Was Rod Serling Trying To Tell Us Something?

One of my favorite shows of all time is The Twilight Zone. When I was a kid I would beg my dad to let me stay up and watch it when it came on PBS (we had to hook the Rabbit Ears to the UHF screws to watch it ). Recently I have begun watching it again, and now that I am older, wow. Rod Serling was a genius, and now I think I am beginning to understand a good bit of what he was actually trying to say. I would guess that a great many of us here are fans of the show, but I can honestly say I never realized the depth and signifigance of some of those classics until I watched them again many years later.


"The Obsolete Man" with Burgess Meredith is an excellent example with some pretty jaw dropping quotes...



"The Old Man in the Cave", a man named Goldsmith is the Mainframe Computer's only liason to the last survivors of a nuclear holocaust. Another great episode with a profound message.


"The Little People" which made me swear off ant squishing as a child.

It seems Rod Covered everything from Alien Invasions, Alternate Universes, to Big Brother Regimes and Time Travel, some of that could have walked right off the pages here at ATS... Apparently there's alot more to the Twilight Zone than I thought, but anyway to make a long post shorter, what's your episodes and what did you get out of them? Just a show or was Rod trying to tell us something?

If you ask me all the UFO, Big Foot, Lochness, Devil's Triangle stuff is just a lot of hooey to keep enquiring minds too busy to think about what they otherwise might be.

I think that Patrick McGoohan was definitely trying to tell us something more substantial with his television series The Prisoner.

Although Rod Sterling was only presenting most of the episodes, i must agree. The show was truly genius and should go down as one of the greatest tv shows of all time. I'd choose it over most of what's on TV anyday.

The Obsolete Man is my alltime favourite Twilight Zone episode! It's written, correct me if I'm wrong, by Richard Matheson who wrote I Am Legend. I thought this was the bets of all the Twilight Zones because it illustrated the danger of a totalitarian government. Isn't weird but true that all forms of totalitarianism depend (very heavily) on a death, or at least an assimilation of art. It's very Marxist, has anyone read Marx's criticism of art recently, it's pretty scarry.

AMD

i'm only 20 years old so this show obviously wasn't in my era. and my parents are in their early 40's so it wasn't in there's either.

but we have a Tivo at my house and somehow the tivo recorded the show on there (must have matched up w/ one of the catagories that we chose) anyway, i watched one of them with my dad and despite it being in black and white i was amazed at how the story lines seem more sophisticated than most of the ideas portrayed in TV shows nowadays. so i keep watching them

my favorite one is the one called "to serve man". in which aliens called kanamites come to planet earth that are like 7 feet tall and with giant foreheads and they claim to be there to serve man and they leave this book and say "if you want to know our true intentions its all in this book". obviously the humans have to figure out a way to decifer it. meanwhile the aliens are teaching humans all these better ways to create energy and lead safer more efficent lives and after a while they start letting humans go in there space ships to their planet to visit. well when they decifer the title it comes saying "to serve man" so naturally all the people trust them even more. well right at the end this cia guy or something has finally gotten his chance to take a flight with the aliens to their planet and the lady that has been trying to decifer the pages in the book runs up and says "dont get in i decifered the book! its a cook book!!!" and the aliens shove the guy in the space ship. and it ends with the cia guy talking to you from the ship as they are trying to fatten him up warning human beings about the faults of their human nature.

"to serve man" its only natural for us to think something would want to come and serve us...too bad not in the way we thought...pretty clever

Kind Regards,
digitalgrl

[edit on 10/01/2004 by DigitalGrl]

To Serve Man is my all time fave too.
Not changing the topic, but I have always wondered why he had to die so young, at age 51 with no previous illnesses or is it my conspiracy alert on?
Perhaps, he was too far beyond his time, experience?

Oh this was the absolute best!!! I will still watch this one! At the time i watched this, i thougt it was the coolest one he'd ever made.

And how about the one with Agnes Moorehead and that little alien with the sharp knife? Incredible!

members.cox.net...


Entire transcript of "To serve Man"

[edit on 21-3-2006 by dgtempe]

i just watched one last night about this lady who is in a bus station and she goes up to the counter to ask the guy when the bus is going to come and he yells at her and tells her to stop coming up and talking to him and she says she has never spoken to him before. then her suitcase keeps appearing and disappearing. Its all about parallel planes of existence and how each of us has a twin in those different planes and once and a while the planes converge and the ones from the other plane try to take out the ones in our time on earth.

pretty advanced for that era huh?
that was a pretty good one. i'm seeing all these for the first time since as i mentioned before i'm only 20 but they some of the most indepth storylines i have seen in a long time. i thought most stuff from back then was pretty cheesy...guess i was wrong

Kind Regards,
Digitalgrl

Well, I had a nice post typed up and then it told me another topic with this name existed...

Too slow I guess... But you get a star for it since I think it is a great topic.

Yup, my favorite episode was also 'To Serve Man'. It made me wonder if we are all just cattle... For sure it will make me think twice about jumping on a 'space ship'

We are a type 0 civilization, what do you think the chances are of a type 2 or type 3 civilization coming and using the Earth for its resources... People and all.... (Imagine the Borg (Type 5 if I remember right) at your door step)

Also the episode with the space ship in the secluded old lady's attic... With those little toy robots attacking her... lmao... Rod commented on how he had to use cheap toys because of his budget... Even though, it was still one of my favorite episodes... Probably #2.

"Time enough at last", the guy who loved to read, locked himself in a vault and WW3 happened.... he came out, was the only guy left and had all the time in the world to read now.... I won't spoil the ending.... But it was a great one too.... One of Rod's personal favorites.


Anyway, yeah. Rod Serling was a great writer.

we all know captain kirk seeing the monster on the wing is the best episode, and showed that we need better plane inspectors

I know this is an old thread but it even makes more sense now than it did a couple of years ago. Specially THE OBSOLETE MAN.

Either Rod was looking at the future, and the Matrix, or he had inside info.

I still never miss one of those old shows when they're on!!!