Keith Palmer's Multi-Purpose Journal

As one of the handful of Twilight Zone episodes I was already aware of through adaptations, I was interested in “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” I watched it on my regular schedule; however, travelling home the next day for Christmas got in the way of setting down and posting my reactions right away.
( Just down the street )

Although I do wonder if Rod Serling’s next-episode previews altogether stick in my mind over the week I take getting to the next Twilight Zone episode, I reached “Elegy” with the general anticipation of another “science fiction” episode. I’m half-convinced this had something to do with my recollections of the preview including the mention of “space travel”; anyway, I also recall Serling mentioning Charles Beaumont would be the episode’s writer.
( As it turned out... )

Rod Serling holding a model biplane and talking about a World War I pilot in his next-episode preview got my attention. Recollections of having seen “The Last Flight” brought up before just might have come back to me. As I waited to reach the episode proper, I suppose I did get to thinking a bit about how “the flying aces” have been picked out from the grimmer image of the First World War as a whole, but a thought or two about the World War I Flying Ace in Peanuts reminded me that the episode was older than Snoopy’s first appearance in a flying helmet and scarf. That ever-popular comparison “we’re now further in time from this thing than it was from that thing...” came to mind. When the episode premiered sixty-five years ago, the beginning of the First World War had preceded it by less than fifty years.
( Future shock )

Noticing “The Hitch-Hiker” had a female main character got my attention. There hadn’t been any Twilight Zone episodes I could say that about since “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine.” At the same time, though, I was and I am conscious of all the potential problems in “judging the past,” and of the potential problems in not making a big deal of that.
( On the road )

So far as starting with a title and not much else goes, I was ready to suppose “Third from the Sun” meant The Twilight Zone was getting back to science fiction. Perhaps I didn’t think too much about certain criticisms that science fiction can (or “should”) involve more subtle subjects than “space travel,” but I might have just been trying not to speculate too much, conscious of the apparent risk in “finding fault with a story just for not being what you thought would be a good idea.” (I suppose, though, that I had a thought or two of a title from a few decades later that added one word to shape a less serious mood...)
( Surprises in store )

Seeing Christmas presents in Rod Serling’s next-episode preview had me wondering if “What You Need” would have The Twilight Zone already getting around to a “holiday episode.” I wasn’t that far into the episode itself before I supposed that wasn’t the case. It instead had me thinking about previous episodes of the show.
( Things needed )

Rod 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...
( Some brief anticipations )

After a week’s break due to a day trip to my extended family’s annual picnic, I got back to my Twilight Zone set and moved on to its second Blu-Ray disc. Extracting that disc from where it had been stacked behind the first and overlapped over more did have me wondering whether I ought to disperse the set into more regular cases. In moving on, though, I was heading from “episodes I was aware of through their adaptations” and “episodes I hadn’t really known about before” alike to one of “the episodes you can pick up on through cultural osmosis,” and wondering just what I’d made of it myself...
( Catching up on your reading )

When it comes to happening on the Twilight Zone episodes I’m already familiar with through their adaptations, my fortunes may not ever get any better than “Escape Clause” following right after “Walking Distance.” That second episode seemed to have embedded itself further in my memories than the first. For that matter, too, its “deal with the devil” story came to mind as I was watching the similar-yet-different “One for the Angels”...
( The final clause )

As Rod Serling’s preview began to attach a bit of meaning to the impending title “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine” a week ago, I did wonder just what I’d make of the episode once I’d seen it. While I make a certain show of seldom managing to broaden my scope by watching old movies, I once found the time to see Sunset Boulevard. The episode coming up did appear to have a similar plot.
( It’s different in The Twilight Zone )