Brief Passages - Twilight Zone (And When the Sky Was Opened)

"And the Sky Was Opened” just gives me the creeps. This idea that you are here on the planet and then gone with no one ever acknowledging your existence while someone else remembers you is just a haunting concept to me. At one point you are recognized by everyone then “something” (whatever you want to consider, and I love to seek out individual opinions of what they think is behind the “here today, gone tomorrow” erasure of these astronauts) plucks you off the earth. Rod Taylor is the star of the episode, Colonel Clegg Forbes, returning to the bedside of fellow astronaut, Major William Gart (Jim Hutton), practically a basket case because Colonel Ed Harrington (Charles Aidman; the narrator of the 80s revival of TZ), another astronaut that was with them on a mission in space, returning in their ship after going missing briefly, is just gone with no one remembering him. When Gart doesn’t remember him, either, Forbes realizes the trouble they are in. Taylor’s breakdown is epic while Aidman’s disorientation and awareness as to what is happening to him in a bar phone booth is particularly eerie. And when Forbes talks to his wife and she doesn’t remember Harrington, the sheer terror and disbelief is palpable…Taylor really gives you the complete performance. He’s practically fit for the straight-jacket by the time he runs into a hall and is “no more”. Then Hutton faces the music. I like that the episode doesn’t give a definitive answer as to what “whisks” them away…it leaves it up to you. Serling leaves it up to interpretation, with his close quite enigmatic. Where did they go in space when they disappeared for 24 hours? And what was this enigma that “came for them”? Were they supposed to return? How were they even able to return? A lot to consider!

--Brian

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So just for 2020, along with my other ongoing projects for the horror genre, I thought it would be fun to build towards my [now annual] self-created 4^th of July Twilight Zone Marathon with a “brief passages” series for the first season. I thought it would be a neat sort of 2020 episodic footprint and the point of the “brief passages” part is to try and limit myself to just a “mini-review” five-to-six line paragraph for each episode of the Twilight Zone (and some Universal Monster films as well) in the first season. My marathon for Independence Day will not be as extensive as it was in 2019…ten episodes, five from the third season and five from the fifth. Because I have written big reviews for many of the first season episodes in the past, this “brief passages” format won’t be as difficult while those certain few that might not have gotten a more elaborate, detailed treatment, it should be quite a challenge to limit myself.