The Twilight Zone Season 1 Episode 11

Okay, there's no denying that the plot makes little (if any) sense....I mean, how in the world could you remove the expedition by thirds until finally you come down to zero?! But I love it anyway, because it's so damn creepy and eerie! Granted, you could say that a good part of the reason for that is because--like when Glenn Close lunges at Michael Douglas from the bottom of the bathtub in Fatal Attraction--it's palpably impossible. But no matter, I don't care...the die is cast...this is one submission that definitely meets with my approval! Exquisitely well-filmed, -acted and -directed. Also you gotta love that Serling actually says: "...someone...or some thing..." lol Oh well, maybe that wasn't as corny back in 1960.

This is "Twilight Zone" at its best - ordinary people caught up in extraordinary situations, trying to convince disbelievers of their plight and only finally figure it all out when it's too late. We never know what happens to the men and their ship - what explanation could match the drama of the story? It's merely enough for us to know that they are vanishing and leaving behind no memory of their existence. If there had been an effort to quantify or explain what was behind all of this, its impact would be diminished. The unknown is always more frightening than an identifiable menace - the men have no idea what they're up against and are powerless against it. With the suspense perfectly doled out until the final moments, this is a classic of "The Twilight Zone."

Ah, what can I say about "And When the Sky Was Opened"? One thing that I definitely loved about the episode was the plot, I found it to be quite original and one of the best that Rod Serling has done through the course of the series.





When the episode starts, out, we find Colonel Forbes, an astronaut going to the hospital to visit a colleague in the hospital following their return from a space mission gone wrong. From the point when Colonel Forbes went inside Major Gart's room to tell him the story about the strange things that has been going on since he and Colonel Harrington; another astronaut from their mission, left Gart in the hospital, I found the story very intriguing, thanks to the way Forbes was acting as he was retelling his story.





It was when Colonels Forbes and Harrington went to a bar after visiting Major Gart that Harrington was feeling like something was wrong. What I found interesting as they sat at the bar was when the two Military men were talking and Harrington felt like he didn’t belong where he was, like their space ship shouldn’t have made it back to earth after it disappeared in the sky. The reason why I found this to be interesting was what happened afterwards: Harrington just disappeared and the people in the bar thought Forbes was loosing his mind when he started asking about his friend.





However, what I found to be the most entertaining part of the episode happened when Forbes began to realize why Harrington was feeling the way he was before he disappeared, mainly because it started a domino effect that made the remaining astronauts believe that they truly didn’t deserve to return to earth in their ship after being lost in space, and they ultimately disappeared themselves.





In all, I found this episode to be quite entertaining; it is a really intriguing storyline that most likely couldn’t be duplicated in its brilliance in Sci-Fi shows of today.