# Was Rod Serling scientifically illiterate... **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 10, 2020, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212 "2020-03-10T17:00:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Ashtura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ashtura/32/2963_2.png) [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2020, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212/21 "2020-03-10T19:31:13Z")
Does it bother you that Star Trek and Star Wars both seem to have an amazing abundance of human-habitable planets? And that everyone is humanoid? Or that everybody speaks English? (granted, Star Trek tried to explain this). Artistic license based of real production limitations. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2020, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212/22 "2020-03-10T19:45:50Z")
I had the same questions as the OP when I first saw the episodes. It was the original broadcast, and I was less than ten years old, but even then I knew that you wouldn’t have the gravity, the atmosphere, and the blue sky of earth on any asteroid. I figured it was something they let slide in the interests of the story. But it still bugged me. the same way it bugged me that the astronauts in _Planet of the Apes_ didn’t realize that they were on Earth, _even when the damned dirty apes spoke English!_ (Serling wrote the original script for PotA, but I don’t know if he introduced that nugget. It wouldn’t surprise me, though, if he had.) I suspect Serling didn’t particularly care, and thought that there would be no blowback from the viewing public. In any event, there’s an “easy” fix – “easy” in terms of writing and plotting, although ridiculously expensive in Real Life. It’s the same fix old-school science fiction writers used when it became clear that our homey image of the solar system – desert Mars, swamp-world Venus – wasn’t at all accurate. They shifted the locale to a distant solar system where such worlds _might_ exist. So you had Robert Sheckley’s story “The Humors” (set on Earth, Venus and Mars in the 1950s) set the expansion of it into a novel (_Crompton Divided_) in 1978 on a series of extrasolar worlds. Or the way Leigh Bracket set her original Eric John Stark stories on Mercury, Mars, and Venus in the 1940s and 1950s, but when she revived the character for _The Ginger Star_ and two other novels in the 1970s, he was suddenly on the extrasolar planet Skaith. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2020, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212/23 "2020-03-10T19:52:25Z")
I thought the entire idea of the Twilight Zone was that it was a place beyond reason. The more scientifically accurate it is the weirder it isn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2020, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212/24 "2020-03-10T20:05:44Z")
He was more concerned with telling a good story and/or sometimes subtly and not so subtly making a point than scientific accuracy. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2020, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212/25 "2020-03-10T20:07:02Z")
Many Sci Fi movies are set in desert areas. Probably because CA has a lot of desert areas to film in. I remember someone asking why so many bad guys in Star Wars had British accents. The answer is they did a lot of filming in the UK. 🙂 Even the recent SW movies mostly use UK sets when they are not filming outdoors. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2020, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212/26 "2020-03-10T20:27:46Z")
> [@Ashtura](#): > > Does it bother you that Star Trek and Star Wars both seem to have an amazing abundance of human-habitable planets? And that everyone is humanoid? Or that everybody speaks English? (granted, Star Trek tried to explain this). > > Artistic license based of real production limitations. The human habitable planets and humanoid aliens don’t bother me at all, because those are practical/budgetary problems. Also, I don’t get bothered by artificial gravity, because it would be flatly impossible for shows in the past to have their characters constantly floating around. What really bugs me about Star Trek is the laziness of the writers in reaching for miracle ‘science’ to get them out of a hole they wrote themselves into. Putting your characters into an apparently unsolvable dilemma then getting them out of it by having them discover a new crazy ‘scientific’ property of the universe that solves their exact problem is just cheap, lazy writing. The original series was not terribly bad for this most of the time, but starting with TNG the deux-ex technobabble became so irritating it made the show nearly unwatchable for me. The latest iterations starting with JJ Abrams and going through Discovery are even worse. That doesn’t mean the writers and producers are ignorant of science. It means they just don’t give a shit. At least Serling’s bad science was in service of the story. Star Trek’s bad science takes away from the story and makes it pointless. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2020, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212/27 "2020-03-10T20:32:01Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > Many Sci Fi movies are set in desert areas. Probably because CA has a lot of desert areas to film in. Ever notice how almost every planet visited on _Firefly_ looks like _South Korea_[?](https://www.hikespeak.com/trails/mash-hike-malibu-creek-state-park/) ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2020, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212/28 "2020-03-10T22:03:55Z")
