it didn't happen.
Walt and Millie hop on a train that's heading out of Centerville ... only for the train to pull into Centerville moments later.
shareWhat's In The Box: Joe Britt seeing himself kill his wife, sentenced to death, then strapped into the electric chair.--on television, in the comfort (sort of) of his own home! The entire episode consists of one WTF moment after another.
I've become a big fan of this episode. It's claustrophobic as hell,--but then many Zones are, as it often deals with issues revolving around entrapment; and the not funny at all knock down, drag out nature of the story it tells makes it unique for the series.
Very surrel episode. I thought it was turning into a game show like the running man. Great pic.
shareLove the part where they are saying everything seems to be fake or an illusion, and Walt says at least we know this tree is real. And then he is able to move the tree, and see that it is also a prop!! WtF!
share Just a little FYI, the character's name was Bob, not Walt. lol I thought some of the posts were referring to a different episode. But then I remembered that the character was named Bob.
Almost all the moments in that episode are WTF! The kitchen in the house they woke up in was all fake. The "food" in the refrigerator is fake. But first, imagine the bathroom "plumbing"!! In those days toilets were not shown or even alluded to on TV. But I think Bob and Millie would have to "go" when they woke up. I imagine Bob saying something like, "Hey Millie, this toilet doesn't flush!!"
They saw the little squirrel on the tree which turned out to be a stuffed animal. The "grass" caught on fire. Everything in that "town" was totally weird.
I love Stopover In A Quiet Town. It's sort of a fifth season companion piece to the first season Where Is Everybody?, has a similar trajectory, though a much different ending. The matter of factness of the presentation makes it weirdly entertaining, as one learns along with the couple just what they're up against. One interesting thing about the episode is that the couple could never have known what was going on, even with the child's giggle in the background, until, well, they found out. In other words, it's not like they're dense,--like some people on the show, who don't know they're dead already or whatever--it's simply not there for them, not until the very Big Reveal.
shareStopover is one of my favorites for its weirdness. Bob and Millie seemed like a genuinely nice couple who went from confusion to panic when they could not get themselves out of the bizarre situation they found themselves in.
The only thing I wonder about is the mysterious giggle of the little girl they hear in the background. She was hardly a "little girl" from their standpoint, she was a giant! Her voice would've been much louder!
I saw a documentary about cats. It said that housecats and lions basically have the same vocal apparatus. A domestic housecat's voice comes out as a little mee-oww and a lion makes a ROAR because of the difference in size of those vocal chords.
In the case of Stopover, the little girl was hundreds of times larger than Bob and Millie. She picked them up in the palm of her hand! Her voice would have sounded like a sonic boom to them, not a little giggle!
Well, just one of those nitpicky things I wonder about after seeing an episode for the 20th time!
The giggle ought to have been louder, though if it had been that would have given the game away. Doesn't the Five Characters In Search Of...is it Exit? ep take place in the winter. Yet it doesn't seem cold or snowy where they are. One can pick away at the Zones, such as the planets, asteroids, whatever, with two suns. I don't think that's even possible!
Stopover also makes great use of the MGM back lot when it was still intact. Those are familiar streets and buildings, which add to the archetypal quality of the episode. It's like the couple arrived in Anywhere, U.S.A., which of course they sort of did,--except that it was, for their "captor" a sort of board game. Another great thing about this one is that unlike To Serve Man, Nightmare At 20,000 Feet and other, more popular entries of the series, the ending is easy to forget.
To my way of thinking that's a sign of quality. It's not so much how it ends that counts,--that's certainly part of it, the kicker, so to speak--but how it plays out, and how the viewer goes along with it. Again, very like Where Is Everybody?, which is riveting right up to the scene with the air force guy in training and the stoplight.
Oh yes, one can "pick away" at some of the less plausible scientific elements of TZ. When I am in one of my critical moods, I do just that! lol But it never interferes with my affection for the show.
Bob and Millie did seem to be in "Anywhere USA" which added to the surreal aspect of their plight. Everything SEEMS to be so nice and normal, but it's not! I often wonder what the little girl alien was going to feed her "pets" since the food in the kitchen was just fake. Hope Bob and Millie liked alien cuisine. lol
Sometimes I get in the mood to pick at the less scientific aspects of the "science".
For instance in "The Midnight Sun", Norma is painting and Rod Serling's voiceover says that that it is 12 midnight, not 12 noon. It's broiling hot because the Earth's orbit has shifted and the planet is moving closer to the sun. Well yes, the Earth would be getting hotter but it wouldn't be daylight for 24 hours at a stretch!
The writer was confusing the orbit of the planet with its rotation. If the Earth's 24 hour rotation stopped and the North and South American continents faced the Sun, they would be in daylight but the other side of the planet would be in total darkness all the time. In the case of moving closer to the Sun, it would be hotter but not daytime ALL the time unless the Earth's rotation also stopped.
The big WTF moment at the end was such a shock. The Earth was actually moving AWAY from the Sun. So yes, it would be getting colder. But once again it wouldn't be dark all the time unless the Earth's rotation stopped.
Just something I thought of years later! But still a very effective story about the delicate balance of our planet. Out of nine planets in our solar system (well eight if you discount Pluto!), we are on the only one that can sustain life.
