I love The Twilight Zone and think the show is better than a lot of hour long dramas that air on television today. No, I’m not some nostalgia buff who thinks television was better back then than it is today. As others have pointed out, many of the episodes seem cheesy because of the acting style, the pacing and the “twists” but for the most part the series continues to hold up rather well.
To set the record straight on the Planet of the Apes: Serling’s screenplay was entirely discarded except for the twist ending. The version that was made into the movie was written by Michael Wilson, but because he’d been blacklisted during the McCarthy era, only Pierre Boulle (who wrote the book) got writing credit at the time.
One of these sentences is not like the other. Do you think that 1950s Galaxy wasn’t a pulp science fiction magazine?
As I’ve pointed out above, many of the TZ stories were directly lifted from 1950s pulp Sf magazines, and two of the writers of many of its scripts – Matheson and Beaumont – were noted 1950s pulp SF authors. TZ was practically 1950s pulp SF made celluloid.
I am afraid you and I can no longer be friends. 
The Twilight Zone is one of my top five favorite TV shows of all time.
I love the Twilight Zone, for many of the reasons already quoted here. I agree that some of the episodes were stupid or clunky, but overall I still think it’s one of the all-time best series on TV.
I liken it to The Honeymooners (which, by the way, I can’t stand, but that’s beside the point)–it looks dated and cliched now because it was the first (or one of the first) to do many things that are common nowadays, but when they were new I’m sure they were much fresher. It might be a “you had to be there” thing. I wasn’t old enough to watch TZ on its first run, but I did watch many reruns in the 70s when it was still relatively fresh and fell in love with it then. (Conversely, the first Honeymooners ep I watched was on a retro network in the 90s, and I couldn’t sit through it, it was so bad).
We might be having two different arguments here. As good or stupid as the various TZ episodes were, if the network had green-lighted a different show for that time slot, wouldn’t you bet it probably would have been more stupid overall than TZ? (By the way, what were the other 2 networks running against it?) As harsh as my judgement, as a teenager back in the 1970’s I sure wasn’t staying up past midnight to smoke dope and watch re-runs of Walter Brennan sitcoms, like I was for TZ.
No, my argument is based on my dislike of Rod Serling, not TZ.
Well, that’s harsh. 
Sorry! I tried and I’ll try a little longer.
Never got to it.
But, I am willing to give it one more shot. Suggest to me the best episodes in your opinion, everyone, and I’ll take a consensus. I’m willing to try…oh, let’s say another half a dozen before I throw in the towel.
The Jeopardy Room springs to mind.
I’m afraid to say which are my favorites and which ones I think suck, because it’s probably at odds with what all the smart critics think.
Wow. So much of the script seems “Serling-y”:
[ul]
[li]they never realize it’s earth, even though apes speak English and the moon is presumably there and the flora and fauna are recognizable[/li][li]they went off in a spaceship to who knows where the hell?[/li][li]they were supposed to colonize the new planet - with one woman and three men (she was supposed to be a “new Eve”)[/li][li]the spaceship, looking for a hospitable planet, wasn’t designed to land in water[/li][li]Charlton Heston laughing like-well, like somebody in the last scene of a Twilight Zone- when the other astronaut plants an American flag[/li][/ul]
That’s what I can think of without breaking a sweat. That’s not even touching the harder-to-nail-down-but-definitely-there overt moralizing about “man’s arrogance” that pervades the TZ.
There was an amusing reference later on, when Shatner had a recurring role on Third Rock From the Sun, saying something like he’d had a nice trip, but during the flight there was something on the wing:
John Lithgow: The same thing happened to me!
The US Primetime schedule for 1959-1960, the first season of the Twilight Zone.. Sports & The Detectives.
Generally, westerns were everywhere on television (Maverick, Lawman, Cheyenne, Wyatt Earp, Rifleman, Wagon Train, Zane Grey Theater, Rawhide, Have Gun Will Travel, Gunsmoke).
I remember that as well. It was awesome!
Here are a few of my faves:
The Hunt
A World of His Own
The Odyssey of Flight 33
Where is Everybody
In defense of Twilight Zone, you have to remember that the late Rod Serling banged out a script a week. The guy smoked so many cigarettes that his right index finger was almost amputated (so much nicotine had gotten into his finger that the circulation stopped). He was so intense, he succumbed to a heart attack early in life.
So yes, some of the plots were bad-but for the late 1950’s TW was the most imaginative series on TV…by a long shot.
but what about my second line? A dead perfect Twilight Zone twist.
Yeah, that was a great scene.
Episodes to try-
“Nick of Time” - the other Shatner episode.
“Penny For Your Thoughts” - goofy, but fun
“The Midnight Sun”
“Two”
Galaxy was published on pulp but, from the beginning, it published more sophisticated stories than those in the old Astounding, etc. The covers boated few B.E.M.s’ & no scantily clad ladies threatened by tentacled horrors.
Yes, TZ was based on the thoughtful SF as published in Galaxy. Or *The Magazine of Fantasy & SF. * Both published on pulp paper, but in the digest format–smaller than the old-time pulps… Some writers wrote in both eras.
1950s Galaxy was not a pulp science fiction magazine - unless you are one of the people who consider all “scifi” as goshwow stuff read by people in propeller beanies.
First, it is digest sized. Second, it was printed on good paper with trimmed edges, not pulp. I have pulp sf magazines from the same era which are not nearly in good a shape as my Galaxys. And the average level of writing is a lot better. Gold’s “You Won’t See it in Galaxy” back covers should be pretty clear on what he was looking for, and he pretty much got it.
Do you consider the early Boucher & McComas F&SF’s pulp sf also?
TZ was high quality non-pulp 50’s sf made celluloid. Of the Galaxy socially conscious sf, not the Campbell 1950s variety.
Nothing hotter than a 50’s sci-fi geek snipe fight.
Yup. Clearly our definitions of “pulp” differ. Your distinxctions seem odd. All the Analogs I’ve seen have trimmed edges. Heck, all the old SF magazines, even of low quality going back to the 30s have trimmed edges.
As for quality – heck, you know the stuff that appeared in them. Asimov and Heinlein and most of the classic SF authors were in Astounding/Analog or Unknown or others.
If it’s a matter of quality, then, yes, I do think that TZ was high-quality magazine SF. But I’ll bet the stories they’re based on weren’t all in Galaxy. To tell the truth, I don’t know if any of them were. I’ll have to check.