The Twilight Zone
Time Travel Movies and Television Shows  Buy the Twilight Zone on DVD
The Twilight Zone has to be one of the greatest sci-fi shows of all time. This show was made in a time where good stories and great acting were it. That's about all you had to go on to create a TV program. They had special effects and costumes of course, but that's not what they relied on. If they had of course, the shows would be laughable by today's effects standards. Unfortunately that's where most of the shows and movies are going to find themselves in 20 years from now. Great writing like that of Rod Serling on the Twilight Zone lasts past the changing times, and the addition of better effects techniques. I'm afraid Hollywood has lost the ability to really create interesting stories. If it weren't for the comic book superhero craze, Hollywood wouldn't have anything worth watching on the big screen, but back to the small screen. The Twilight Zone has some great time travel stories, but those aren't the only episodes that have inspired me in my writing of the Time-Rider . The Twilight Zone was known for it's incredibly shocking endings. I guess I should say surprising endings. Today's shows and movies try to shock you at the end sometimes, but they can be really bad endings instead of a unique ending that you didn't expect the way the Twilight Zone would usually do. On the Twilight Zone you never knew what to expect. One episode might bring the viewer into a conversation going on in heaven, or wait till the end of the show to clue us in that the main character has been in the other place for the last 30 minutes. In Time-Rider issue 5 I allow our hero to end up in heaven to explain away a very important plot point you'll have to read for yourself.

A man might walk over a hill in the Twilight Zone and go a hundred years into the future, or step out of a door and wind up a hundred years into the past.  Angels appeared as well the opposing side. aliens, ghosts, robots, apocalyptic futures, monsters, and more appeared in the Twilight Zone every episode stretching the imagination of the viewer to it's limits. More often than not there would even be a moral for the viewer in these amazing stories.

For our purposes we'll focus on the time travel episodes.

The 7th is made up of Phantoms - 12/6/63

Modern tank soldiers conduct war-games at the location of Custard's Last Stand when they hear Custer's battle over the rise. After a soldier is shot by an arrow, the soldiers go over the rise to fight in the past. Back in the present their names are found listed at the memorial site there.
 

The Last Flight- 2/5/60
A World War I Royal Air Corp. Pilot, flees a battle and travels though a cloud and into the present. He travels back into the cloud to save his friend and gain his honor.

Execution - 4/1/60

While being hung in the old west, a killer is pulled from the past and into the future via a time machine. He kills the scientist responsible, and is killed by a burglar, who then starts the time machine and is back in the noose of past. Guest starring Russell Johnson the Professor from Gilligan's Island as Professor Manion. What typecasting. Russell Johnson also appeared in the episode "Back There" which by coincidence was also based on time travel.

The Trouble with Templeton - 12/9/60
An actor longing for his dead wife and the days of Hollywood's past, finds himself in the past with his wife and friends. Unsuspected, he becomes focus of a play for him to live for today and he's returned to the present.

Back There - 1/13/61

Opening Rod Serling Narration
"Witness a theoretical argument, Washington D. C., the present. Four intelligent men talking about an improbable thing like going back in time. A friendly debate revolving around a simple issue: could a human being change what has happened before? Interesting and theoretical because who ever heard of a man going back in time, before tonight, that is. Because this is the Twilight Zone."

A theoretical conversation about time travel leads to an unexpected trip for Peter Corrigan into the past right before the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Unable to change the past to save the President, he however finds out that a former servant in the present is now wealthy thanks to his trip to the past. Guest starring Russell Johnson from Gilligan's Island. His second Twilight Zone, and second time travel episode.

Closing Rod Serling Narration
"Mr. Peter Corrigan, lately returned from a place 'back there,' a journey into time with highly questionable results, proving on one hand that the threads of history are woven tightly and the skein of events cannot be undone, but on the other hand, there are small fragments of tapestry that can be altered. Tonight's thesis to be taken as you will, in the Twilight Zone."

The Odyssey of Flight 33 - 2/23/61

A plane hits a pocket of air that speeds the plane back through time back into the age of the dinosaur. They're able to travel to a presumed present, but they didn't come far ahead enough arriving above the 1939 New York Worlds Fair instead and they decide to try again.

A Hundred Yards over the Rim - 4/7/61

A early American settler with an ailing son hikes over a rim and travels into the future. He reads how his son discovers penicillin and bring the medicine back over the rim and into his time.
 

The Rip Van Winkle Caper -  4/21/61

To escape the law after stealing $1 million worth of gold bricks, a band of four gold thieves, led by scientist-mastermind Farwell (Oscar Beregi), hide in a secret cave in the desert. Using suspended animation to escape the law the the thieves wake up in the year 2061 where gold is now worthless.

Once Upon a Time - 12/15/61
An janitor (Buster Keaton) from the year 1890 uses a time helmet to travel to the future of 1962. Meeting a scientist who longs for the past, they travel back to 1890 but the scientist hates it and returns to 1962. This episode was one of the Twilight Zone's comedy episodes. The parts set in the 1890's have no sound, silent film speech cards and a saloon piano.

Keaton was one of the biggest stars of the silent era, starring in and devising elaborate stunts and gags for such classic comedies as The General and Steamboat Bill, Jr.. His career suffered with the advent of sound films, and he spent decades struggling in Hollywood. This episode was intended as an homage to his early work.

No Time Like the Past - 3/7/63
Paul Driscoll uses a time machine with the noble intention to go back in time and alter past events (in such a way as to minimize the loss of human life). After failing to warn a Hiroshima police captain about the atomic bomb, assassinate Adolf Hitler (in August, 1939 immediately before the outbreak of World War II in September, 1939), and change the course of the RMS Lusitania to avoid being torpedoed (by a World War I German U-boat), he accepts the hypothesis that the past cannot be changed. He then uses the time machine to journey to the town of Homeville, Indiana back in the year 1881 (with the intention of escaping and living out a quiet, uncomplicated life). After reading in a history book that Homeville's schoolhouse will burn down because of a kerosene lantern thrown from a runaway wagon, he spots the wagon and attempts to prevent this event from occurring. But instead he causes the fire he intended to prevent.

Spur of the Moment - 2/21/64
A young woman, Anne, is engaged to be married to a nice young investment broker, whom her father likes, while rebellious David Mitchell is trying to get her to elope with him. One day while horseback riding, she sees a terrifying woman dressed in black on horseback, who begins yelling at her to stop. The woman in black gallops toward her at full speed, and the young woman flees in terror, escaping her pursuer. Just before she is to be wed, the young woman is met by the no-good Mitchell, who convinces her to elope.

Twenty-five years later, Mitchell has driven the ranch his wife's father left her into bankruptcy and her to alcoholism. Anne has a fight with her husband and goes horseback riding, where she sees herself as a young woman on a horse. She now realizes that she was the terrifying woman in black who had frantically chased her younger self in the hope of warning her not to make the mistake of eloping with Mitchell. Anne is her own "ghostly double" from the past seeking to warn herself.

When the older Anne goes horseback riding, she repeatedly sees herself as a youngster and gives chase, but can never catch up, and thus can never change her past.

DVD Recommendation
I highly recommend if you plan on buying DVDs from the Twilight Zone that you get the Twilight Zone complete definitive collection. At the time of this writing it is much cheaper than getting the individual season sets. It could change of course by the time you read this.

Links
www.twilightzone.org
Tvcrazy.net Twilight Zone

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