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The New Twilight Zone was the popular nickname for the 1985 revival of Rod Serling's acclaimed 1950/60s television series, The Twilight Zone. The New Twilight Zone (titled just as The Twilight Zone) ran for two seasons on CBS before producing a final season for syndication.
Series history
It was Serling's decision to sell his share of the series back to the network that eventually allowed for a Twilight Zone revival. As an in-house production, CBS stood to earn more money producing The Twilight Zone than it could by purchasing a new series produced by an outside company. Even so, the network was slow to consider a revival, shooting down offers from the original production team of Rod Serling and Buck Houghton and later from American filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. Their hesitation stemmed from concerns familiar to the original series: Twilight Zone had never been the breakaway hit CBS wanted, why should they expect it to do better in a second run?
The answers to this question began to surface in the early 1980s, as a new generation of writers and directors emerged from the very teenagers who formed the core of Twilight Zone's original audience. First came "The Twilight Zone Companion" by Marc Scott Zicree, an in-depth look into the history of the series that won critical accolade, a 1983 nomination for the American Book Award and a place on bestseller lists across the nation. Also encouraging were the new numbers from Nielsen and the box office alike. "We were looking at the success of the original series in syndication and the enormous popularity of the Steven Spielberg films," said CBS program chief Harvey Shepard. "Many of them (such as E.T. or Poltergeist) deal with elements of the show. Perhaps the public is ready for it again."
Despite lukewarm response to The Movie, Spielberg's theatrical homage to the original series, CBS gave The New Twilight Zone a greenlight in 1984 under the supervision of Carla Singer, then Vice President of Drama Development. "Twilight Zone was a series I always liked as a kid," said Singer, "...and at that point it sounded like an interesting challenge for me personally." These sentiments were seconded by a number of young filmmakers eager to make their mark on a series which had proved influential to their life and work—people like writers Harlan Ellison, J. Michael Straczynski, George R. R. Martin and Rockne S. O'Bannon and directors Wes Craven and William Friedkin. Casts featured such stars as Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Martin Landau, Jonathan Frakes, and Fred Savage. New theme music was composed by Jerry Garcia and performed by The Grateful Dead.
Filling in for Serling as narrator and host was Charles Aidman, himself the star of two classic Twilight Zone episodes. The New Twilight Zone ran for two seasons (in an hour format) on CBS. An additional season of half-hour programs was produced in 1988 to "pad" the series' syndication package. Robin Ward replaced Aidman as the narrator of these Canadian-produced episodes.
First season (1985-1986)
The Twilight Zone debuted the night of September 27, 1985 to a generally warm reception: it would win its Friday-night time slot four of its first five weeks. Episodes featured adaptations of stories by Greg Bear, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Harlan Ellison and Stephen King. A new batch of scripts was supplemented with remakes of classic Twilight Zones like Dead Man’s Shoes, Shadow Play and Night of the Meek. Though the production crew was convinced that they were making all of the right decisions, ratings began to slide as the novelty of the show wore off. "You have not known humiliation until you have been beaten by Webster and Mr. Belvedere," said executive story consultant Alan Brennert. Then came the "Nackles" incident.That the show's producers had ever managed to hire Harlan Ellison was considered by many to be nothing short of miraculous; Ellison was an extremely vocal critic of television who had already published two collection of essays on the subject “concluding that to work in television is akin to putting in time in the Egyptian House of the Dead.” These feelings surfaced once again when the script he submitted for Twilight Zone
The "Nackles" incident generated a flurry of press which ultimately proved inadequate to revive public interest in the series. "I can see why people who were expecting The Twilight Zone were disappointed with it," said staff writer Michael Cassutt of the show's low ratings. "...our show always seemed uneven to me. There were episodes perfectly in keeping with The Twilight Zone spirit, and then others that could have been from The Outer Limits or from anything." Among the episodes frequently cited as the series' best were Her Pilgrim Soul, Nightcrawlers, Profile in Silver and Dead Run, all produced in the first season. Thanks to such successes and despite poor ratings, The New Twilight Zone was renewed for a second season in early 1986.
Second season (1986-1987)
Unlike episodes from the first season, several episodes contained only one long segment, opposed to 2 or 3 smaller segments. Season 2 only ran for 11 episodes because CBS canceled it in the middle of the season. Several of the unaired/unfinished episodes would be finished for season 3.Third season (1988-1989)
CBS got rid of the original production team, and brought in a new group (led by J. Michael Straczynski) to do thirty half-hour episodes for the third season; this way they could have enough episodes to sell the series into syndication. Robin Ward replaced Aidman as the narrator of these Canadian-produced episodes.See also
- Twilight Zone Cafe A Twilight Zone Message Board
- Postcards from the Zone New Twilight Zone episode guide/blog with in-depth reviews and opinions
- List of The Twilight Zone episodes
- The Twilight Zone (original series)
References
- Ellison, Harlan: "The Deadly "Nackles" Affair". The Twilight Zone Magazine, February 1987
- Graham, Jefferson: "The Twilight Zone Returns". The Twilight Zone Magazine, April 1985.
- Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)
Anthology television series | CBS network shows | The Twilight Zone
"The New Twilight Zone"