The Twilight Zone: Nightmare as a Child
Feb. 24th, 2026 07:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerWith a title and Rod Serling’s on-set preview, I had a certain theory of what “Nightmare as a Child” might involve. Although heading home for the long weekend (and coming back with another carload of nostalgic relics to help my parents downsize, something I might or might not say a bit more about in a later post) meant another interruption in watching my way through The Twilight Zone on Blu-Ray, I suppose the theory was still in mind as I began the episode. It turned out my theory wasn’t correct.
A grown woman inviting into her apartment a young girl found sitting on inside steps did have me thinking a bit of anxieties since then. I managed to push that thought out of my mind (I’d also been thinking the inside steps reminded me of the apartment in “The Big Tall Wish”) and wondered about this being an episode produced on a more affordable scale than some, amusing myself with the possibility of it being a two-character show. That, though, had me contemplating my theory of just who the young girl really was and what might result from that, but also wondering if that had something to do with dismissive judgements of “child actors.” When another character knocked on the door, the previous possibility went away and further theories set in. They perhaps weren’t that far off how things turned out in the end.
One more thing that did get my attention at the end of the episode was an explanation explaining away this episode’s element of the fantastic through the invocation of psychiatric judgement, which I’ll admit had me thinking of my general impressions of the years when The Twilight Zone was made. I didn’t begrudge rationalization in this one case, though.
A grown woman inviting into her apartment a young girl found sitting on inside steps did have me thinking a bit of anxieties since then. I managed to push that thought out of my mind (I’d also been thinking the inside steps reminded me of the apartment in “The Big Tall Wish”) and wondered about this being an episode produced on a more affordable scale than some, amusing myself with the possibility of it being a two-character show. That, though, had me contemplating my theory of just who the young girl really was and what might result from that, but also wondering if that had something to do with dismissive judgements of “child actors.” When another character knocked on the door, the previous possibility went away and further theories set in. They perhaps weren’t that far off how things turned out in the end.
One more thing that did get my attention at the end of the episode was an explanation explaining away this episode’s element of the fantastic through the invocation of psychiatric judgement, which I’ll admit had me thinking of my general impressions of the years when The Twilight Zone was made. I didn’t begrudge rationalization in this one case, though.