Aug 10
TV lineup for Sunday night
The Dispatch - Aug 5, 1966
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TV lineup for Sunday night
The Dispatch - Aug 5, 1966
The Twilight Zone Beginner's Guide
Background
The Twilight Zone was a sci-fi, horror, and surrealist fantasy anthology TV show. It had 5 seasons that ran from 1959 to 1964. It was created by Rod Serling, a WWII Army veteran and screenwriter notable for his social activism against racism, censorship, and war.
Every episode of the Twilight Zone is standalone and is introduced and concluded with a short monologue from Rod Serling. The show covers a wide range of topics and while some episodes are moral tales, others are simply telling a surreal story.
I've compiled 40 episodes with different subjects in the hopes that a new viewer will find a Twilight Zone episode they enjoy! There are many more episodes than what I list here, if none of them interest you I highly recommend browsing episode descriptions on IMDb to see if any catch your eye.
Where to Watch
The Twilight Zone is available for free on Tubi, and is definitely "not" available on PopcornMovies and SpenFlix ;) (please use discretion)
Additional Notes
Despite Serling's efforts, 1960s American TV executives were incredibly racist and actively limited the racial diversity on their TV shows. Black and East Asian actors feature rarely on this show. The vast majority of episodes feature White American men. There are also elements of sexism in many episodes with female characters. In my opinion the stories in this show are still worth watching despite these flaws.
Also, many episodes use special effects that were maybe impressive at the time but now are very obvious. I think the SFX are charming and encourage viewers to look past the corny-ness of it (unless that's something you really love, in that case you'rein for a treat).
Episode Recommendations
Star⭐️ = highly rated episodes(IMDb). Heart❤️ = personal favorites of mine.
Aliens/Space Travel
S1.E25. People Are Alike All Over
S2.E15. The Invaders
S2.E28. Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up? ⭐️❤️
S3.E24. To Serve Man ⭐️
S3.E28. The Little People
Dystopia/Social Commentary
S1.E22. The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street ⭐️❤️
S2.E11. Eye of the Beholder ⭐️
S2.E11. The Night of the Meek
S2.E28. The Obsolete Man ⭐️
S5.E17. Number 12 Looks Just Like You ❤️
War
S1.E8. Time Enough at Last ⭐️
S3.E1. Two
S3.E3. The Shelter ⭐️
Time Travel
S1.E5. Walking Distance ❤️
S1.E30. A Stop at Willoughby
S2.E23. A Hundred Yards Over the Rim
S3.E21. Kick the Can ❤️
Horror
S1.E16. The Hitch-Hiker ❤️
S1.E21. Mirror Image
S3.E8. It's a Good Life ⭐️
S3.E26. Little Girl Lost ❤️
S3.E27. Person or Persons Unknown
S3.E33. The Dummy
S5.E3. Nightmare at 20,000 Feet ⭐️❤️
S5.E6. Living Doll ⭐️
S5.E25. The Masks
S5.E30. Stopover in a Quiet Town ❤️
Heaven & Hell/Angels & Demons
S1.E2. One for the Angels
S1.E28. A Nice Place to Visit
S2.E5. The Howling Man
S2.E22. Long Distance Call ❤️
S3.E16. Nothing in the Dark ⭐️
S3.E19. The Hunt ❤️
Miscellaneous or "Wasn't that crazy? I'm Rod Serling."
S1.E27. The Big Tall Wish
S2.E16. A Penny for Your Thoughts
S2.E18. The Odyssey of Flight 33 ❤️
S3.E2. The Arrival
S3.E10. The Midnight Sun ⭐️
S3.E14. Five Characters in Search of an Exit ❤️❤️❤️
S3.E31. The Trade-Ins
i feel like 60s TV fandom Tumblr is sleeping on Ironside. Like... no judgement or anything!! I mean, I've been obsessed with 60s TV for over 30 years and I only discovered it this week! I already feel as though my whole life has been wasted because I haven't always been obsessed with it, though, so I'm here for my fellow 60s TV aficionados with some reasons why you too ought to discover it if you haven't already.
Consider:
Openly gay lead actor in the 1960s
Black main cast member whose role was not being The Black Guy™ (in a similar vein to Greg Morris who was cast as Barney Collier in Mission: Impossible a year earlier)
Disabled lead character with no chance of 'miraculous recovery'
Portrayal of disability accommodations up the wazoo for said character, and/or how being disabled affects his daily life.
So much grumpiness.
Disabled character retains Police Chief title in an honorary capacity as a consultant - despite being unable to do all the running about that policemen tend to do in these shows, because he's THAT good of a detective the police force can't cope without him, wheelchair or no wheelchair.
Seriously the show was entirely written to raise disability awareness. Handled a bit clumsily sometimes, but with total sincerity. A lot of "he a little confused but he got the spirit".
