Twilight Zone episode by episode thread...

[benbess]

How about a thread where we chat a little about Twilight Zone episode by episode, in order. Give your thoughts, analysis, things that surprised you from the audio commentary, what you liked, even things that bugged you.

The glitch some suffered is bad, obviously, but it seems to have been corrected. And some never had problems to begin with.

And so now the picture and the sound quality on this set is amazing for a show from this long ago. It's like you're in the CBS theater watching the show as Rod Serling watched it, on 35mm film.

And it's amazing what Rod Serling and his team could do on such a limited budget. I think in the commentaries somewhere it says that the budget per half hour show was $50,000. Even using a handy-dandy inflation adjuster calculator, that's around $360,000 in today's dollars:

http://www.angelfire.com/fl/twilightzonelist/index.html

I think most half hour shows today have a budget of about a million or so. And so 50k even back in 1959 was a not a lot of dough. And yet Twilight Zone still can give people chills. My kids, ages 9 and 14, for instance, have long been able to see an orc decapitated in LOTR, but mention of TZ makes them shiver and creep out.

One of the things about it is the brilliant music by the great Bernard Hermann, also famous for many Hitchcock scores like North by Northwest and Psycho. That music is just so eerie. And the great Jerry Goldsmith also contributed a lot scores.

OK--on to episode one.

Thoughts, comments, etc. about Where is Everybody?

This episode first aired on October 2, 1959--51 years ago if I'm counting right...