Twilight Zone: Mr. Denton on Doomsday

[Lizuka]

I really figure the reason Twilight Zone is thought of by and large as a sci-fi series is just because that's what a lot of the best known episodes are. Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, Time Enough at Last, To Serve Man, Eye of the Beholder, Nightmare at 30,000 Feet kind of rides the line... There are certainly well known ones that are pure fantasy as well, but those are just more the kind that tend to stand out to people.

Might also in part be because, while there are good and bad episodes in both ways, I feel like a lot of the outright worst episodes are fantasy. Not to take anything away from all of the really, really good ones, but that might be partial factor.

[cdrood]

Somehow, I've never caught this episode before. I'm reminded of the movie, "The Gunfighter" with Gregory Peck. It's a great film showing how tired and repetitive being "the fastest gun" is. However, you don't want to die. All he wants to do is reconnect with his wife and meet his son. Also in the movie is a young Skip Homeier (Melakon & Dr. Sevren to Star Trek fans).

[Durandal_1707]

I really figure the reason Twilight Zone is thought of by and large as a sci-fi series is just because that's what a lot of the best known episodes are. Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, Time Enough at Last, To Serve Man, Eye of the Beholder, Nightmare at 30,000 Feet kind of rides the line... There are certainly well known ones that are pure fantasy as well, but those are just more the kind that tend to stand out to people.

Might also in part be because, while there are good and bad episodes in both ways, I feel like a lot of the outright worst episodes are fantasy. Not to take anything away from all of the really, really good ones, but that might be partial factor.

I dunno, my impression was that the magic/fantasy stuff was firmly embedded in the popular image of what the TZ is. Episodes like "It's a Good Life", "Living Doll", "Walking Distance", "The Dummy", "The Hitch-Hiker", and "Long Distance Call" are pretty well known, I think.

I'd also argue that "Nightmare at 30,000 feet" isn't sci-fi under any definition. If you think the monster is real, it's fantasy, and if it isn't, it's a story about a man's psychological breakdown, but either way there aren't any sci-fi elements in it.

Frankly, I think the show on a whole is probably fairly half-and-half (including the worst episodes, of which there are plenty in the sci-fi genre. Remember the one with the punk-jacket wearing aliens? Or the one where a jealous computer falls in love with its technician? Or the one with the robot that drinks chocolate milk? Or the one with the baseball-playing robots? Or the one with the soldiers who find a time portal to the nineteenth century and decide to join Custer's Last Stand for some reason? Well, I do, although I can't remember the names of any of these off the top of my head).

[Fianna]

In a lot of Twilight Zone episodes, the cause of the weird goings on is left unexplained. We don't know why the kid from "It's a Good Life" can warp reality with his mind, or what the creature from"20,000 Feet" really was, or what caused the plane from "The Odyssey of Flight 33" to travel back in time. Those could all be caused by something mystical (a god in human form, a mischievous goblin, a magical doorway) or they could be caused by standard sci-fi conceits (psychic powers, a curious alien, a temporal wormhole), but since the episodes don't confirm which it is, pegging them as either sci-fi or fantasy is difficult.

As Serling said in one of the opening narrations, the show is about "the middle ground between science and superstition".