It's a 60s era TV show written by people who were not astrophysicists. Why would you expect them to get everything right? Suspend your disbelief and enjoy the story.
This is important to remember. People would be able to just Google facts after the episode and know it didn't make sense. Unless someone was really into space and read a lot of books about it, I don't think the general public would really consider either of these things for those episodes. Space travel was very new.
“Arrow” came about when a woman approached Rod at a party and suggested that premise for an episode. He paid her for the idea and got to work on it. He never took suggestions from the public again. Presumably actual scientists gave him hell over it and that’s why.
Imagine Hollywood (Or any capitalist enterprise) voluntarily paying someone for their ideas, rather than stiffing them. Conversely, if they are paid, they have to sign a contract agreeing to say their ideas, work, genius, actually was the work of someone else (Drake, Elon.)
This discussion reminds me why I love TZ so much and why I feel it is so sorely missed. People mistakenly think of TZ as a sci-fi anthology series - when even Rod Serling himself acknowledged that he just used that frame to get difficult social commentary past the censors.
The beauty of TZ is precisely that it doesn’t concern itself with actual scientific facts, plausibility etc. It’s all about the bigger moral issue (in most cases… not all). I find very few, if any, modern series that tackle moral commentary the way TZ did. One of the problems with our culture today is that people Google whether 11 million miles is a plausible distance from the sun for the storyline to be accurate, rather than have a conversation about the broader issue of the civilization we have created here on earth - and whether it’s worth saving.
That's why I used the term "fridge logic" in the title. It doesn't mean that the show is bad when it's unrealistic, but that the parts of it that are good (the philosophy and social commentary) is so good that you don't even realize how unrealistic it until you've watched it many times over.
I remember Serling saying something about "And When The Sky Was Opened". I paraphrase it as "Remember, we and the general public had no real idea WHAT would happen if a man went into space. In a sense, anything was possible". It's best to treat such stories as parables in a way.
I think a lot of episodes have this characteristic. While, in some instances, that may be due to a misunderstanding about the science involved, I think in a lot of cases, like The Midnight Sun, it was just a case of "not letting the facts get in the way of a good story". I think more often we see a lack of concern about the story's internal logic, but, again, that's for the same reason. There's a story they want to tell, and they have only a limited time in which to tell it. The episodes demand a certain suspension of disbelief, which I'm happy to give them. (Maybe I'm just saying that because The Midnight Sun is one of my favorites, haha!)
That said ...
Henry Bemis (Time Enough at Last) will definitely die of radiation poisoning within a couple of weeks.
After struggling for so many years to recapture The Howling Man, would David Ellington really have left a stranger in a position to make the same mistake he did?
Hector B. Poole (Penny for Your Thoughts) would have been inundated with all the incoherent thoughts of the people around him and wouldn't have been able to make sense of any of it.
A bomb shelter that can be broken into by panicked neighbors probably wouldn't have been much defense against fallout (The Shelter).
IIRC, Anthony Fremont (It's a Good Life) can kind of read people's minds or at least sense their emotions. Surely, he would have sensed how much everyone wanted him dead. (Maybe he did and was just toying with everyone, but the episode doesn't make that clear.)
A few years ago, I would have said that the prospect of an actual Nazi gaining a foothold in American politics (He's Alive) was straining credulity, but I guess that's one I've got to give them.
I agree with a lot of your observations, but for some of these I have thought about the episode and have some headcanon explanation:
Contrary to popular belief, I don't think telepathy necessarily has to hear everyone's thoughts all the time (as if everyone is always "broadcasting" and telepaths are always "receiving"). Since telepathy doesn't exist, there are different ways it can be interpreted. For example, there could be only certain kinds of thoughts that get "broadcasted" akin to an FTP or email.
Anthony can read thoughts of people around him, but there's a big point made that everyone constantly thinks happy thoughts to avoid their hatred of being detected. The only exception is when one person contemplated killing Anthony while he was distracted turning another man into a jack-in-the-box.
The American Nazi Party definitely existed in the 1960s and I feel like someone with Hitler's charisma would be moderately successful, just not on a national level. There are recent movies that spawn from this same concept.
Anthony could sense their emotions, but they were constantly on guard and saying to themselves and thinking “Anthony did a good thing” over and over so he is content hearing that much.
The thing that bugs me about the “think happy thoughts” is that - you cannot truly betray your own line of thought. If you’re scared/angry/frustrated, you can’t just suddenly actually believe happy things and the hatred disappears.
So Anthony should be able to sense very easily that you’re just covering (poorly) your hatred with “boy it sure is hot as shit hell today…and that’s a good thing!! A real good thing!”
I'm wondering if it's just because he doesn't know any better. People have treated him that way his whole life, he's never had a normal human interaction or even read a normal unobscured human thought really, so I figure just he doesn't really pick up on the ambient fear and hatred unless you stop trying to cover it, like birthday guy.
