THE TWILIGHT ZONE
(1985-1989)
Season 2

Available on DVD

1. The Once And Future King/A Saucer Of Loneliness
2. What Are Friends For?/Aqua Vita
3. The Storyteller/Nightsong
4. The After Hours/Lost And Found/The World Next Door
5. The Toys Of Caliban
6. The Convict's Piano
7. The Road Less Traveled
8. The Card/The Junction
9. Joy Ride/Shelter Skelter/Private Channel
10. Time And Teresa Golowitz/Voices In The Earth
11. Song Of The Younger World/The Girl I Married

The Once And Future King/A Saucer Of Loneliness

THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING - An Elvis impersonator goes back in time to meet the real deal just before his first recording and finds that he's going to have to give the man some pointers.

A fairly standard time travel story is given a bit of zest by Jeff Yagher's performances as both Elvis and his impersonator. There is a twist along the way that becomes obvious too early, but it's a nice idea all the same.

A SAUCER OF LONELINESS – A lonely waitress is singled out by a UFO for a special message that she refuses to share since it is 'private'. She suddenly finds that she's not so lonely, but that it's not necessarily such a good thing.

Shelley Duvall seems to have been playing this kind of character all her life and she can pull this off with her eyes closed, but the story doesn't manage to pull of the wistful tone of its story quite so well, despite her performance at the centre.

What Are Friends For?/Aqua Vita

WHAT ARE FRIENDS FOR? - A father and son move into a remote cabin and the child starts to play with an imaginary friend, an imaginary friend who might not only be too real, but also not a stranger.

A nostalgic look back at the loneliness of childhood this might be and it might feature the undoubted talents of Tom Skerrit, Fred Savage and Lukas Haas, but that doesn't stop this from being really quite dull and since the characters aren't that likeable to begin with there is a barrier between them and the audience from the start.

AQUA VITA – A new anchorwoman on the cusp of losing her job to a younger woman learns of a miracle cure for ageing called Aqua Vita. What she doesn't realise before it is too late is just what this cure is going to cost her.

An examination of the search for everlasting youth, the importance of looks in the media and the nature of addiction, this could have done to have had a bit more time in which to realise its potential, but it rushes through its story, wasting the true potential horror of the tale.

The Storyteller/Nightsong

THE STORYTELLER - An old woman recounts a tale of her youth when she met a young boy with the apparent talent for keeping his elderly relatives alive by making up stories for them.

An evocation of a simpler time is the backdrop to this story of youth and innocent and the pressures that adults place upon their children. It's well enough told, but there's not enough story to fill out its admittedly meagre running time and the twist in the tale isn't as surprising as it should be.

NIGHTSONG – A DJ pining for the old boyfriend that walked out on her plays his record and he comes back into her life, to shake her up and to let her know what happened.

Despite the best efforts of the usually reliable Lisa Eilbacher, this ghost story is so obvious on every level that it fails on each of those levels. The big twist at the end is laughably obvious, but even more laughably melodramatic.

The After Hours/Lost And Found/The World Next Door

THE AFTER HOURS – A young woman is drawn to a shopping mall after closing time and finds that some of the inhabitants are not all that they seem.

This is quite a creepy little number that doesn't give away all its secrets too soon, making it all the more effective as Terry Farrell (Dax in STAR TREK DEEP SPACE NINE) is chased around the familiar and yet threatening mall.

LOST AND FOUND – A student is missing some stuff and finds that she has a great destiny to live up to.

A completely pointless time travel tale that is here for the sole purpose of filling up the time that the other segments didn't.

THE WORLD NEXT DOOR – A secret door in the basement of a failed inventor's home proves to be the gateway to an alternate reality where he is a great man.

The alternate reality here is a nice twist on a Victorian period, but it proves to be the only interest in a story that never goes anywhere and provides little entertainment along the way.

The Toys Of Caliban

THE TOYS OF CALIBAN – Toby has the ability to summon anything that he wants, but he is mentally challenged and so has no control over the consequences of this talent. When he ‘brings’ his mother’s heart after seeing a picture of one in a magazine, a social worker tries to understand why the father keeps him locked away, leading to dramatic consequences.

There is an impressive air of melancholy over this story in which two older people in love and loving their afflicted son give over their lives to fighting a doomed battle for his survival. Richard Mulligan reins in his comic persona and Anne Haney is equally impressive in creating this atmosphere of hopelessness and the story (which is slight and borrowed from other sources) is secondary to that.

This is one of the best episodes that the show has produced and benefits from having the running time to devote to it.

