What is The Twilight Zone?
Q: What is The Twilight Zone?
A: The Twilight Zone is an American television series created by Rod Serling. It is a series of unrelated stories of drama, psychological thriller, fantasy, science fiction, suspense and/or horror, often ending with a dark or unexpected twist.
Q: Who wrote for The Twilight Zone?
A: Aside from Rod Serling himself who wrote nearly two-thirds of the series' total episodes, writers for The Twilight Zone included authors such as Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, Jerry Sohl, George Clayton Johnson, Earl Hamner Jr., Reginald Rose, Harlan Ellison and Ray Bradbury. Many episodes also featured adaptations of classic stories by such writers as Ambrose Bierce, Lewis Padgett, Jerome Bixby and Damon Knight.
Q: What was the success of the first series?
A: The first series was a popular and critical success which introduced many Americans to serious science fiction and abstract ideas through television and Twilight Zone books and comics. This success would lead to two revival series; one that ran on CBS in the 1980s and another that ran on UPN from 2002 to 2003. It would also lead to a movie adaptation as well as radio series', comic books', magazines' and other spin-offs that have gone on for 50 years.
Q: How were themes addressed in The Twilight Zone?
A: Writers often used science fiction as a way for social commentary in order to address themes like nuclear war, mass hysteria or McCarthyism which could not be discussed openly on primetime television at the time due to censorship regulations.
Q: How long did each season last?
A: Seasons 1-3 & 5 were half hour shows while Season 4 (1962–1963) contained one-hour episodes. In total there were 156 episodes across all seasons combined.
