To quote that famous Twilight Zone episode, this is the time of year the Syfy Channel truly puts out the effort "to serve man."
Well, Twilight Zone aficionados anyway. Just as it has for the past two decades, the channel will be showing a New Year's marathon of all the show's original episodes, which ran from 1959 to 1964. The 21st annual airing will begin at 6 p.m. Wednesday, ending at 11 a.m. Jan. 3. All 156 episodes will air.
As diehard fans of the show -- which we find eerily prophetic of these days and times -- Hubby and I will be watching a goodly number of these episodes. But this marathon will bring a new element. We will be gripping and flipping through a copy of the new book The Twilight Zone FAQ: All That's Left to Know About the Fifth Dimension and Beyond by Dave Thompson (Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, $19.99).
The book and its news release describe The Twilight Zone as "among the most beloved shows in American television history, a pioneering fantasy behemoth that [provided] thought-provoking mystery, mind-boggling theorems and occasionally outright horror." If famous singers' hits can be described as the soundtracks of our lives, this show should be dubbed the reflection of, well, the pit of our fears and the summit of our knowledge. Thompson's book is almost guaranteed to be our "Old Man in the Cave" (to mention another episode).
Thompson pays tribute to the series with a mix of undertones of humorous sarcasm, philosophy and no small amount of reverence. He begins with a summary of the social background that gave rise to the show: the Red Scare, McCarthyism, UFO sightings, A-bomb fear and the B movies it spawned.
In the second chapter, Thompson delves further into the bomb scare and the episodes that rose from it, including the popular "Time Enough at Last." That's the episode where Henry Bemis, a henpecked (well, thoroughly emasculated) book lover and bank clerk played by Burgess Meredith, survives an atomic bomb blast and subsequently thinks he'll finally be able to read unhindered by his dearly departed wife or boss.
Chapter Three begins the biography of the show's creator, Rod Serling, while Chapter Four takes a peek at the episodes born of World War II. These include "Deaths-Head Revisited," featuring what has to be one of the most idiotic bad guys in TV-dom: a former Nazi S.S. captain who decides to return to gloat at the concentration camp where he tortured prisoners.
Serling's life and career continue to unfold in subsequent chapters, interwoven with episodes and their back stories, real-life events going on at the time, and references to other shows. Readers will learn of a precursor show that was shelved ("The Time Element") and the episode that was aired on TV only once ("The Encounter").
Chapter Nine delves into the time-travel episodes, including "In Praise of Pip," the bookie who gets to visit with the child version of his injured-soldier son and offers himself in exchange for his son's life; and "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms," where three modern-day soldiers find themselves in the middle of the Battle of Little Bighorn and become part of history.
The book goes on to lump other episodes into seasons and categories: space-theme episodes, such as the 1959 pilot episode "Where Is Everybody?"; and parallel-universe episodes such as "The Afterhours," the story of a store mannequin who went over her allotted time to enjoy life as a human. The back of the book contains lists of seasons, episodes, and casts of the original series, the 1983 movie, and the revival shows of the '80s and the early 2000s.
To anyone who doesn't delve in deeply enough, The Twilight Zone FAQ appears to be a jumble of information, illustrated with stills from episodes and pictures of memorabilia. But it's a nice resource with which to settle arguments that might spring up as friends and family watch the marathon together. Sure, you could head to the Internet via smartphone and find the answer faster.
But sometimes, only an actual book will suffice. Just ask Henry Bemis.
That's an email address up ahead. Your next stop:
Style on 12/27/2015