IIRC, the episode mentioned by the OP was based on a short story by Chekov. “The Bet”, I think it was called.
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
It is one of four Twilight Zone episodes containing no supernatural or science fiction elements; the others are “Where Is Everybody?”, “The Shelter” and “The Jeopardy Room”.
[/QUOTE]
But all four of the episodes cited were written by Rod Serling. Since Serling created Twilight Zone, and wrote those episodes specifically for the show he created, it stands to reason those episodes must indeed be “Twilight Zone.”
Touche. I was just too lazy to look it up.
Maybe it should have been a Star Trek episode.
The Twilight Zone version had more of an obvious ‘shock’ ending to it than Chekhov’s. In his, the ruined banker decides to kill the man (who had to stay in solitary confinement for many years), but finds the man rejects the money outright because he has grown wise enough to reject the banker and money as worthless.
Recent research which used this very story suggests that having the ending spoiled doesn’t ruin your enjoyment of it, and may in fact improve it.
The Twilight Zone is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. It is the dimension of imagination.
If the story lies in the real world right smack in the middle of everything, it is not the Twilight Zone. Q.E.D. 
On a related note, how many “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” were there that seemed more like “Twilight Zone” episodes? One that comes to mind was the one based on a Ray Bradbury story about a kid who was growing “mushrooms” in his basement that were actually alien spores that took over the bodies of the people who consumed them.
It’s good that you wrote this. This is a good post.
It’s a really good post. It’s much better than the old posts.
The old man in the cave told me to post this.
This post is a cookbook.
Coming back around: is there anything sci-fi or supernatural about A Stop At Willoughby?
Aside from the fact that he somehow dreamed up the name of the funeral home (or ambulance company, it’s been a while) his body would be picked up by?
Perhaps not with ‘Time Enough at Last’, as the ‘survival in the basement’ element seems to have been at least partially borrowed from real life events - the survival of Eizo Nomura at very close range at Hiroshima. His boss had sent him to a vault/storage room in the basement to retrieve a document. Still, a H Bomb is a different order of magnitude from Hiroshima…
Yes, aside from that; that could just be a coincidence, albeit an ironic one; I couldn’t be so blithe about a pocketwatch that stops time, or a three-eyed Martian shrugging at the psychic powers of a three-armed Venusian, or even a robot pitcher suddenly refusing to throw his signature fastball after a heart transplant; by contrast, this story could’ve simply happened back in 1960 without really changing what folks thought was possible and actual and et cetera.
In fact, didn’t his financial status take a nosedive (at least partially) because it became known that he was involved in a crazy bet?
I guess it depends on how you interpret the middle part of the episode. ‘Time’ travel, or dream? Did his sleeping spirit escape to a marvelous, idyllic life away, or was it just a dream, or maybe foreshadowing of what heaven would be, showing that his death was coming?
But it still didn’t have any sci-fi or fantasy elements. Even if you count nuclear war as being sci-fi, in this episode the crotchety guy faked the nuclear war to try to get his enemies to beg his forgiveness. So, there was no fantasy there.
It turns out it’s man!
Here’s a couple of others where it is ambiguous.
Nervous_Man_in_a_Four_Dollar_Room I think the man in the mirror is an aspect of his own personality that he has been suppressing for years, and emerges as a hallucination.
Dust. Is the dust really magic? Or does the crowd simply decide to forgive by themselves
There was a Western-themed episode starring Lee Marvin that PROBABLY wasn’t supernatural at all.
He played a cowardly bounty hunter or lawman (I forget wwhich) who showed up in a Western town just AFTER the outlaw he’d supposedly been chasing died. The outlaw left behind a note saying he’d left a very obvious trail for the bounty hunter/lawman to follow, and that his pursuer was just too chicken to come and catch him. His last line was something like, “Tell that coward never to come near my grave, or I’ll reach out and drag him down.”
Marvin had to show the townspeople that he wasn’t a coward, so he took a dare- he was supposed to go to the cemetery and plunger his knife into the grave. He did it… but the next morning, he was found dead at the gravesite. Apparently, while plunging the knife into the grave, he pierced his own poncho. When he tried to stand, his poncho was pinned to the ground. He felt the pull, and died of fright, thinking the dead man WAS reaching out of the grave.
They try to leave open the possibility that it WAS the dead man, of course.