by Natalie Devitt

This past month on The Twilight Zone has been quite the experience. It has included anything from deals with the devil to time travel. It has also thrown in parallel universes and wish granting genies just for fun. If any of those things sound familiar, there may be good reason. The show does seem to be rehashing some old ideas. So, has The Twilight Zone finally run out of steam, or is it just offering new interpretations of some old classics? After four seasons one thing is for sure: anything is possible in The Twilight Zone.

Printer’s Devil, by Charles Beaumont

What is the price you would pay for one last chance at achieving a dream? That is the question that Douglas Winter, played by Robert Sterling, has to wrestle with in Printer’s Devil. Douglas is the editor of a failing newspaper called The Courier. Faced with the possibility of the paper, to which he has dedicated his life, folding, Douglas contemplates suicide. He drives himself out to a local bridge in the middle of the night, hoping to end it all there.

At the bridge, he meets a mysterious stranger named Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith is played by Twilight Zone favorite Burgess Meredith. Mr. Smith offers Douglas everything he needs in order to keep The Courier in business. In no time, the paper is beating its competition to the latest scoop. In this surprisingly strong update of Faust, Douglas begins to question if his paper’s success is worth the price he will have to pay Mr. Smith, who is really the devil in disguise.

A story about someone selling their soul to the devil is hardly a new one. The episode’s writer, Charles Beaumont, knows that and has fun with the cliché in his script. Mr. Smith even makes jokes about the rumors that violinist Niccolò Paganini sold his soul to the devil to become a virtuoso. In addition, the script does not waste time revealing that Mr. Smith is the devil. In fact, during his first scene on screen, Mr. Smith is shown lighting his crooked cigar with his fingertip, so the viewer is aware of Mr. Smith's diabolic nature from the get-go. The story spends most of the time focusing on the characters and their motivations, which I feel helps to make this version of a classic bargain work surprisingly well.

The story’s script is made even better by Burgess Meredith’s mischievous performance as Mr. Smith. He really seems to relish his role without being hammy as he tells Douglas that no modern man could possibly believe that he could sell his soul to the devil, and that the contract he drew up for Douglas’ soul was just him being an eccentric old man.

This episode offers a new twist on an old tale. I give it three and a half stars.

No Time Like the Past, by Rod Serling

Dana Andrews stars as Paul Driscoll, a man who thinks he has the solution for the problems that plague the world today. He uses a time machine in hopes of altering the past and preventing the world’s current problems. He tries going back to Hiroshima in 1945, just in time to warn people about the atomic bomb. There, he is dismissed as being crazy, so he then tries going back to Berlin in 1939 to assassinate Hitler. His plans are foiled, so he travels back to 1915 to stop the RMS Lusitania from being torpedoed by a German U-boat. Once again, things do not go as planned.

Douglas’ failed attempts to alter the past cause him to conclude that the past cannot be changed. He decides to time travel one last time, this time to Homeville, Indiana in the year 1881, where he says he plans to go, “to live, not to change anything.“ It is a place where he could be free of the all the problems in the present day. Only, once again, things do not go quite as well as he hopes.

It turns out that the good old days are not quite as good as he imagined they would be. Bad things continue to happen all around him, and he still is powerless to do anything. Even if he could change things, he considers the possibility that his actions cause a chain reaction for things to change for the worse. One thing is certain, though. Having come from the future, he can predict every historical event or disaster before it actually happens, which has its disadvantages.

This is another story with a familiar theme — the episode Back There tread similar ground. That said, this episode is not bad, but it takes a while to get going. At first, it jumps from time to time, with transitions not as smooth as they could have been. Once the story does stay for a while in a single time period, as it does in 1881, the episode improves dramatically.

This episode was a perfectly fine way to spend a Thursday night. It deserves three stars.

The Parallel, by Rod Serling

Robert Gaines, played by Steve Forrest, is an astronaut who has returned to Earth from space. He blacks out shortly before landing, but he somehow manages to get land and everything seems fine at first. As he tries to transition back into everyday life, he finds that life back on Earth is not quite the way he remembers it. His house is a little different, his wife seems uncomfortable when he shows her affection, his colleagues cannot remember his proper ranking at work, nobody knows that John F. Kennedy is president, and one day, his daughter tells him that she does not know who he is. Robert comes to the conclusion that he must have landed in a parallel universe, but not everyone agrees with him.

This is an episode that really uses the hour long length to its advantage. It uses the extra time to build suspense as the people closest to Robert begin to question his sanity due to all of his theories about parallel time. Additionally, a number of sequences, including one in a hospital and some at the space station, use a lot things like low key lighting and lots of shadows to intensify the atmosphere of fear and suspicion in a manner similar to that used in film noir and horror films.

Unfortunately, the ending was not quite as strong as the rest of the episode, but overall this episode was pretty good. It earns three stars from me.

I Dream of Genie, by John Furia, Jr.

I Dream of Genie tells the story of a perpetually unlucky nebbish named George Hanley, played by Howard Morris, who purchases an oil lamp. While trying to clean the lamp, he accidentally rubs it and releases its genie. Out of his lamp, the genie reveals himself to be a cranky old man, who does not look or act like your traditional genie. For example, he wears modern western clothing. The genie tells George that he will grant him only one wish. George works through his options in fantasy first, so as to make the best decision. He imagines himself married to a beautiful secretary from work, then being rich, and finally, becoming the President. Sadly, even in his dreams, he cannot seem to catch a break.

When I realized that this episode would be a comedy, I was excited about the possible change of pace. Perhaps it would provide some much needed relief from the darker and more serious tones of the previous episodes. I could not have been more wrong. The generally good acting can save even the worst episodes of this series, but that is not the case this time around. The acting was so over the top, and not in an entertaining way. This was especially the case in scenes where George is trying to win the love of his coworker, Ann. The fact that this episode was an hour long made it even harder to watch. To make matters worse, George’s final wish does not reward the viewer for not changing the station.

The Twilight Zone has made better episodes about lonely and down on their luck men who finally seem to get a chance to turn their lives around. Incorporating comedy into this series has been a risk that often does not seem to pay off. This episodes was sadly not an exception to that rule.

All I can give this episode is one star, which I hate to admit is probably being generous.

The Twilight Zone revisited some familiar stories and themes this time around, which actually seemed to work most of the time. It remains to be seen if this will continue to be the case. I will just have to keeping on watching to find out. I hope you'll join me — both misery and joy love company.

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