Pre-Order The Twilight Zone: Season One (2019) (Blu-ray) Available for Preorder (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

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[Josh Steinberg]

Of all the shows rebooted and resurrected in recent years, this has to represent the one which had the most wasted potential. So much promise, but ultimately, so little “there” there.

 

[Matt Hough]

Of all the shows rebooted and resurrected in recent years, this has to represent the one which had the most wasted potential. So much promise, but ultimately, so little “there” there.

I have only seen the premiere episode which made it to YouTube before being pulled, but it was completely underwhelming. I have requested this set for review, so I am looking forward to seeing if the trends from the pilot extended to the subsequent episodes. From you (and others on the internet), it seems like they did.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

It wasn’t good enough for me to even finish the season; I let my CBS All Access subscription lapse rather than pay another few bucks to see the final three episodes.

 

[Harry-N]

I keep the CBS subscription for other reasons, but I only watched about four of these before bailing. I can still watch them anytime, but choose not to. And it's really a bummer, as they'd say in the late 60s.

The first episode, "The Comedian", struggled too hard and too long. It reminded me of a not-so-great AMAZING STORIES episode from the 80s, and I didn't like that one either.

"Nightmare at 30,000 Feet" was probably the better of the two that formed the premiere, but it didn't quite gel the way a TWILIGHT ZONE episode should.

The following week brought us "Replay" and it had a decent premise, but got too preachy for me. Had the message been more subtle, it might have been a great episode, but it was written with a sledgehammer.

At that point, I decided to put the series on hold for awhile and didn't watch the weekly upload. Several weeks later, there was an episode with a spaceship that seemed to have a little buzz, and I decided to check that one out. Called "Six Degrees Of Freedom", this one just didn't quite do what I would have liked it to do. I can't even recall what the ending was on this one. Maybe I fell asleep...

The next episode I watched was "Blurryman". Again, I read some Internet buzz about it and as it was the final episode of the season, I thought it might be worth checking out. This was probably the best of all of the episodes I'd seen. By this time, CBS All Access had uploaded all of the episodes in a black & white version and gave the viewer the choice. I wondered if maybe a return to black & white might improve my experience, so I chose to watch "Blurryman" in black & white. Maybe it helped. Maybe it was just a better episode.

A few weeks ago, with some time to kill, I thought that I'd choose another ZONE to look at. I picked "A Traveler" and again chose the black & white version. It was another "just OK" episode, and I think I was mistaken to pick the black & white. The episode had a number of shots of the aurora borealis and holiday lights, so it is probably better viewed in color. My mistake.

Those are all I've watched, so I've seen half of the season. One think I liked in each episode was the references to the original series. Peoples names, town names, subtle placement of objects and icons from the original series, all put a smile on my face. I like the fact that they remained true to the musical theme of the show by Marius Constant and continued with the floating eyes, doors, windows, etc., that Serling used in the fourth and fifth season of the original.

I really hope the the writers do a better job with a second season. It seems to be a difficult thing to do as all of the attempts without Rod Serling have all fallen flat to one degree or another. The 80s series was a decent attempt and had some successes. I didn't much care for the 90s version, and this one is not high on my list - yet. I love the show enough to WANT it to succeed.

I'm not going to jump on this home video version just now. Maybe later at a better price.

 

[jcroy]

I agree with the other comments so far. I also feel the same way about the other two previous attempts at TZ reboots: mid-late 1980s and early 2000s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twilight_Zone_(1985_TV_series)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twilight_Zone_(2002_TV_series)


In terms of writing quality and execution, I still regard the original 1960s version as the gold standard for this type of show. I say this from the perspective of watching it as an adult, and NOT from any "nostalgia" rose tinted glasses from my youth.

Other than watching a few random TZ + Outer Limits reruns when I was a kid, I don't really remember the show at all other than the theme music intros.

 

[jcroy]

So this was never a tv show franchise which had any emotional gravitas for me. I don't have any nostalgia for any of these versions.

I never watched the 80s and early-2000s versions in their original first runs. I only watched them years later on dvd.

The 1960s version I only really watched semi-consistently on scifi basic cable channels over the past 20+ years or so.

 

[Nelson Au]

I totally forgot about this series and thought this was a new release of the original series. I would agree this remake just wasn’t compelling. I wanted to like it but I stopped watching after viewing 4 episodes. I’d give it credit to try to be modern, but the stories seemed mean at times.

 

[Nelson Au]

I agree the original Twilight Zone series is the best iteration.

Though I liked a couple episodes of the 1980’s series. I especially like Profiles in Silver. That’s probably my favorite of that version.

 

[David Norman]

"To See the Invisible Man" from 1985 I thought was one of the best episodes of any of the series

I also liked Examination Day as well as quite a few others. The 80's series is uneven, but have a number of really good episodes.

The 3rd series seemed to have very few good episodes at all.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

They just didn't get it (again). Episodes that dragged on for 50 minutes. Even the original discovered the formula doesn't work for an hour (fourth season). A half hour was just enough to set up the premise, throw some instantly identifiable characters in, and then pay off with a surprising or moralistic twist. That's the formula. But then you had Rod Serling's writing within that. Or Matheson's. Or Charles Beaumont's. Plus... an audience that, forgive me, was much more literate back then. It was an audience that READ BOOKS, or especially short stories. They knew a Faustian reference when they saw it. And we were richly rewarded for our literacy. Serling NEVER wrote down to us.

Black and white! Yes. Gives it an otherworldly, timeless feel, especially against today's market.

