Twilight Zone - And the Sky Was Opened/Additional

 This is that episode of Twilight Zone best viewed in the dead of night. It chills the nerves for sure. To be just completely culled from existence, wiped out through whatever cosmic eraser saw the need to take away three astronauts and the space ship that crashed back on earth after they seemed to return practically in one piece, this episode really leaves such an impression because those being scrubbed totally out couldn't stop it. They didn't obviously want to leave, and the terror of knowing no one would even know them, as if their existence was some temporary anamoly briefly on the lam until their cosmic pursuer corrected its mistake, certainly is detailed effectively by Colonel Forbes, who seems to fight whatever it is despite the inevitable doom. The episode just has this palpable dread all through it. The outcome can't be denied no matter how much the three astronauts want to live...it's like this blip, minor and unmalleable. There was just no future for them...they weren't meant to ever return much less walk out of the hospital ready for life again. There's something so disturbing about being here, a part of life on this planet, a son, friend, lover, and even a famous astronaut, only for all of it to be gone, complete nothingness.

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I first watched this episode August 20, 2011. I was quite stunned I missed it in marathons all those years.

A nervy Col. Clegg Forbes (Rod Taylor, sensational) enters the VA hospital looking for fellow astronaut, currently bedridden, Maj. William Gart (Jim Hutton), after having been released the day before along with Col. Ed Harrington (Charles Aidman). Gart, concerned with Forbes' questionable behavior, wonders what gives. Forbes asks him about Harrington, and Gart tells him that he doesn't know the man. Startled by this Forbes gives details about Harrington, yet to no avail Gart doesn't remember him. It is as if Harrington never existed..

Man, is this episode eerie! It follows Forbes descent into hysteria because his friend's existence is forgotten by everyone that ever knew him. Harrington himself could feel something pulling him away, and when he calls his own parents they don't know who he is! Before long he's "taken"; this troubles Forbes who pleads to Gart to remember Harrington. A newspaper article is used three times, to creepy effect, depicting the absence of men we spend time with and know were at one point real, yet before long even we must question the cause of their disappearance or reason for existing at any point at all.

Quite an ambiguous threat and we never are given a real answer as to what happened to them, even their space ship (the astronauts had successfully went to space, crash landing in the desert which was the reason for their hospital stays) becomes a *victim*. I can't really put into words how this episode creeped me out, but I guess the idea of being "erased" is kind of scary, especially the very memory of who I was, no one remembering me at all, completely forgetting about me. Superb direction and Taylor is mesmerizing in a role that calls for him to decline psychologically as the episode continues, at one point breaking through a bar door's glass as he looks to find Harrington hiding away somewhere. The scenes, particularly after Harrington vanishes inside a phone booth (not visually, Taylor turns around and he is gone), with no one even knowing who he was when questioned by Forbes, certainly are spooky. I'm really surprised this is the first time I have watched this episode, but having the entire series affords me the opportunity to find those that don't receive the same kind of rotated appearances on syfy channel and experience them for the first time; this is definitely one of my top tier favorite episodes of the series.