The Twilight Zone: Death By My Victim

60 YEARS!

Ah! The Twilight Zone - 60 years old! Hard to believe, isn't it?

60 years of an absolute cult classic, easily one of my favourite TV programs. It still holds up extremely well today. I first got into the Twilight Zone when I was 13, when I got the Series 1 DVD box set from Amazon. The first episode I got a chance to watch was in fact Mr. Denton on Doomsday, not that it really makes much difference anyway because the series has no regular characters if you cancel out Rod Serling. And I was gripped from the start! Probably not the most popular episode or considered to be a fan-favourite.

And then going through the series, I was hooked into every episode from the start. The writing by genius is so intelligent and hardly anything can live up to his standard, writing for 99 of 156! It was incredible story after incredible story! Episodes like Time Enough At Last, Nightmare At 20,000 Feet, Uncle Simon, A Thing About Machines, Living Doll, The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street, so many incredible titles! 

My personal favourite story is in fact The Fever. This isn't exactly many people's favourite story, and the plot is rather simple. Franklin and Flora Gibbs are on their vacation in Las Vegas, and whilst at the casino, Franklin is able to win some money from the one arm bandit slot machine. Later that night, he decides to return the money to the machine. However, he becomes obsessed with it! Hours and hours and hours pass over, and just on his last dollar, just when the machine was about to cough up all the money, it breaks down and Franklin is taken away back to his room. That night, he hears the machine calling his name, chasing him, yet Flora can't see it. Franklin then falls out of the window - landing dead! Afterwards, a dollar rolls out to his death, outstretched hand as the machine inhumanely smiles at him. Damn what an episode!

This is my favourite for a number of reasons; firstly it addresses the major problem that has been a problem of 1960 and even 2019. Secondly, the performance of both Franklin (Everett Sloane) and Flora (Vivi Janiss) do so much to show the obsession and the terror brought by the third reason - the machine! "A monster with a will of its own" - it is as though the fever itself has driven him so hard that he causes this breakdown leading to his death. But it makes it seem that this machine was hunting him - leaching on to its victim and beckoning him to succumb to more of the temptation and feed in more money. And of course, excellently written by Rod Serling helps make this my favourite story, but somehow it only has a rating of 6.7/10 in IMDb. "Powerfully and emotionally charged". "Gripping tale". "Spine-tingling".

After finishing the series with the Bewitchin' Pool as Episode 36 of Series 5, I felt sad that I had gone through all the episodes now and felt that was all for the series, even though 156 were produced. Its never quite the same when you watch something a second time though, but I have watched the series again and again, and I still love it to bits! One thing that I believed worked so well in the series was variety, each episode was totally different. You could have the fun and sweet Mr. Bevis episode one week to the creepy and chilling The After Hours the next. And that kept it interesting and engaging to watch - you were in a new setting every week.

Today an imaginary and bizarre world like The Twilight Zone would be dark and mysterious, the type of feel Black Mirror might have. But even with The Twilight Zone with such contrasts in episodes, it made every episode unique in many different ways. You might like the robot, science-fiction episodes the most like I do, or the wartime historical episodes such as The Last Flight or perhaps The Purple Testament. You may also like the psychological episodes and bizarre ones like Mirror Image or What You Need, or the fun and humorous episodes like Escape Clause, The Chaser or The Mighty Casey.

To be fair though, the series did have a few not quite so good episodes, but that would only be natural for a series with 156 episodes. The Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge wasn't even a Twilight Zone story, whilst those that are like Come Wander With Me are found towards the end of the series, perhaps a sign that the show was beginning to run out of steam.

I haven't seen the 1980s remake, and the 2019 remake I wasn't very impressed by with the trailers and reviews. The remakes either just try to copy what's been done before or try new and much less popular ideas, a few stories I know of have had critical acclaim from the 1980s, like Profile In Silver. These ideas from the original series you can see have been copied time after time after time, showing how much Serling was advanced for his time. You simply can't beat the originals! And the original classic series will forever go on to be loved by new audiences for generations and generations to come, it can easily last around for another 60 years...

My two fan fictions from Century 22 Productions here on Wattpad I feel aren't two of my favourite stories I have written. The first My Life was an adaption for my Year 10 Drama Devising performance which I really hated doing, adapted and featuring some Joe 90 references here and there. And to give it a second shot, I wrote Death By My Victim. The story I felt started off well incredibly well, yet later on, the pacing jumped around a bit and with lots of new problems Rhys faced off suddenly. Perhaps they are some of my least favourite as there is nothing else I can really link to like characters for example, like Doctor Who or with the Gerry Anderson productions or other fan fictions like The Prisoner or Wolfblood. 

I decided to write about bullying as this is a big problem certainly I have faced, and I would like to share my experiences about it in this fan fictions and the problems I face. Many problems that Rhys has at school, like no social media, no social proof, no true friends I have, lone wolf (and that is for the better!). His physical description is like that of me - CaptainThunderWho! But the most important similarity is how attractive he is...

Anyway, a big 60th happy birthday to one of TV's greatest shows of all time - The Twilight Zone (1959-2019). Rod Serling, on behalf of Century 22 Productions - thanks!