If you don’t have the time to watch 156 episodes of Rod Serling’s anthology series is a landmark in the history of television. Serling was struggling to get TV scripts produced that dealt with serious subjects like racism and political paranoia, because networks were very particular about offending their sensitive rs in the ‘50s and ‘60s. But he found a clever workaround: he could use the horror and science fiction genres to allegorize that sensitive subject matter.
The Twilight Zone’s allegories made its social commentary more digestible and accessible, and it also made it more evergreen. By tackling topics like McCarthyism and the looming threat of nuclear war through tales of alien invaders and apocalyptic events, The Twilight Zone maintained a timeless quality. The Twilight Zone’s best episodes still hold up today. Serling used sci-fi stories to comment on race relations, political divisions, and otherization, all of which are sadly still relevant now. If you don’t have time to binge-watch the entire series, give these essential episodes a watch.
10 Time Enough At Last
Season 1, Episode 8
The first truly iconic episode of The Twilight Zone’s run is season 1’s “Time Enough at Last.” A bookworm who just wants to read but doesn’t have the time miraculously survives a world-ending catastrophe that wipes out the rest of humankind. He sees it as an opportunity, since he finally has time to read the classics, but then, in the episode’s legendary ending, his reading glasses break. By setting up a dark scenario and culminating in a spine-chilling all-is-lost moment, this episode introduced audiences to The Twilight Zone’s unique style of twisty storytelling.
9 Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up?
Season 2, Episode 28
Season 2’s “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” is wonderfully reminiscent of John Carpenter’s The Thing, with an Arctic research station swapped out for a humble all-American eatery. After a UFO crashes in the midst of a blizzard, two state troopers are called out to a diner. Nine people are holed up in there, but only eight of them are human. As is typical of The Twilight Zone, this is a classic sci-fi vehicle to explore Cold War-era paranoia. The sneaky Martian who came to Earth is a stand-in for a mythical Soviet impostor infiltrating the United States.
8 The Midnight Sun
Season 3, Episode 10
The season 3 episode “The Midnight Sun” is an existential nightmare. It’s mired in face-melting heat, but it sends a chill down your spine. It explores a terrifying what-if scenario that sees the Earth knocked off its axis, careening toward the Sun. Some people have already been killed by the heat and others have fled to colder areas for a few more precious hours before the planet is engulfed in flames. The episode is a gonzo allegory for a nuclear apocalypse, and it builds to a haunting final twist that flips the horror on its head.
7 And When The Sky Was Opened
Season 1, Episode 11
In the season 1 episode “And When the Sky Was Opened,” after two pilots crash-land an experimental spacecraft, they’re asked to recall their experiences. They a third co-pilot who has mysteriously disappeared, but it becomes ominously apparent that this third pilot doesn’t seem to have ever existed. This underrated gem is chillingly ambiguous; it doesn’t provide a straight answer. It could be a commentary on the way warring nations treat their troops as expendable. Soldiers are sent to die so unceremoniously that it’s as if they never lived in the first place.
6 Five Characters In Search Of An Exit
Season 3, Episode 14
A clown, a bagpiper, a ballet dancer, a migrant worker, and an army major find themselves in a large metal container in the season 3 episode “Five Characters in Search of an Exit.” They don’t know each other, they don’t know how they got there, and they don’t their lives outside this giant cylinder. They speculate about why they’re in this container and try various unsuccessful plans to escape. This is one of The Twilight Zone’s most curiously abstract and esoteric episodes, and it builds to a truly heartbreaking ending that’ll have you questioning reality.
5 Nightmare At 20,000 Feet
Season 5, Episode 3
Very few Twilight Zone episodes are as well-known as season 5’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” It was remade as a segment in the Twilight Zone movie, and it’s been parodied in everything from The Simpsons to Airplane II to Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa. It’s about an airline enger who panics when he sees a horrifying creature on the wing of the plane, sabotaging the flight, and no one will believe him. This episode uses the horror trope of a gremlin to encapsulate the mindset of a nervous flyer. Everyone can relate to William Shatner’s airborne anxiety.
4 To Serve Man
Season 3, Episode 24
The title of season 3’s “To Serve Man” has a delicious double meaning. A nine-foot-tall alien race called the Kanamits arrives on Earth with claims that they want to solve the world’s food shortages and energy crises by sharing their advanced technology. Episodes of The Twilight Zone live and die on the strength of their twists, and the final twist in “To Serve Man” is a doozy. As it turns out, the Kanamits aren’t interested in providing humanitarian aid at all. It’s a fascinating examination of how difficult it can be to trust a good thing.
3 Eye Of The Beholder
Season 2, Episode 6
Season 2’s “Eye of the Beholder” masterfully subverts society’s beauty standards. It revolves around a woman who’s described as being hideous to look at, undergoing 11 cosmetic procedures in an attempt to look “normal.” But when her bandages are removed, it’s revealed that she’s a beautiful woman by real-world standards, and that everyone else has sunken eyes, pig snouts, and twisted lips. The episode examines the frivolousness of judging people by their outer appearance, and the fact that humanity’s standards of beauty are just circumstantial.
2 It's A Good Life
Season 3, Episode 8
Every The Twilight Zone’s scariest character by far — and the episode itself is a deeply unsettling cautionary tale about the dangers of absolute power.
1 The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street
Season 1, Episode 22
Season 1’s “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” is the most perfect example of what Serling set out to do with The Twilight Zone: use speculative sci-fi stories to explore contemporary social and political issues. The episode takes place in a quaint all-American neighborhood; the kind of place where everyone knows each other’s names, trusts the people on their street, and leaves their doors unlocked. But that all changes when a spooky shadow descends over the town and a local boy compares it to a story he read where alien invaders disguised themselves as a human family.
10 Types Of Twilight Zone Episodes
Each installment of The Twilight Zone has a message hidden in its story, but there are a number of different types of episodes based on their themes.
Tensions quickly run high among the neighbors, and the quest to identify the aliens promptly becomes a witch hunt. The episode was a timely allegory for McCarthyism and the Red Scare. The plot to out an alien impostor symbolized the then-ongoing attempts to out every communist sympathizer in the United States. Today, that allegory is still relevant, as Americans are still divided over their political opinions, and that mob mentality is still alive and well. “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” is The Twilight Zone at its very best.
The Twilight Zone
- Release Date
- 1959 - 1964
- Network
- CBS
- Showrunner
- Rod Serling
Cast
Rod SerlingSelf - Host-
Robert McCordWaiter
WHERE TO WATCH
- Directors
- John Brahm, Buzz Kulik, Douglas Heyes, Lamont Johnson, Richard L. Bare, James Sheldon, Richard Donner, Don Medford, Montgomery Pittman, Abner Biberman, Alan Crosland, Jr., Alvin Ganzer, Elliot Silverstein, Jack Smight, Joseph M. Newman, Ted Post, William Claxton, Jus Addiss, Mitchell Leisen, Perry Lafferty, Robert Florey, Robert Parrish, Ron Winston, Stuart Rosenberg
- Writers
- Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, Earl Hamner, Jr., George Clayton Johnson, Jerry Sohl, Henry Slesar, Martin Goldsmith, Anthony Wilson, Bernard C. Schoenfeld, Bill Idelson, E. Jack Neuman, Jerome Bixby, Jerry McNeely, John Collier, John Furia, Jr., John Tomerlin, Lucille Fletcher, Ray Bradbury, Reginald Rose, Sam Rolfe, Adele T. Strassfield
- Creator(s)
- Rod Serling
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