The Twilight Zone - The Parallel

I continue to enjoy The Parallel, as the second viewing left me quite pleased with how it questions whether or not when traveling in space at just the right moment could introduce a rift that sends a ship into a similar dimension with certain differences (Forrest notices the white, picket fence in his yard, that he’s got a different rank, that Kennedy isn’t the President, his wife and daughter feel he isn’t the husband and father they remember). Like all of the TZ episodes in the fourth season, it is overlong and burdened by padding but I think out of most of them The Parallel doesn’t feel like it has too many unnecessary scenes. You do have these conversations between members of the planet orbit space program team that perhaps would have been shaved down or trimmed if trying to write out fifty minutes of script for television wasn’t expected of Serling and his creative minds bringing this to screen. Still Forrest’s dismay and how others react to him offers quite a scenario to consider. 3/5

I definitely feel And the Sky Was Opened vibes while watching this episode. Of course, Forrest has a better outcome than the three astronauts who eventually are "excised" from existence!

I had a write-up that wasn't particularly favorable but overall this second viewing was much better.

 Astronaut Major Robert Gaines (Steve Forrest) sets off on mission to orbit completely around the earth but something odd happens: he awakens after blackout to a parallel earth where there are similarities and subtle differences, with his colleagues, wife, and daughter eventually treating him as either delusional or alien to them. What could have been a fine sci-fi half-hour episode just drags mercilessly due to the extra twenty-five minutes burdening the script to drag out conversations and the obvious beyond what is needed. With Jacqueline Scott (William Castle's Macabre (1958)) as Robert's wife, unsettled by the man that returned to her, just bothered by a kiss and embrace that feels all wrong, Frank Aletter as Colonel William Connacher, spending most of the episode (in both universes) perplexed at Robert's statements about parallel experiences, and Paul Comi as psychiatrist debating whether or not Robert is off his rocker or accurate in his claims. The radio transmission from Colonel Robert Gaines leaves those considering Major Robert Gaines possibly delusional startled and perplexed. The subtle differences in the parallel universe Robert soon spends a week are shared in dialogue rather than necessarily visually (although see the difference in where Aletter and Comi stand when speaking after their visit with an awakened Gaines; it is clever), but how the wife and daughter react disturbed when he draws near and embraces them (as if he causes them to shiver) makes for a well directed clue to how off everything is. I just think the padding is detrimental (or if you wish "wrecks") the story's potential for resonance. Robert's colleagues identify six hours "lost" where he didn't contact them, while he assures them he spent six days on the parallel earth. How that happens is never explained.