THE TWILIGHT ZONE
(1985-1989)
Season 3

Available on DVD

1. The Curious Case Of Edgar Witherspoon
2. Extra Innings
3. The Crossing
4. The Hunters
5. Dream Me A Life
6. Memories
7. The Hellgramite Method
8. Our Selena Is Dying
9. The Call
10. The Trance
11. Acts Of Terror
12. 20/20 Vision
13. There Was An Old Woman
14. The Trunk
15. Appointment On Route 17
16. The Cold Equations
17. Stranger In Possum Meadows
18. Street of Shadows
19. Something In The Walls
20. A Game Of Pool
21. The Wall
22. Room 2426
23. The Mind Of Simon Foster
24. Cat And Mouse
25. Many, Many Monkeys
26. Rendezvous In A Dark Place
27. Special Service
28. Love Is Blind
29. Crazy As A Soup Sandwich
30. Father And Son Game

The Curious Case Of Edgar Witherspoon

A psychiatrist visits the home of an elderly man who claims that the mad contraption in his basement is actually keeping the world in balance.

Harry Morgan can play a daft old codger with his eyes closed and he makes Edgar likeable and irascible all at the same time.

It's just as well that he is there because the rest of the story is predictable.

Extra Innings

A washed up baseball player gets the chance for glory that was denied him by injury when he finds a magic trading card that can take him back in time.

This is a simple case of wish fulfilment that plays on nostalgia to hide the fact that the player (Marc Singer in likeable form) is a man who has given up on his life and his marriage to dream of what might have been. His wife is painted in a very poor light when all she wanted was for her husband to help her keep things afloat.

The scenes in the past are handsomely mounted.

The Crossing

A priest is working himself to an early death in order to get the new children's wing of the hospital finished. He starts to see a girl in a red station wagon crashing nearby, but they are only hallucinations. Or are they?

The supernatural aspect of this is the girl in the car and the guilt and memories that the priest have that are driving him are too sketchy to be really effective, although the grounding in reality is well enough done.

The Hunters

An cave full of ancient paintings is discovered, derailing a building project. The woman in charge in determined to save the dig site from the vandals that are killing animals nearby, but then she notices that the paintings have changed.

This is a mild horror tale that could have been a good deal more effective had it been given more time for the plot to develop and the atmosphere to build.

As it is, it just about manages to scrape by, but is played too lightly by all involved to be really scary.

Dream Me A Life

An elderly man in a retirment home who has given up on life since the loss of his wife finds himself visiting a terrifying dream in the closed off mind of a comatose patient.

This starts off with a really impressive dream sequence and it is the dream sequences that give this episodes its effectiveness. Off kilter, black and white, grainy and nicely designed, it feels like a dream and a terrifying one at that.

The resolution might be a bit too pat and the moral heavy handed, but with Eddie Albert and Barry Morse providing the acting calibre this is the best episode yet.

Memories

Mary helps people remember their past lives, but can't remember her own. After one attempt, she wakes up in a world that is falling apart as humanity goes quietly insane through the effects of being able to remember past lives vividly.

It wouldn't be a good idea to be able to remember all our past lives is the moral of the tale, but it doesn't get the time it needs to fully expand on that and paint in the world that is coming apart in detail enough to have the effect that it should have.

In the end, this means that it's hard to really say what the point of the story was at all.

The Hellgramite Method

A drinker about to lose his family is approached in a bar by a man offering a cure, but he could not imagine what horrors that cure would come with.

This is a depiction of a man going through cold turkey to try and overcome his addiction and it's a very affecting and effective one. The set up involving the potential placing of a killer worm in his gut is merely a mcguffin to allow this depiction of drug dependency to appear in a science fiction show. The power of that depiction makes it forgivable. The sudden ending, however, is less forgivable.

Our Selena Is Dying

A young woman goes to stay with her dying aunt only to find that the old woman's condition has suddenly changed for the better.

A J Michael Straczynski script from a Rod Serling story ought to have been something special, but this proves to be somewhat obvious and unsurprisig. The ageing makeup isn't very convincing either and the ending rather arbitrary.

