The Twilight Zone: The Purple Testament
Dec. 2nd, 2025 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerAs a title in isolation, “The Purple Testament” got my attention. Rod Serling’s episode preview filled things in a little (and quashed whatever speculation the colour might have raised); I understood it would be a war story. Beyond that, I was willing to wait and see.
The beginning of the episode got my attention even if I might not have needed very long to suppose it involved “stock footage” (much more probably from a war movie than actual combat footage); the forward base the story shifted to did have a certain sound-stage look to it even if the greasy sweatiness of everyone looked more impressive in another certain way. I noticed Serling’s opening narration refer to the Philippines, which located the story in time and space, but waited a while longer for the element of the fantastic. It involved an officer realising he could see who was going to die soon by looking at their faces; that also got my attention.
I might have been distracted from that when the story moved further back from the front lines and I started wondering if a staircase with a bend in it was indeed the staircase that had featured in “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine”; it reminded me of impressions a bar had shown up in two different episodes closer in sequence. So far as the ending went, I think I’d supposed a mirror would have to show up before it actually did; the episode as a whole was more interesting than a mere “Twilight Zone twist ending,” though. The ending narration explained the title with a Shakespeare reference. Afterwards, thinking a bit again of impressions Rod Serling had served in the Pacific in World War II and this had left a lasting impression him, I looked up his Wikipedia entry at last and realised he’d been in the Philippines himself, if not as an officer.
The beginning of the episode got my attention even if I might not have needed very long to suppose it involved “stock footage” (much more probably from a war movie than actual combat footage); the forward base the story shifted to did have a certain sound-stage look to it even if the greasy sweatiness of everyone looked more impressive in another certain way. I noticed Serling’s opening narration refer to the Philippines, which located the story in time and space, but waited a while longer for the element of the fantastic. It involved an officer realising he could see who was going to die soon by looking at their faces; that also got my attention.
I might have been distracted from that when the story moved further back from the front lines and I started wondering if a staircase with a bend in it was indeed the staircase that had featured in “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine”; it reminded me of impressions a bar had shown up in two different episodes closer in sequence. So far as the ending went, I think I’d supposed a mirror would have to show up before it actually did; the episode as a whole was more interesting than a mere “Twilight Zone twist ending,” though. The ending narration explained the title with a Shakespeare reference. Afterwards, thinking a bit again of impressions Rod Serling had served in the Pacific in World War II and this had left a lasting impression him, I looked up his Wikipedia entry at last and realised he’d been in the Philippines himself, if not as an officer.