4th of July 2025 Marathoning

McDowell and Comi prepare to leave for Mars.

 Aliens visiting the UN, dropping off their cook book, providing goodies for humans on Earth, easing them into trusting them, spiriting them away to be food for them on their home planet. To Serve Man is nearly 60 years ago. I've been watching Twilight Zone since I was a teenager in the mid 90s thanks to Sci Fi Channel. Many of my family have passed since (for instance, my mother's siblings are all about gone except one last sister), and it wouldn't be right to avoid a marathon during the 4th if just for nostalgic reasons. Syfy didn't see the value of TZ on Independence Day, except last year, so even though I cannot watch episodes like I do during New Year's Eve and Day, it is nice to try and sneak in a block of episodes whenever possible. I started with Death Ship from the fourth season, continuing with Stopover in a Quiet Town and The Gift. To Serve Man would feel like a later afternoon watch but SYFY showed it at 3:30 Central where I live. "Kentucky windage" was perhaps correct in determining exactly what the Kanamits were up to...not altruistic but quite sinister. Mr. Chambers was looking a gift horse in the mouth...and got kicked.

Martians in togas as spectators watching specimens in cages replicating environs of those they hold prisoner, with biologist Sam (Roddy McDowell) assured of the very thing he feared...he didn't want to make the trip to Mars while astronaut Marcusson, excited to go, perishes from the crash in a tragic case of irony. People Are Alike All Over reveals to us that maybe a trip to Mars isn't worth it.

Sometimes aliens coming to Earth to colonize come in the guise of black leather jackets riding motorcycles such as the fifth season episode Black Leather Jackets. They can open doors and close windows with their mind.

Basehart seems melancholy because he's far away from Earth even though he's much better off than his colleagues right before the planet's nuclear apocalypse. At least Basehart's planet looks sunny, idyllic, and perhaps with an alien potential mate who looks like an Earth woman, he's got it much better than his annihilated American friends in Probe 7, Over and Out.

Rod introducing Mr. Dingle, the Strong

Rod Serling was chilling with a beer and a smoke while introducing one of my least favorite episodes of Twilight Zone, Mr. Dingle, the Strong. Seeing Mr. Dingle, a stuttering and soft-minded victim of harassment and bullying while hanging at the bar during downtime from selling vacuum cleaners didn't need any of Don Rickles' shit but got it anyway. Baseball was really a big deal as was boxing back in the late 50s/early 60s as stories often featured these sports while sci-fi often playfully incorporated them. Meredith's Mr. Dingle is granted power and later intelligence thanks to curious aliens who wanted to test these inferior humans and see how a subject might utilize advances provided them.

Twilight Zone loved to toy with whether or not where the story is set is Earth or some facsimile. Agnes Moorehead appears to be a mute living on a farm in poverty, as if plucked from a hardscrabble life in the prairie somewhere...until you see the flying Saucer from a planet called Earth. The Invaders must have been quite the WTF moment for first time viewers watching on television. Since then, it's not exactly the same wallop. It's also probably not shocking American astronauts would have zap lasers that hurt Moorehead because they deemed her a threat due to her size, where to us before this revelation, we just assume she's a frontier woman surviving as best she could.

I'm wrapping up my block of episodes taken from the SYFY marathon schedule featured mainly on 4th of July mid afternoon and early evening. I might try another block Saturday late afternoon but, if not, it has been a fun return even if late into the night on Independence Day. I wish I had the chance to watch more, but New Year's is always the main marathon anyway. The Fear has often been an episode that appears late in marathons and it was featured in the 6:30 PM slot this year on the 4th. I hope to add this to a lineup sometime but watch the entire episode, not just the SYFY truncated version. It really seemed like Rod Serling wanted to keep this episode tight and as cheap as possible with only Peter Mark Richman and Hazel Court hired for it. Just a small story with little aliens this time trying to scare humans using what is nothing more than Giant trickery.