The Twilight Zone: Judgment Night
Sep. 22nd, 2025 07:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerRod Serling’s next-episode preview had me thinking “Judgment Night” would be a sea story, which is more foreknowledge than I’ve carried into some Twilight Zone episodes. I was a bit surprised when selecting it from the Blu-Ray menu jumped straight into the episode without offering the chance to listen to a commentary, “isolated score,” or selected radio drama adaptation. A certain sense of “a minor instalment” might have set in. Then, what seemed a longer opening voiceover narrowed down not just where the story was set but when...
As the ship the episode was set on was developed to the point of implying families on board, I admit I wondered just how many “passengers” were trying to cross the Atlantic in 1942. I did, though, also wonder about what I’ve picked up about Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, a movie I haven’t seen. The more enigmatic feature who became the central figure of the episode wound up someone I could guess the impending revelation about partway through, and in this case I did anticipate the twist ending. I suppose that in considering the relative closeness of when the episode was made to the history it was taking on I did recall Rod Serling had served in World War II; what further invocations of the war might show up, and how subtle they might get before I start missing them, is a question to anticipate.
As the ship the episode was set on was developed to the point of implying families on board, I admit I wondered just how many “passengers” were trying to cross the Atlantic in 1942. I did, though, also wonder about what I’ve picked up about Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, a movie I haven’t seen. The more enigmatic feature who became the central figure of the episode wound up someone I could guess the impending revelation about partway through, and in this case I did anticipate the twist ending. I suppose that in considering the relative closeness of when the episode was made to the history it was taking on I did recall Rod Serling had served in World War II; what further invocations of the war might show up, and how subtle they might get before I start missing them, is a question to anticipate.