I think he knew that A)people understood it was just a story and the story was more important than making sure it was scientifically accurate and B)those same people really like his voice. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2020, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212/29 "2020-03-10T22:55:42Z")
I remain baffled how Taylor didn’t realize he was on Earth the whole time until the very end of _Planet of the Apes._ ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2020, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212/30 "2020-03-10T23:09:54Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > Many Sci Fi movies are set in desert areas. Probably because CA has a lot of desert areas to film in. I remember someone asking why so many bad guys in Star Wars had British accents. The answer is they did a lot of filming in the UK. 🙂 Even the recent SW movies mostly use UK sets when they are not filming outdoors. I have a [book](https://www.amazon.com/Where-Monsters-Walked-California-Locations/dp/147666840X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1XNDNU4NA6SYF&keywords=where+monsters+walked&qid=1583881596&s=books&sprefix=Where+Monsters+W%2Caps%2C-1&sr=1-1) which has the locations where many sf movies were filmed in California. The authors had a hobby of tracing down the locations and doing matching shots. About every cave in every sf movie - from Robot Monster on up - was shot in Bronson Cave and Canyon outside of LA. Robinson Crusoe on Mars was filmed in Death Valley. I have it at home from Netflix since I was there long after I saw the movie the first time. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2020, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212/31 "2020-03-10T23:11:23Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I remain baffled how Taylor didn’t realize he was on Earth the whole time until the very end of _Planet of the Apes._ I finally watched it not that long ago. I spent the entire movie say “psst, idiot, notice that the Apes are speaking English?” ---
**Author:** ![Uncle\_Jocko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/uncle_jocko/32/2932_2.png) [@Uncle\_Jocko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uncle_Jocko)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2020, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212/32 "2020-03-10T23:47:25Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > But it still bugged me. the same way it bugged me that the astronauts in _Planet of the Apes_ didn’t realize that they were on Earth, _even when the damned dirty apes spoke English!_ (Serling wrote the original script for PotA, but I don’t know if he introduced that nugget. It wouldn’t surprise me, though, if he had.) Yeah, particularly when the apes in the _[original](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Apes_(novel))_ work spoke French, not English! (ducks & runs) ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212/33 "2020-03-11T00:45:56Z")
For the people that keep saying, in various forms, “it’s just a show”. For TZ, NO ONE cares that aliens look like humans in rubber masks. NO ONE cares if spaceships have FTL and gravity, or if supernatural things happen. But we DO CARE if the story is fundamentally stupid. And the TZ in question is fundamentally flawed. If the only way you can tell your story is that the characters are irredeemably stupid _within the logic of the show itself_, then maybe you should tell another story. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212/34 "2020-03-11T01:32:07Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I finally watched it not that long ago. I spent the entire movie say “psst, idiot, notice that the Apes are speaking English?” Even if they never met a single talking ape, all the constellations would be a dead giveaway. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212/35 "2020-03-11T03:15:43Z")
Two simple realities characterized TV in those days: Serling was an actor, and was paid to read the script. Desilu Studios produced thousands of TV episodes after 1947, and shows hosted by the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Loretta Young and Serling bought the episodes that best fit their style. Once they had a regular buyer, Desilu would tailor some shows for that series. Desilu Studios even produced some of the early episodes of Star Trek. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212/36 "2020-03-11T04:38:49Z")
