I just bought some original 50's episodes of The Twilight Zone...



There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition and it lies between the pit of mans fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call The Twilight Zone.

Some of my favourite parts of TZ are Rod Serling's narrative intro's & outro's. Standing in his sharkskin suit, smoking unfiltered cigarettes & dishing out his prophetic insights from between clenched teeth & pursed lips with a voice as smokey as the Lucky Strike between his fingers. I remember watching TZ on channel 4 & although they were 20+ years old at the time, they still held me in suspense. I guess the stories are based more on the mental themes of Science Fiction rather than the visual monsters, robots & spaceships stylings of The Outer Limits & other more typically SF projects. Unusual subject matter, often allegorical but always fluid & entertaining, using the everyday and the ordinary to give the supenatural elements an even sharper edge. Serling himself wrote 92 of the 156 episodes that were produced between 1959 - 1964 along with other writers such as Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson & Ray Bradbury. Serling died in 1975 from complications arising from a bypass operation - he was only 51 years old.

You see kids - it may look cool posing with a cigarette in your hand, but...