Canonically lives alone with male black bodyguard who is possibly secretly married to him, often seen lounging about in boxers and flimsy dressing gown only just about tied (Hooooooooo boy.....!!!)
Only times lead character actually shows genuine fear or emotion is when his bodyguard is put in any danger. Will do anything to stop said bodyguard from putting himself in real danger during cases, despite it being his actual job. Conclusion: it's love, folks
No seriously you do not understand, I swear the UST between Robert Ironside and Mark Sanger is off the charts you can't even tell me it isn't
THE GRUMPINESS
Total himbo lead detective with heart of gold and brain of custard. Det Sgt Ed Brown, we don't know what you do, but you sure do it and we're grateful.
Badass lady detective constantly out-sassing and more often than not outthinking every single man, especially the lead character, while consistently having the best hair and wardrobe of any actress in a 60s detective series filmed outside of the UK.
Did i mention everyone is really, HILARIOUSLY grumpy??
Oh yeah, great writing, strong plots, all that stuff.
Barbara Anderson deserves her own post istfg she is everything to me. I adored her as Mimi in the last season of Mission: Impossible and it's so wonderful to get to see her every single episode in this!!
Eight whole-ass 60s-length seasons of this stuff - that's 195 episodes of 60s/70s over-the-top awesomeness to wallow in for MONTHS before you've watched all of it!!!!
Good LORD there is so much grumpiness....!!!!!!
I hope that's helped sell it for you all a little bit. Please feel free to let me know if you already watch Ironside though!! I've literally only started watching it in the last couple of days, I think I'm only about halfway through Season 1 so I am totally here for any fangirling!!!
Look at these absolutely furiously grumpy goofballs, they're so pissed off they can't even find the camera!!!!
The Avengers: Never, Never Say Die, Compared with Night of the Big Heat
Something a little different today, because for some time I have been pondering similarities between the Avengers episode Never, Never Say Die ( Production finished 14th February 1967 and first broadcast 17th March 1967) and the film Night of the Big Heat (released May 26th 1967 in the UK and in 1971 in the USA as Island of the Burning Damned), so I'm going to lay out what I'm thinking in this blog post and you can all tell yourselves how wrong I am.
In fact the similarities are largely incidental because the plots of the two broadcasts are quite different. Never, Never Say Die is more science fiction and Night of the Big Heat is more horror.
Never, Never Say Die is about people being copied with robots who are indestructible but have problems with radio and television waves.
Night of the Big Heat features a couple running an inn on an island: he is a novelist and manages to hire a woman with whom he has already had an affair as his secretary. For some reason the island is experiencing a massive heat wave, and a scientist checks in to the inn to do experiments on the island. There are unexplained things happening to people and animals, and lots of unexplained interference with electrical appliances. The reason for the strange happenings is that the island has been invaded by aliens, who are banished by an unexpected thunderstorm.
I am going to lay out the things which strike me as similarities about the two.
In both shows we see banks of electronic equipment in shots which at least look like each other.
Both shows feature disturbance on communication equipment: televisions and/or radio.
In Never, Never Say Die, Christopher Lee's character repeatedly gets run over, always just standing in the road before this happens. In Night of the Big Heat a character nearly gets run over because he's just standing in the road.
Both shows feature similar-looking fantasy cottagey interiors: Night of the Big Heat is very definitely set in the fantasy world of The Avengers.
Peter Cushing's character in Night of the Big Heat is called Dr Stone and there is also a Professor Stone in Never, Never Say Die, played by Christopher Lee.
Night of the Big Heat has a full house of 1960s regulars who had appeared at various times in The Avengers, which is another way it looks very much like the ITC TV of the 1960s: Christopher Lee, Patrick Allen, Peter Cushing, Sarah Lawson, Thomas Heathcote and William Lucas. Kenneth Cope needs no introduction to the readers of this blog, of course.
I badly want there to be a connection between this Avengers episode and this film, but haven't been able to find one. At the very leaast there are similarities and if you like The Avengers I think you would definitely like Night of the Big Heat as being set in the same fantasy world. In fact there was an earlier television adaptation of the novel of Night of the Big Heat in 1960, so it's possible that was an influence on The Avengers first, and then the Avengersy elements in the 1960s zeitgeist also affected the production of the film so they ended up looking like each other. Unfortunately the 1960 TV adaptation is missing believed wiped.
Something I find hilarious about the film is that they've slathered the entire male cast in glycerin to make them look sweaty in the heat (and I mean absolutely covered) but they've only done this on the cleavage of the secretary and not on the other female actress. Obviously she's a lady and just glows. Speaking of the secretary, who is best candidate to be what my late mother would have called a sexy piece, I do have one criticism, which is that Night of the Big Heat is actually quite sexy because everyone is glistening, but I honestly think it could have been so much more sexy in horror film tradition. The secretary is basically the only sex object but there are way too many clothes being worn for the situation to my mind, and they've missed an opportunity.
