Twilight Zone - New Year's Eve Marathon Bit

Rod Serling introduces Rip Van Winkle Caper

 Busy working and later get together removes my chance to watch much TZ today, but the weekend,..Woop, Woop, will be total dedication to the show. I hate not getting to watch much. Just some notes for this particular day:

Some notes to go with the below:

*Watching "The Parallel", I'd love to do "further analysis" at a later date. There's some great Serling writing and a question of how the astronaut is able to land without injury or crash and not remember it leaves quite a question never answered. The "something's off" nature of the astronaut's experience in a different dimension, in a different "timeline" explored through Serling's script has little touches I appreciated. However, and not to keep harping on it, the demand for length really seems to strain these fourth season episodes. There are extended dialogue scenes discussing Bob Gaines' "condition". I can't help but see twenty minutes of dialogue that could easily be condensed to five.The name dropping of John Kennedy and great astronauts of the time are cool.

This year's SYFY promos certain to repeated for two days feature "Resident Alien" and some new show about two friends whose emphasis on weight appears to be of great interest.

In Plain text:

Date - Episode Remarks 

2:00am – The Parallel I thought SYFY mixing in some fourth season episodes was a nice touch, since they aren't as keen on doing so for a lot of their marathons much the last few years it seems. I can't remember the last time they kicked off the New Year's Marathon with a fourth season episode.

A dimension parallel to ours and an astronaut in an orbit "slipping through" is a concept I find quite neat. Problem is The Twilight Zone is exceptional at giving us something like this in 30 minutes. In an hour, you get a lot of dialogue, a lot of conversation, and it just feels like Serling and company had to overexplain what could have been streamlined quite sufficiently in the previous seasons' format.

3:00am – Where is Everybody? Surprised to see the first episode of the first season buried early in the marathon since this has always been more of a later afternoon favorite right before the usual prime time favorites. I looked over Decades Network's Three day marathon twice; I was disappointed to see they didn't even have it in their lineup this year.

3:30am – One For the Angels I think I will always watch this if I'm able every marathon. This is one of those episodes that does typically wind up in the wee hours. Maybe some day, after I have completed my Twilight Zone Long Haul series, I will put together the ultimate Marathon with some particular thought on where I would feature episodes for a two dayer.

4:00am – Mr. Denton on Doomsday The "western" episodes, I've noticed, aren't among the most popular with Zoners, but I still think there are some gems. I don't think "Mr. Denton" is necessarily all that highly rated. I do remember this episode being featured seemingly as a more distinguished in the 90s marathons. If I ever dig into my VHS collection, I do recall recording marathons when SYFY was actually The Sci-Fil Channel with the Saturn logo.

How Mr. Denton looks at that gun before meeting up with Henry J Fate to get that ten-second elixir speaks to how Durea can communicate just what a weapon and what it does can scar someone. The gift of being removed as a quick-draw is a blessing to him.

4:30am – The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine I will admit that this is an episode I'd probably never feature prominently at all marathon-time. I can only imagine SYFY does so because it is in the first season and they are known to consistently throw a bunch of this season in marathons. But if the episode is shown in a New Year's marathon, 3:30 Central in the morning right at the beginning is the best slot for it.