The Convict's Piano

THE CONVICT'S PIANO – A piano player in prison for a crime that he insists he didn't commit comes into contact with an old piano. When he plays it, he is transported to the time and place of the music. Could this be his way of escape?

Just about every prison movie cliche is thrown at the screen in this story and none of it is impressive. Once the shape of the story becomes clear, it takes far too long for the expected conclusion to come around.

The Road Less Traveled

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED – A draft dodger who went to Canada to avoid Vietnam learns the consequences of his actions when his self from another dimension when he did go to war shows up in a wheelchair.

Vietnam is still a scar on the psyche of the US and this story isn’t going to help much either. It isn’t that the depictions of the conflict shown in brief flashbacks aren’t impressive or that the justification for draft dodging espoused here isn’t valid, it’s that the blanket of sentimentality that is poured over the whole ending is so much that you could almost drown in it. Writers and directors are still trying to give a happy ending to the war.

The Card/The Junction

THE CARD – A woman who is unable to curb her spending finds one last credit card that will take her. The late payment charges, though, are not what she had expected.

The need to control your finances and read the contracts that you sign is a lesson that is told most entertainingly here, though by the end there is a sense that it was close to outstaying its welcome even at this short running time.

THE JUNCTION – A miner is caught in a rockfall and finds himself trapped with another man who appears to have been caught in a rock fall in 1912

Having got a half-decent set up, this story doesn't know what to do with it and ends up just meandering along until it comes to an end without having really said anything much about anything at all.

Joy Ride/Shelter Skelter/Private Channel

JOY RIDE – A group of wild friends steal a car and find themselves living out a past experience that ended up with a cop dead and one of their own number likely to go the same way.

There's more than a touch of Stephen King about this story, but it isn't given enough time to either flesh out the characters enough to care about them or do any service to the supernatural aspects of the plot. Considering what they just witnessed, it's odd that everyone just walks away at the end.

SHELTER SKELTER – A man is so certain that nuclear war is coming that he builds a fall out shelter beneath his house and alienates his family with his warrior ways. When the bomb does finally drop, though, that family is far away.

Joe Mantegna plays the survivalist as a boor and bully and it is no surprise that his family leaves him, though he seems unaware that this is what has happened. Considering what a fine actress Joan Allen is, it is something of a shame that she appears in the story for such a short time, though her smile of satisfaction at her husband’s fate at the end seems somewhat out of place.

The twist is the tale is quite a nice one, though hardly as surprising as it would like to be.

PRIVATE CHANNEL – A teenager travelling on a plane finds that his damaged personal stereo is picking up the thoughts of those around him and the man in the seat next to him is thinking about the bomb that he is carrying.

This story has a very nice set up, but then squanders it by not being anywhere near long enough to ratchet up any sort of tension at all and the resolution is so simplistic that it fails to grab either.

Time And Teresa Golowitz/Voices In The Earth

TIME AND TERESA GOLOWITZ - A Broadway show composer dies at home and is given the opportunity to go anyplace and anytime that he would like. He chooses a party where he almost got off with the prettiest girl around, but this time he makes a much more surprising discovery.

If it weren't so utterly predictable then this would be a delightful tale. It benefits from the urbane presence of Gene Barry as the Devil, but in the end it's just something that we've seen before.

VOICES IN THE EARTH – A historian taking a last look at old, abandoned Earth makes a surprising discovery that might be the ghosts of humanity, but might be something else.

The environmental parable of this story is so hammered home that the actual story is lost in the meaning. A tale of future ghosts ought be far more engaging than this especially with Jenny Agutter and Martin Balsam on board.

Song Of The Younger World/The Woman I Married

SONG OF THE YOUNGER WORLD - A wayward young man in a youths' prison falls for the head man's daughter and they are threatened with terrible things if they are found together again, but she has found a book with a mystical escape route.

There are some hints of Romeo And Juliet in this tale, but they are only hints that show up just how uninteresting this story is and the the ending has nothing in the way of a twist that anyone would have trouble seeing from a great distance ahead.

THE GIRL I MARRIED – A successful lawyer is suffering from a mid-life crisis and thinks back to the heady days of the sixties and the girl he fell in love with then. When she appears and starts an affair with him, he is brought to understand what love really means, but he is not the only one.

A time travelling storyline with a wrinkle in that the younger version of the man’s wife isn’t her transposed, but a replication of her. The fact that the actress really doesn’t look as young as she is supposed doesn’t help matters and neither does the script that wanders all over the place and finally settles down into mawkish sentimentality having never once gone anywhere near believability.

The ease with which the man falls into bed with this younger version of his wife doesn’t help us empathise with him either. His current wife is still being cheated on, even if it is with herself.