Twilight Zone • Still Valley**

I'll be at work some days thinking about The Twilight Zone, certain episodes I might rewatch again, contemplating a specific time just right for them.

Still Valley is a marathon episode I have seen countless times on Sci-Fi and Syfy over the years. Morning, noon, afternoons, and night, wherever the schedule dumps it I always seem to come across it. Most Twilight Zone fans I come across often consider it middle-of-the-pack mediocre. I always have a strange attraction to it. The idea of witchcraft, revoking God and summoning Satan, to win the Civil War is perhaps a creaky concept, of its time, outmoded. Then it might have been quite compelling for the audiences of its era, and the episode’s weary, weathered, sweat-backed, exhausted protagonist being a “Johnny Reb” instead of a “Damn Yank” was an interesting option. Serling loved to do that, though. Different perspectives, using whatever gimmick Twilight Zone could afford him to tell a story in a unique way, while still confronting issues such as selling your soul (maybe not necessarily even in a Christian sense but figuratively, psychologically, and even physically) and desperate times calling for desperate measures. Vaughn Taylor, with a sinister twinkle in his eye and wicked grin when talking about what the words could do when he reads them from his beloved book, is a blast to watch on screen. He isn’t the least bit disturbed by his actions. He tells the war-battered Paradine (Merrill, who I always find so captivating when I revisit this episode year after year), that he is a “witchman” and his fathers before him were. He even uses the book to “freeze” Paradine, to properly convince him that the witchcraft is legit. While Paradine is frozen in place when leaning down towards Taylor’s Teague, the witchman explains to him that the book has power and he wields it just by reading the print and believing in Satan who he worships instead of God. I kind of figure this bit of the episode will turn off some viewers. Some TZ fans can go with it. It is just a different device (would you renounce God if your side of the war is losing badly and in need of a respite?) used in a bloody, unsavory war that fractured the country, as Serling adds a supernatural spin that could have changed the entire outcome. Gettysburg is mentioned in Serling’s closing monologue as Paradine, reversing his initial consideration of using the book of witchcraft to help the Confederacy win the war, decides to toss it in the fire despite his peers advising him to. Paradine decides, perhaps those around him considering it against his better judgment, to accept whatever fate for the war lies ahead instead of forsaking God, eventually inviting many of their own demise. Much like “Elegy”, Still Valley tasks actors in the episode to remain as perfectly still as possible, and those involved do their best to oblige. Paradine’s dismissal of “yella-belly” Dauger (Ben Cooper) can be felt as maybe a bit harsh (just a kid, really, and seeing so much death and loss does leave a lasting effect on soldiers, no matter how tough), but there was a job to do and the proposed surrender to the frozen company in Teague’s town was treated as an insult…Paradine believed in their cause and didn’t like the idea of just chucking aside all they have experienced due to exhaustion and being sick and tired. It was a slap in the face by Dauger so Paradine literally slaps him across the chops in retaliation for the mere thought of just giving themselves up and throwing down their weapons. The camera gets many close-ups of Merrill and Vaughn’s face as they contemplate winning the war through the use of the book. I felt while watching the episode in full that it is quite edited by Syfy, with certain dialogues cut short. Vaughn’s disgust with the Union officers as he explains their intrusion into his neck of the woods to a Paradine, awestruck by the book’s power seems to have been scissored a bit. The material might not be considered as thought-provoking as “Monsters Due…” or as fun as “Will the Real Martian…” which is why it isn’t on the tips of tongues of fans. It rests somewhere in the pack, somewhat noticeable but not within a serious conversation of the very best the series had to offer.