2) Time Enough at Last

I wear glasses and am a reader - this one always makes me smile at my own post-apocalyptic vulnerability,

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I always loved the old Outer Limits too, and I get them mixed up. "It's a cookbook!" is one of my favorite lines from TV.

Fun thread, lezfriend.

Food and water would be the least of his troubles...radiation sickness....that would be most troublesome.

BTW...both are TZ..."to serve man" was the cookbook episode.

Cheesy effects sunk The Outer Limits in my opinion....the series had one of the greatest openings ever...WE ARE IN CONTROL OF YOUR TELEVISION SET....

"Within a couple of days, Burgess Meredith's character would have begun to pine away from a lack of basic necessities."

Well duh, the presumption is that he (or me in the fantasy) has a fully-stocked radiation-proof bunker. (Fully-stocked means plenty of you-know-what too, of course.)

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"Both of those shows had terrible special effects, Aristide."

There was an element of camp in that Anon. The had limited budgets so made a virtue of necessity with special effects that didn't try to be more than a suggestions of the gremlin, the spaceship or the big head-alien with the anal probe, etc.

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One that sticks in my memory was the WWI British flyer who came out of a cloud and onto a modern (1962-ish) USAF runway. "I say, you chaps really have come much further than I had realized," he says, or something like that. It was sad though. Wow, many decades since I saw that.

Another thing that the episode proves is that one should always carry an extra pair of specs at all times.

You never know when or where you might need them. Lol.

Yes. 'Walking Distance' is an outstanding episode. Extremely well written dialogue as you have cited a prime example with the wonderful interaction between the adult Martin Sloan and his father. Plus, the universal themes of the longing for a more relaxed, less complicated existence and escape from the highly pressurized business world. Also, the desire to recapture one's youth and the lure of nostalgia. The former elements very much to be found in another similar TZ episode 'A Stop at Willoughby', while the latter elements were themes Rod Serling frequently returned to in such episodes as 'Young Man's Fancy' and 'Kick the Can.'

But getting back to 'Walking Distance', the episode was said to be somewhat autobiographical in nature because Serling spent much of his youth in Binghamton, New York and felt the longing to return to a simpler, quieter life after the years he spent in big cities such as New York and LA writing in the post WW II period.

It was also the second best Gig Young acting performance (of what I have seen with him) next to his Oscar winning role as the emcee in the Depression Era 1969 Sydney Pollack directed drama 'They Shoot Horses Don't They?' Tragically though, Gig never approached that level again career wise and committed suicide in 1978 at age 64.

What did you think of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"???

The entire clip runs 23:40 (with no commercials), and it's actually a pretty decent little clip...

- Twilight Zone was a one-of-a-kind series!

Very good episode. Probably not one that immediately comes to mind when thinking of the very best programs of the five seasons the original TZone ran. But well worth seeing nonetheless.

It deals with a theme that has been commonly used in literature, as well as visual dramatic depictions and that is the horrors of war insofar as the psychological toll it frequently takes upon the combatants.

In this case, the character of Farquhar attempts to escape his ultimate fate by his moments of delusion which take him to a more peaceful time and place (seeing his wife and children). But in the end, he as well as the audience comes to realize that there is no escape. Very powerful stuff and quite consistent with the TZone style of writing.