The Call

Norman is a lonely man so when a misdialled call brings him into contact with a lonely woman, they talk for hours. He tracks her down to find only a statue of an artist who committed suicide.

Once it is clear who Marianne is then there are only two ways that this story is ever going to go, so there are no surprises to be had. The story and dialogue, by J Michael Straczynski, is slight and not entirely original, but it is nicely played by William Sanderson and doesn't outstay its welcome, though it is a bit over-sugared.

The Trance

A fake medium finds that the spirit guide that he invented to 'give him wisdom' is acting on its own and is determined to do just that.

Normally this story is about a ventriloquist whose dummy starts to talk to him and ruin his life. There's very little here that's new apart from the fact that it's the spirit guide of a medium and as a result the episode is flat and uninteresting.

Acts Of Terror

An abused housewife finds that she has a spectral guardian in the shape of a ghostly dog, but where does it come from?

Melissa Mayron and Kenneth Welsh breathe a little depth into this tired story about a wife whose rage at her treatment manifests in supernatural form. Their performances make it worthwhile, but the dog could have been more menacing.

20/20 Vision

A lowly bank worker is given glimpses into the future by way of a broken pair of glasses.

This is a pleasant, if inconsequential, episode that benefits greatly from the presence of Michael Moriarty. The story is barely enough to fill out the meagre running time and there are no surprises along the way.

There Was An Old Woman

A forgotten writer of children's books visits a sick child to read to him and then finds herself being tormented by voices in her own home.

This is a gentle, dignified story that is predictable from start to finish, but doesn't suffer as a result because the performances create characters worth caring about, even if only for a short time.

The Trunk

A kindly hotel worker in a rundown urban area discovers a trunk that will give him everything that he asks for, but is that everything that he actually wants?

Bud Cort is a likeable presence at the heart of this episode, nice without being too bright, and he manages to ground what is essentially a morality tale that couldn't be any lighter for fear of blowing away on the slightest breeze.

The conclusion is somewhat predictable, but the manner in which it is reached is not quite so obvious.

Appointment On Route 17

A ruthless businessman returns from a heart swap operation to find a softer outlook on life and and interest in a lowly diner waitress.

Paul Le Mat takes a storyline that is so flimsy and see through that it makes gossamer seem heavy duty and breathes some sort of life into it. Anyone who doesn't guess where this plot is going has their brain set on reverse, but there are some incidental pleasures along the way. Just not too many.

The Cold Equations

The pilot of an emergency despatch ship discovers a teenage stowaway and is faced with the options of executing her or letting thirty five men die.

In space, the difference between life and death is governed by the cold equations of mathematics. Humanity is a far distant secondary consideration. This is a two hander play in which one character is so emotional and the other is so underplayed that they never gel and the emotional core is lost.

At least it has the courage of its convictions right to the very end.

Stranger In Possum Meadows

Danny is a lonely boy living in a remote mobile home with his hard-working mother. She is suspicious of his new friend, a mysterious man named Scout and it seems that she has good reason.

There aren't many surprises in this story, but it's played nicely enough for that not to matter too much. The mystery as to Scout's exact purpose engages for a while, but in the end it works out rather predictably.

Street Of Shadows

A desperate man acts on impulse and breaks into a rich man's house. There he is shot, only to find himself waking up in the body of the man who shot him.

A body swap into the life of the your enemy is hardly a new idea, but it opens up the opportunities for some sort of point to be made about opposites and learning life lessons. Unfortunately, there is nothing to be learned her other than don't get shot breaking into other people's houses.

No reason is given for the transformation and no point is really made by it, making you wonder why it exists at all.

Something In The Walls

A doctor new to a psychiatric institution encounters a woman who is terrified of something that she claims lives in the walls and in patterns of colour.

There is a stretchy wall effect that can be pretty spooky when a face is pressed against it. Unfortunately, you need more than that one effect to make for an effective story and this doesn't have anything more to give.

The storytelling is muddy and muddled, messing up the conclusion by being unclear.