And the host WAS the primary writer, who staked his reputation on his story presentations. His blood on the page. His lungs sacrificed. His worldly (he saw some real horrors as a WWII paratrooper) views of morality couched in perfect little Aesop's Fables for adults (or astute children).

God it was a simple formula, but one that, sadly, after this latest attempt, still escapes reproduction of any ironic depth or soul.

 

[Tom.W]

They just didn't get it (again). Episodes that dragged on for 50 minutes. Even the original discovered the formula doesn't work for an hour (fourth season). A half hour was just enough to set up the premise, throw some instantly identifiable characters in, and then pay off with a surprising or moralistic twist. That's the formula. But then you had Rod Serling's writing within that. Or Matheson's. Or Charles Beaumont's. Plus... an audience that, forgive me, was much more literate back then. It was an audience that READ BOOKS, or especially short stories. They knew a Faustian reference when they saw it. And we were richly rewarded for our literacy. Serling NEVER wrote down to us.

Black and white! Yes. Gives it an otherworldly, timeless feel, especially against today's market.

And the host WAS the primary writer, who staked his reputation on his story presentations. His blood on the page. His lungs sacrificed. His worldly (he saw some real horrors as a WWII paratrooper) views of morality couched in perfect little Aesop's Fables for adults (or astute children).

God it was a simple formula, but one that, sadly, after this latest attempt, still escapes reproduction of any ironic depth or soul.

I totally agree. This was a huge disappointment for me. I suppose I was banking on Jordan Peele's reputation that this would live up to the standard he set with his recent films. The writing in the episodes I watched - about the first five or so - was subpar, almost nonsensical, imho. "Replay" seemed especially weak, particularly the way the flashbacks were handled, and the ending seemed like a cliche, but unjustified by the story. I couldn't get through "Traveler" although that was partly due my wfi dropping out.

There was only one Rod Serling, at least we have 5 seasons worth of the original to revisit. I noticed that Carol, his widow, has a credit, as a consultant, I think. I wonder what she thinks.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I think one of the big problems is that the showrunners bought Peele’s reputation without trying to buy his talent. There was all this promo copy of how Jordan Peele was bringing us a new vision of the Twilight Zone, but then he didn’t write or direct a single episode of it. And I get it, he’s making a name for himself directing movies, and this was probably an opportunity to do a couple days of green screen work and get some money and credits for his production company, which will only help with his feature work.

But I think this particular slice of nightmares works best when the onscreen host is running the show, doing a lot of the writing, curating the writing he doesn’t actually do, and generally using the show as an extension of his voice. Peele has such a wonderful and distinctive voice as an author that using his face and not his words makes it inauthentic from the start. He’s just a guy reading words. I don’t know if that’s all he wanted to do or all they offered, but this for me is an “all or nothing” property.

Serling created the show because he was bursting with ideas he wanted to explore and stories he wanted to tell that he couldn’t get past the gatekeepers of his day. By adding a little otherworldly window dressing, he was able to sneak those ideas through. From the episodes of this revival I saw, I didn’t feel a distinctive voice, and I didn’t get that sense of sneakiness that gave the original run its sense of mischievous fun. Bad things happened to people, but you wanted to watch.

 

[Harry-N]

Rod Serling himself never saw himself as a narrator or on-screen persona. It only came about because they couldn't agree on anyone else for the job. They'd originally imagined a "big-voiced" narrator such as this:



But that didn't work out, and at the last minute they had Rod himself do it.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Ugh. That sterile professional voice talent does not work at all. And he's no Vic Perrin.

 

[Dave Jessup]

Nope - Westbrook Van Voorhis' voice was one for the newsreels.

A long time friend invited my wife and myself out to watch the first couple episodes when they dropped on CBS-AA.

I think, perhaps, as much for the fun of watching my reactions as anything else.

Despite what I thought then and what I think after hearing our fellow HTF'er Craig Beam's coverage on his Twilight Zone podcast series, I'll pick up the physical release when I can. Not only to keep the "collection" complete, but to give the other episodes a chance - and hope for better in the next go-round.

 

[Peter M Fitzgerald]

Ugh. That sterile professional voice talent does not work at all. And he's no Vic Perrin.

Ah, but Van Vorhees was the narrator for Panic! (1957-58, a.k.a. No Warning), one of my remaining grail shows, by the way--

 

[jcroy]

Plus... an audience that, forgive me, was much more literate back then. It was an audience that READ BOOKS, or especially short stories. They knew a Faustian reference when they saw it. And we were richly rewarded for our literacy. Serling NEVER wrote down to us.

(On a huge tagent).

This is not quite a direct apples-to-apples comparison, though I'll mention it anyways.

I grew up with television and also read a lot of books. Unfortunately due to the nature of the books I was reading a lot of, I was also very ignorant and almost "illiterate" in a lot of things.

When I was younger, I was mostly reading garbage sci-fi books such as Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Star Wars, etc ... and later Foundation. Later on I was mostly reading highly technical / mathematical books for "pleasure reading", such as computers, advanced calculus, analog electronics, relativity, etc ... When I was in college, I was able to "weasel" my way out of taking many liberal arts courses, by taking "loophole" courses such as: symbolic logic, philosophy of science, etc ... which were counted as valid liberal arts credits.

As a result of this, I didn't know what many figures of speech meant, such as: faustian bargain, freudian slip, etc .... until well after college. In person-to-person coversations and watching tv/movies, I was largely guessing what such figures of speech might mean, largely from context and body language.

It was only when the internet became popular, that I eventually searched and figured out what a lot of figures of speech and other non-technical "cultural" stuff actually meant. Up until that time, I never really read a lot of "serious" fiction and history literature. (The only history books I really read over the years, was factual stuff about nazi germany).