Rod Serling: Submitted For Your Approval (Serling Documentary On TV Tonight)

PBS.Org ^ | December 2003

[supercat]

I did like "The Mission" in the New TZ... the one with Kevin Costner as the commander of a B-17. The belly gunner was trapped in the bubble ... I liked that one a lot.

I thought that was the plot of the first Amazing Stories.

[supercat]

Burgess Meredith, also in Rocky and another Twlight Zone where he was sentenced to death for having books but got the Judge to admit he believed in God and was arrested.

Was that The Obsolete Man?

[Senator Pardek]

TZ -the best of all time.

A pleasant faced man steps up to greet you
He smiles and says he's pleased to meet you
Beneath his hat the strangeness lies
Take it off, he's got three eyes
Truth is false and logic lost
Now the fourth dimension is crossed...

You have entered the Twilight Zone
Beyond this world strange things are known
Use the key, unlock the door
See what your fate might have in store...
Come explore your dreams' creation
Enter this world of imagination...

You wake up lost in an empty town
Wondering why no one else is around
Look up to see a giant boy
You've just become his brand new toy
No escape, no place to hide
Here where Time and Space collide

You have entered the Twilight Zone
Beyond this world strange things are known
Use the key, unlock the door
See what your fate might have in store...
Come explore your dreams' creation
Enter this world of imagination...

[bootless]

One of my favorite TZ episodes was the Odyssey of Flight 33.

Wasn't there another one where a man alone on a planet built a female android companion?

Also, I think there was one about the earth leaving its orbit, and going closer to the sun. Everything was getting hotter, systems were failing, etc. Turns out the woman protagonist was in a fevered state of unconciousness, and when she woke up, she was very relieved to hear that the earth was not moving towards the sun ... but it was moving AWAY from the sun and the planet would soon freeze to death. I read that adapted episode in a book before I saw the episode - it was chilling (no pun intended).

[bootless]

Of course, you're right. That was Amazing Stories. Thanks!

Rod's genius was taking the parts of the human soul that we tried to hide, or hide from, and make it the centerpiece of the story. The (bomb) Shelter, the plastic surgery story ... so many great stories.

[longtermmemmory]

Watching the special, they did have a McCarthy comentary.

Has any network ever really been conservative?

[chindog]

Submitted for your approval,
December 25, 1958

A story a little different than those that populated the airwaves during that period... a story about a little man that gave people not what they wanted, but what they needed.

Perhaps it was a pair of shoelaces, or simply a hair comb. As the story unfolded, it wasn't what the people wanted, but what they needed was quite useful.

I was intrigued about the author who wrote this story, and was surprised to learn that he was quite a large legend as a sci-fi writer in his time. Henry Kuttner, along with his wife C. L. Moore, wrote several stories featured on the Twilight Zone. Do a google on him to find out more.

[jolie560]

A very good eulogy--thanks for the post.

[breakem]

probably, I think at his trial he was declared "obsolete."

[breakem]

you bet!

[x]

Night Gallery looked like vintage Serling, but according to the special it wasn't his show. He was just the onscreen host, and was peeved about not having creative control or input. It looks like Serling did get writer's credit on most of the segments, so it's not clear how much ground there might be for any resentment. The special may have exaggerated the "failure" and "frustrated genius" side of Serling's life, and downplayed the satisfaction he got -- and deserved -- from his television work.

[MattAMiller]

Serling created a great series, but his own stuff always way too melodramatic and self-important.

[wolficatZ]

PATTERNS, with Ed Begley and Van Heflin, is a great movie; I watched it at movieflix.com a while back. Also if you have broadband, check out some of the free episodes of One Step Beyond, a short lived series hosted by John Newland that aired before Twilight Zone but was similiar in several ways, some of the episodes are quite good.

[Fred Mertz]

Rod Serling was a genius and always will be.

[Ghengis]

"YOU MUST CONFORM!"
(No, Waxman didn't say this. But, TZ fans might understand the confusion.)

Just another reason I won't let Rep. Waxman near my health care plan!

[isom35]

I took it to mean he joined an army of butchers :)

[Ghengis]

My Dad owned a Funeral Home in Rochester, NY.
I was a kid, tagging along for a ride, when my Dad and I stopped by Mt. Hope Cemetery to bring in a remains for cremation.
Rod Serling passed away 1 day earlier at the University of Rochester Medical Center while having heart surgery.
As we entered the retort area I casually asked the Director of Operations if Rod had stopped by.
He directed me to the looking glass of the retort.
I saw the last Rod Serling "Twightlight Zone!"
True story, I still retain my FD's license in NY.

If I understand this correctly, you observed the autopsy of Rod Serling being performed?

[x]

The censors Serling would have had to face wouldn't have been conservative, just nervous about how the sponsors, pressure groups, and the public would react. Words like conservative and liberal are ambiguous. Censors in the 1950s might have been "small c" conservative in the sense of being timid and cautious, without being "Big C" political or ideological Conservatives. Today's politically correct official or unofficial censors are "Big L" ideological and political Liberals but not often "small l" liberal in the sense of being tolerant friends of liberty.

Serling was a 1950s liberal, though by today's standards that was a pretty tame animal, defined mostly by opposition to segregation, discrimination, and McCarthyism, worry about the Bomb and conformism, and a belief in capitalized nouns like Art, Man, and Humanism. Most of the embittered conflicts that define today's politics hadn't yet begun in Serling's heyday, and the Eisenhower vs. Stevenson campaigns didn't have the sharp edge of earlier or later elections. "Liberal" and "conservative" tended to be used almost as much in the "small letter" as in the "capital letter" sense, so you might see liberal Republicans for Eisenhower and a conservative Democrats for Stevenson.

Maybe one of Serling's problems later on was that political issues proved to be harder to resolve than it looked in the Fifties. Loving each other and trying to see the other person's point of view didn't seem to be enough in the late 1960s and 1970s. Serling thrived on his willingness to take on the Big Issues of the Day, but the issues and the conflicts and passions that surrounded them got to be too big to be resolved in 30 or 60 or even 90 minutes.

[Y2Krap]

YOU'RE TRAVELING THROUGH ANOTHER DIMENSION..
A DIMENSION NOT OF SOUND MIND,
BUT OF IMAGINATION..
WAIT! THERE'S A SIGNPOST UP AHEAD.
YOUR NEXT STOP..

[woofie]

1924 till 1975, 51 short years