simpsons episode

Arnold, you must own or have read Isaac Asimov’s “Before the Golden Age.”

Okibeav, the only TZ episode that even comes close is “The Little People.” Two Earthmen land on a planet and discover a miniature city populated by tiny people. One of the Earthmen sets himself up as the little people’s god, and destroys most of the city. In typical TZ fashion, he himself is killed by giant aliens.

I don’t recall that TZ episode, but there were others where a human found himself in the land of the giants (The Land of the Giants – ran for one, maybe two seasons in the mid- to late-'60s. Space explorers land on a planet just like Earth, except all the people are 40 feet tall and apparently immune to the laws of physics. Wackiness ensues.)

The TZ episodes I recall most clearly involved a man who wakes up in a deserted town, gets on a train that keeps going around in circles, and keeps hearing strnage laughter. Turns out he was captured by a giant alien on Earth, who brought him home as a pet for his kids who put the poor guy in a doll house / model railroad.

The other one – a fairly famous episode – involved a woman who was terrorized by tiny space aliens. She finally fights them off (with a broom? a knife? the mind is the first thing to go. then the typing…). Zoom in close – the tiny space men are from the USA. This episode was famous for having no dialogue until the very end.

Since we have broached the subject of “micro-worlds” in fiction, I would like to nominate “Surface Tension” by James Blish. In summary, it is a tale of a human seed ship that crashes on a world completely unsuitable for human life. Their solution was to populate the planet with microbe sized people.

Though it is too fantastic to be believable, it made an entertaining read for a then 10 year old boy.

Beraung–I didn’t see the first episode you listed in any TZ episode guides. The second one was “The Invaders”, starring Agnes Morehead (Endora on “Bewitched”) and written by Richard Matheson (author of “I Am Legend” and “The Shrinking Man”).