As a 50s kid, I miss Bad Sci-Fi. I grew up with oxygenated asteroids, spaceships that bank and explode loudly, and the Canals of Mars… those majestic waterways that had been a big part of Martian society. Then came the 60s… I resented those damn scientists in the white button-down shirts and skinny ties, as they spoiled the Mars of my childhood. A Mars not of their reddish dust and no atmosphere, but full of history and culture and tall natives, and maybe even a turreted castle or two… I felt like I found a kindred soul when I came across an article by Isaac Asimov where he lamented about losing Mars. And Brian Aldiss wrote a page of verse along those lines: “There Are No More Good Stories About Mars…” > [@](#): > > Once, across the sands tides lapped… > The thirties writers will tell you… of buccaneers. > The forties writers, sharper of pen, > drained the oceans, changed the > diction. Built domes all round Argyre and > then made us little green men. > Fifties were the worst: \*\*Dust, lack of oxygen. > All the stuff of realism at first. \*\* > Foxholes, sweat inside your suit and frost outside. > Then came the plagiarists erecting their pre-fab plots… > > And we who read of Mars legend still hold, > cleansed in the mind, a place both actual and unreal. > By many writers’ hands designed… I abridged that. The whole thing is the last poem in [this issue of F&SF](http://galacticjourney.org/stories/Fantasy__Science_Fiction_v024n06_1963-06_Gorgon776.pdf) from 1963 ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212/37 "2020-03-11T05:38:46Z")
> [@MovieMogul](#): > > Even if they never met a single talking ape, all the constellations would be a dead giveaway. The moon is kind of a giveaway, too. You’d think an astronaut would notice it. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212/38 "2020-03-11T06:12:55Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > If I understand correctly, the OP’s objection was **not** that the show didn’t _depict_ lower gravity. It’s that astronauts should have instantly known, based on the level of gravity they felt, whether they were on an Earth-sized planet or a much smaller asteroid; and that they didn’t was a massive plot hole, albeit one that requires a certain amount of scientific literacy to see. Could it not have been a very _ **dense** _ asteroid, something in between a planet and a neutron star? > [@Musicat](#): > > It was a much different time. In the 1950’s, no human had been in space, and until 1957, there were no artificial satellites. Science fiction was a relatively new genre, and movies made no attempt to be scientifically accurate until **2001** came along. So Serling could get by with minimal (i.e., no) knowledge of astro-physics and still have an entertaining TV show. That’s all it was. Mainly this, I think. Though it’s still sort of amusing how much _2001_ got wrong. Not only is Pan Am not flying civilians to circular wheel-shaped space stations, they’re not flying anybody anywhere! And the ISS we do have does not in any way resemble a luxury hotel! ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212/39 "2020-03-11T06:54:52Z")
Rod Serling’s scripts were basically discussions of current political issues. His non-fantasy, non-science fiction scripts for TV shows before _Twilight Zone_ often got edited by the TV networks to remove those references to political matters. He used _Twilight Zone_ as a way to slip political issues into his scripts. That way when asked if the script was about some current political matter, he could say something like, “It obviously couldn’t be about that since it isn’t even set on Earth.” ---
**Author:** ![GMANCANADA](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gmancanada/32/2837_2.png) [@GMANCANADA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GMANCANADA)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212/40 "2020-03-11T08:59:59Z")
**@kaylasdad99** I can’t even comment on your post it’s so ridiculous. As others have noted, it’s a 1960’s TV show. Next you’ll be posting how dumb Star Trek that Kirk beamed down into every dangerous situation. Or add in how dumb modern shows like American Horror story are - “Major plot hole, everyone knows ghosts aren’t real!!!” However, I did want to elaborate on **Trancephalic** comments on Post #7. I’ve been listening to a great podcast recently: **“In Research of”:** > **[‎In Research Of on Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/in-research-of/id1481720142)** > > ‎Science · 2022 They go back through the original episodes of _“In Search of”_ in their original airing order and review them in a modern skeptical and humorous light. If you ever watched In Search of, it makes for very entertaining listening. As Trancephalic notes, and I learned in the podcast, Serling did two pilot episodes and was set to be the host for In Search of, but he died before the show started full production. Leonard Nimoy was only their back-up choice. When you watch the show in that light to can see many similarities to Night Gallery and Twilight Zone. Nimoy walking out and narrating the opening from behind photos floating in the air etc. https://www.youtube.com/embed/8LXmUeYWEVs?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&list=PLft0vOv0DuPV_h3wzWFzFsCYVTDA2Aru2 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-rod-serling-scientifically-illiterate/849212.md?page=3)