Nonetheless an Avengers episode and film which bear a passing resemblance to each other, and if you like the Avengers I would definitely say you will like the film.
Meanwhile in Clacton the record-length postal ballots have started arriving and as you can see this one went to a patriot who voted Binface. 🚮
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Monty Python's Flying Circus: You're No Fun Any More
I have commented before that a Monty Python episode, or even just a sketch, will tend to enter my head for a time and rather preoccupy me before leaving and being replaced with another. Mrs Premise and Mrs Conclusion Go to See Jean-Paul Sartre has finally left my head and the Science Fiction Sketch has entered it instead. I have also commented that the reason Monty Python doesn't appear very much here is because I find I can't write about it. The Monty Python humour rather evaporates when analysed in my opinion: the best you can do is describe it as if you are sharing it at school or work the day after the broadcast. That is rather what I did with the Monty Python advertisement for Birdseye Peas. I felt it worked well with that little-known piece, but my ambition with this blog has always been to avoid description if possible.
In fact I was thinking I would be at a disadvantage with this one because science fiction films really aren't my strong point, and I knew there would be endless references to famous films which I wouldn't recognise and would end up making a fool of myself. I have therefore been heavily dependent on Darl Larsen's Monty Python's Flying Circus: An Utterly Complete, Thoroughly Unillustrated, Absolutely Unauthorised Guide to Possibly All the References, which is certainly exhaustive. Of course Mr Larsen is a foreigner so sometimes misses some meanings, although the only absolute howler I've spotted while reading about this episode was where he calls Scots language Scots accent, which it certainly isn't.
One of the things he has made me realise about this episode is that there are far more sexual references than I had realised. This does make me feel a bit silly, because the 'you're no fun any more' is an explicitly sexual reference, even as portrayed in the episode. Larsen takes it further to point out that the reference to Scotland being so full that there are three men to a caber is also a positively filthy innuendo which I'm ashamed to say I'd missed completely. The reference to whipping is of course directly kinky. Larsen suggests that the preceding snatch of the vampire not biting the woman also has a directly sexual reference in terms of a vampire being, as it were, engorged with blood but I could leave that one myself.
I am once again struck by the different pace of television at this time. Specifically what makes me think of this is the little detail that the camel spotter is called Mr Sopwith. While not an obsessive fan I consider myself fairly familiar with the Flying Circus but had never spotted this momentary reference. How would anyone, seeing it just once in their family living room, have a chance to spot all these details? It's quite something that so many TV programmes at the time put in tiny details many of which were probably missed by viewers over 50 years ago.
However of course the main attraction for me is the blancmange which invades the planet to turn Englishmen into Scotsmen.
I knew of course that there would be references galore to science fiction films here. I was thinking of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), because it is one I like and is actually on my laptop. It is also very close to the plot of the spoof science fiction film, in terms of people being changed. Of course The Blob has a distinctly blancmange-like alien, which has many similarities. Larsen also suggests references to The Invisible Man (1933), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), Forbidden Planet (1956), Angry Red Planet (1960), and Them! (1954).
The Pythons have a swipe at pretty much everyone here, all in the name of parodying the ridiculous conventions of the science fiction genre. Most obviously Scotsmen, who are depicted as primitive, stupid, foreign, and generally othered. However the woman in the research lab also embodies the dumb bimbo of science fiction. He gives a lengthy list of the tropes from science fiction the episode uses, and there is a shorter, slightly differently-named list on Tekevision Tropes is you want to look.
Larsen makes the excellent point which I really hadn;t noticed that the woman in the lab doesn't have a name and is only referred to by pronouns. The fact that she is just calle She or You puts her on the same footing as the invaders here just referred to as Them, so that she is made the Other in common with the invading blancmange.
There is also the strange effect that incidental music can be heard inside the lab, while rhetorical statements are taken literally by Graham Chapman, and the other way round. This episode genuinely takes every convention of science fiction at once and stuffs them into a relatively short sketch.
I don't have any criticisms of this episode, and particularly like the way it ends with Scottish music instead of the normal Monty Python music. Highly recommended, although other people will certainly get more science fiction references than me.
Finally a short video, and in case you are reading this abroad and don't know who this man is, it's Sir Edward Davey, leader of the ultra-sensible and serious Liberal Democrat Party, and he's endorsing Count Binface for Clacton.
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Archives from 2013 to September 2023 may be found at culttvblog.blogspot.com and there is an incomplete index to the tags used on the Tumblr version at https://www.tumblr.com/culttvblog/729194158177370112/this-blog
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About this blog: https://culttvblog.substack.com/about