A Game Of Pool

A young pool hall hustler rails at the universe that he'll always be considered as less than a dead hero. That hero then returns to take him on in a game where the stakes are literally life and death.

If you're going to set a plot around a game of pool between two greats then you really need to make the shots that they take on look difficult and spectacular, which the ones here do not.

on top of that, the script is stilted and neither Esai Morales nor Maury Chaykin can breathe life into it.

The Wall

An ageing test pilot is asked to go through a spatial rift to find out what is on the other side. When he finds a perfect society the question becomes should be return?

A story by J Michael Straczynski directed by Atom Egoyan? This ought to have been something of a highlight for the series and it initially seems that it might be as the set up is rather nicely done, but once the man is beyond the rift, he is faced with a series of platitudinous arguments that can only go one way.

Disappointedly fails to live up to its potential.

Room 2426

A scientist with information vital to the state is tricked into believing that he can escape from his cell through only the power of thought.

The mind games being played on the imprisoned scientist are so obvious that an untrained child would probably be able to withstand them and since there is not enough time given to the torture on him, there is not sense of his body, mind or spirit being broken.

That, though, turns out not to be the twist and for once the show manages to get one over on its audience.

The Mind Of Simon Foster

Simon Foster is down on his luck and almost out of cash. Then he is introduced to a process whereby he can give up selected memories and be paid for them.

There's a neat idea here as the loss of apparently insignificant memories build up into a life-changing situation. There's the spectre of the poor having their organs harvested here and how they could get sucked into a spiral of dependency.

The memory stripper is too obviously evil for the good of the story, but the final reveal is less a twist than a cautionary postscript.

Cat And Mouse

A repressed lover of trashy romance novels is surprised when the stray cat she welcomes in is actually a shapeshifting handsome man who refuses to be tied down to one woman.

A lighthearted romp of a story that doesn't have any points to make other than in love you reap what you sew. It's slight, but a lot of fun.

Many, Many Monkeys

A nurse begins to suspect that an outbreak of blindness has more to do with people's lack of caring than a virus.

There's some nice camerawork in this episode to give a more chilling effect to the blind eyes of the victims, but the story's moral that turning a blind eye to inhumanity will actually make you blind is heavy-handed and uninvolving.

Rendezvous In A Dark Place

An old woman seemingly obsessed with death has a chance to meet the grim reaper himself and argues that her place is with him.

Janet Leigh stars in this odd little tale that doesn't have a twist, but is a nice vignette in which an outsider finds a place for herself again the strangest of circumstances. It is aided by a nice turn from Stephen McHattie as Death, managing to combine smooth and sinister to good effect.

A Special Service

A young man discovers that his life is being watched by millions of TV viewers without his knowledge.

This episode gives the storyline that went on to become the Jim Carrey vehicle THE TRUMAN SHOW (for our money one of the finest science fiction films ever). Here, it's a piece of light fluff that aims to use its central idea to be funny and frothy rather than dramatic and prophetic.

As a result, it's one of the most fun episodes in the whole three seasons.

Love Is Blind

A jealous trucker is intent on killing his wife's lover, but meets a strange bar singer instead.

Sneezy Waters is unnerving as the blind singer and it is he who makes this one of the more memorable episodes since the plot is trite and stupid and predictable. He is creepy enough to make his motives suspect throughout and that gives the episode the edge that it would otherwise be missing.

Crazy As A Soup Sandwich

A bored gangster decides to liven up his life by taking on a killer demon.

This is one of the silliest storylines that the show has come up with to date and it knows it well enough to not even try to play it straight. The direction is colourful, the perfomances pantomime and the whole thing carried off with an energy and brio that makes the nonsense of the plot matter not one little bit.

Father And Son Game

A rich businessman cheats death in a regenerated body with a digitised version of his mind. When his son challenges his right to run the company, he drives himself to prove that life is more than just the body.

Exactly what is it that makes a man a man? Is it the mind and if so can that mind be preserved beyond the death of the body? Could the human mind be digitised and run on a computer? These are all fascinating questions, or at least they would be in a more interesting storyline. They have certainly been examined in more depth in better episodes of other shows.