In honor of the iconic sci-fi franchise's return, TV Guide sifted through the original series to find the episodes that aged the best - whether they're newly relevant again or they never went out of style in the first place.Ī dying patriarch promises his toxic relatives their inheritance on one condition: They wear hideous masks until the stroke of midnight. Jordan Peele's The Twilight Zone: What to Watch and What to Skip What The Twilight Zone was really trying to unpack was human nature. Its themes were timely - the original series, which aired from 1959 to 1964, was preoccupied with the space race, nuclear panic, and post-World War II reckoning - but the core idea of the show was timeless. But even if its template is now familiar and some of its its biggest twists have been spoiled by word of mouth, the series hasn't lost its impact.Īt its best, The Twilight Zone nailed a hard-to-duplicate formula, wrapping provocative social commentary in an entertaining package. Rod Serling's classic sci-fi anthology series, now back for an all-new reboot under Jordan Peele, has left its mark on everything from Black Mirror to Star Trek to Peele's Get Out. The real news is replete with terrible crimes perpetrated by men, many of whom we assumed were “good guys.” In other words, it’s hard to disagree with the essential premise of the episode, particularly because the twist lands pretty damn well.Few shows have the staying power of The Twilight Zone. Whereas Torchwood made a weird classist argument against being isolated from society, “Not All Men” suggests that many males of the human species are simply or one or two asteroids (or drinks) away from becoming monsters.įurther reading: The Twilight Zone On Stage – A Classic Enters a New DimensionĪnecdotally, this assertion from the Zone is pretty accurate. Turns out: NOPE! It’s not aliens at all, but just really screwed up humans who live in really big houses in the country. Written by Heather Anne Campbell (she co-wrote last week’s episode, “Six Degrees of Freedom”) “Not All Men,” seems to split the difference between a dark-but-happy Captain Kirk sentiment, and lands somewhere a little closer to Captain Jack from Torchwood.įor those who remember, the Doctor Who spin-off briefly featured all sorts of X-Files-esque adventures, including an episode called “Countrycide.” In it, the Torchwood team discovers some weird butchering of humans happening in the English countryside and just assumes it’s the work of aliens. This sentiment was put more cheerfully by Captain Kirk in the classic Star Trek episode “A Taste of Armageddon” when he said that every day a human being could “choose not to kill…TODAY!” The implication is that evolved humans make that choice over and over and over again, and that is the definition of progress. The episode casually floats the idea that human beings (and men in specific) might all be inherently bad, but that our ability to choose to act against our nature is what makes us civilized. After Annie and her sister are nearly killed the the suddenly rioting men, it’s eventually revealed that there was no spooky extraterrestrial influence from the space rocks instead, it just created a pretense for these men to act terrible.įurther reading: Ray Bradbury’s Influnece is All Over “Six Degrees of Freedom”Īnnie’s nephew puts it like this: “I chose not to.” What he means is that he chose not to give into the rage and hatred inside of him, even though he felt it, too. Ditto for “Not All Men,” but minus the aliens. In “Maple Street,” the humans are being manipulated by aliens, even though their decisions are their own. In “Maple Street,” this caused paranoia, whereas in “Not All Men,” it causes the males of the species to behave like violent, murdering assholes. In both “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street,” and the new episode, “Not All Men,” a meteor shower is blamed for strange, behavior. But, perhaps most obviously, the essential premise seems lifted from one of the most beloved Zone episodes ever the 1960 story “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street.” The biggest difference here is that the twist is made a little more damning and specific. For fans of old-school sci-fi, this set-up recalls everything from Invasion of the Body Snatchers to Robert Heinlein’s novel, The Puppet Masters. After mysterious red asteroids shower a small town, a woman named Annie (Taissa Farmiga) starts noticing certain people behaving oddly.
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