But since Norma is dreaming do the laws of physics apply?
share Well no they don't apply if the first part of the story is her dream. It's just that Rod Serling announces it as if it is totally logical. But it wouldn't BE daylight on this side of the planet unless the Earth stopped rotation. She is obviously in a very sick and feverish state and dreaming of heat. Rotation, orbit, two different things.
But at the end when it is revealed to be a dream, the Earth is in total darkness. Again, that has to mean that the Earth stopped rotating.
A very scary episode no matter what!
But which one was the dream? They could have both been. Serling calls this episode a "minor exercise in the caring and feeding of a nightmare [which is just awesome, by the way]" and that it was depicting "the poles of fear" but doesn't offer any more clarity than that. Like Gregory Samsa in "The Metamorphosis" Norma wakes up from a nightmare and into an even worse one (or not, depending on if freezing in your estimation is worse than burning to death).
And I'm always on guard with Serling and his narratives. Since he's a representative from "The Twilight Zone" I don't think he's always reliable. Take his opening narration in "King Nine Will Not Return": he tells us the desert landscape we are looking at is in 1943. But it's not as Embry, who wakes up in this setting amidst a wrecked B-52 Bomber, at one point sees jets flying overhead which did not exist back in 1943. But maybe it really was 1943 -- or at least parts of it in his mind anyway-- as we find out at the episode's conclusion that his experience amidst the B52 Bomber was just a dream. But then someone finds sand in his shoes which confuses reality and dreams even further. So we don't know. Just like we don't in "The Midnight Sun"
And I agree with you totally: "The Midnight Sun" is quite chilling (no pun intended).
Freezing or burning? Yikes! lol But I would probably take freezing. I have heard that after a certain point, you just feel warm and go to "sleep". Not looking forward to either.
With The Midnight Sun, either way Norma could have dreamed the whole thing. Maybe she had malaria. Isn't it true that malaria causes alternate fever and chills?
My initial argument was just that moving closer to the Sun would not mean that North America would be in constant daylight unless the Earth stopped revolving. Maybe Norma was just not clear about science. LOL
The science was just very iffy in these episodes, like in Third from the Sun. Earth is many lightyears from any other planets in the galaxy. Hard to believe those people could make a trip so fast. It would take a lifetime. Of course this was before even a show like Lost in Space. So it's doubtful the viewing audience would be aware or even care about those facts.
That episode had a great WTF at the end. They weren't leaving Earth but heading for it. Still, it would've been a much LONGER trip!
While the dodgy science of "The Midnight Sun" can be somewhat explained by the fact that all this could be happening inside Norma's head other episodes don't have the "it's all a dream" excuse to explain away their suspect science. Take "I Shot An Arrow Into The Air" where the astronauts don't realize they're back on Earth. I realize the crash could have scrambled their brains and all but still ... Or how about Corry in "The Lonely" being imprisoned on an asteroid? Pretty far-fetched -- but even more so when Corry and Alicia go star-gazing and the stars are arranged exactly as they would be if they were on Earth. I mean come on!
Still "TZ" was more "Aesop's Fables" than Neil DeGrasse Tyson and the profound truths it expressed more than made up for a flunky's grasp of science.
As for "WTF" moments how about the one in "Shadow Play" where the dream is starting over and Grant is back in the courtroom, being sentenced yet again to the electric chair? The people from the previous version of the dream are now playing different roles in this version -- like one of his death row inmates is his lawyer, while another one is the judge, and the priest who administered him his last rites, and the city editor who tried to convince the DA to grant Grant a stay of execution, are now both jurors.
We could also all be part of an
Authors book and made up as long as he isn't Fed up with is. It would explain while Rob was only in some narration and missing in others.
"Pretty far-fetched -- but even more so when Corry and Alicia go star-gazing and the stars are arranged exactly as they would be if they were on Earth. I mean come on!"
Yes, if they were on one of the asteroids that circle the Sun between Mars and Jupiter, then the stars would be arranged exactly the same in the sky *. Sorry, but TZ got this one right.
* well almost, since there would be a slightly more pronounced parallax as the asteroid swings around the sun, but we're talking light-minutes compared to light-years to the nearest stars
I think The Midnight Sun is one of the great, archetypal episodes of The Twilight Zone. It stands above and apart from most other episodes and yet it isn't a one off. There's a strong emotional undercurrent in it, as feelings are emphasized over logic. As to the illogicalities of the two midnights, this could be delusional on the part of the main character,--and who knows?--maybe the clocks have all gone haywire. They call it midnight, one, two or three in the afternoon or morning but it may not matter. It would be understandable if the earth had lost track of time except as a subjective abstract, a convenience. In other words, even after the winter awakening the twelve on the clock they just use the noon or midnight to keep themselves from going crazy.
share"For instance in "The Midnight Sun", Norma is painting and Rod Serling's voiceover says that that it is 12 midnight, not 12 noon. It's broiling hot because the Earth's orbit has shifted and the planet is moving closer to the sun. Well yes, the Earth would be getting hotter but it wouldn't be daylight for 24 hours at a stretch!"
Its true that even if the Earth had moved closer to the sun, at local time of 12 midnight it would still be nighttime. But remember, that was in Norma's fevered nightmare. Then she wakes up. Now, its still ok, because Rod Serling doesn't come into the picture and say now it is only darkness. It just happens to be at night at that point. 12 hours later, the Sun could shine on them again. But still they could be moving farther and farther from the Sun, still doomed as the story implies. So it is still possible to save this episode from the wrath of scientific inconsistency critics...
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