That bugged me about “The Midnight Sun” until the twist ending, when it made a lot more sense … probably still not on an astrophysics level, but more sense than everywhere on earth being in eternal daylight
There’s a parallel, (not the episode, lol) between “Arrow” and “Death Ship” in so far as people who are scared and disoriented have a tendency to let their fears and confusion rule their thought processes.
It’s one of the elemental things about the show. The examination of human nature in circumstances both banal and extraordinary.
Just relax and vibe to it, baby!
The viewing public and for that matter most writers in 1959 were largely ignorant of how shall I put it Science Matters. A lot of people felt that Venus and Mars were probably livable. Why couldn't there be asteroids that were livable also?
Further the stories were intended to be improbable. The whole idea was what happens when a regular person gets thrown in completely impossible situation. You're the only pretty person in a world of ugly people. You meet the ghost of Abraham Lincoln marching home from the end of the Civil War.
But most of these problems could have been solved by a little bit more exposition. This planet wasn't 11 million miles away it was 11 light years away. This rocket has a experimental hyperspace Drive. This is a parallel world split off from our own at some point.
Rod Serling basically made that deal of suspension of disbelief with his audience every week. What if you woke up hungover only to find that you've been captured by Giants? Never mind how could there be Giants or why would they speak English. How would you feel how would you act if you were suddenly inexplicably thrust into that.
The movie Groundhog Day follows the same format. We're never told what caused the time Loop. No explanation whatsoever. Just that it provides an opportunity for Bill to grow.
They could in each episode spend a minute or two adding in the necessary exposition to make the science work if you will. But would it actually improve the entertainment value? Or would it in fact disturb the tempo of the story.
In the end you choose to go with it or you don't. The devil can be caught by monks and held imprisoned. Will Robinson kidnaps a town and torments them with unexplained psionic powers. You just accept it or you don't.
Personally I have to say that almost every single episode I'm more than willing to accept what Rod is selling.
What bugs me about “person or persons unknown” is that Dave Gurney wakes up one day and his wife doesn’t know who he is and nobody else ever heard of him either, he goes to work and nobody at work never heard of him either, then he sees a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist tells him that there is no David Gurney, that he doesn’t exist and his name isn’t in the phone book or anything, then Dave asks the psychiatrist, “if I’m not Dave Gurney then who am I?” Then the psychiatrist says to him, “that’s what we’re gonna try to find out”. What bugs me is that nobody ever asks why does he know his wife’s name and he knows everyone’s name at work and he also knows the bartender’s name and he calls his mother up on the phone and she doesn’t know him either but how did he know her phone number if Dave Gurney doesn’t exist?
It was. . . A fantasy series. The science fiction aspects of the show obviously leaned much more heavily towards the fiction rather than the science. It’s no less logical than most sci-fi stuff you can watch today. Ever heard Ben affleck’s commentary on the movie Armageddon?
I was just talking on another thread about how it hit me one day (during the pandemic) that the moral logic for “Time Enough At Last,” seems off to me. How does someone who was mistreated by the world for wanting to read deserve that fate?
That is a good point. The moral of the story is supposed to be that "no man is an island" because although he wants to be left alone, he cannot survive on his own for long. They needed to show a plausible reason why he wanted to be alone, but I can see the argument that they pushed a bit much in that direction.
Yeah, like some of the others, I was going to mention Henry Bemis but the whole series kind of hinges on the bizarre and suspension of belief/logic as we know it. To me most of the episodes are social metaphors using surreal plotlines to get a real message across, so if we pick them apart too much as being illogical, it takes a lot of the fun away.
I actually do have a real question though--the Aunt Tee thing with the old lady in the pool. I think I took it as the kids ended up drowning because the parents were materialistic and self-absorbed, but it was definitely one of the scariest episodes to me.
The Hunt - this one is about the old man and his dog who die, and his dog is refused entry into the first gate, but the second gate lets them both in: what if the second gate was “the bad place”?
The Obsolete Man - a bomb? Really? They gave him an explosive device?
The Little People - astronauts land on a plant with a tiny civilization, and one of the astronauts proclaims himself king, and the tiny aliens build a life size statue of him. Their city was about 6 feet across, and their buildings were centimeters high, how could they build a 6 foot statue so quickly? It would be like humans building a statue 50 miles high in a week.
The obsolete man one cracks me up because, ultimately the “leader guy” was done in by a simple ordinary household bathroom style door lock! Lol. A simple hardware store Schlage brand door lock. Not even a deadbolt.
And it’s hilarious the scene where he’s in the apartment with Mr Wordsworth, telling this hoity supreme speech, then turns to leave. Twists the handle and it’s locked. And the tables are instantly turned. He’s fucked.
Don’t get me wrong, I lovE TZ episodes very deeply. But I do derive actual enjoyment out of finding these types of things. So it’s just part of my process of enjoying a show.
I’m glad you expanded this topic. We were discussing this briefly in another thread.
I simply can’t believe the easy mistakes made on basic science stuff.
It’s not like the solar system was unknown in 1959-64. Your average kid who was interested in space (and there were very many due to the budding space race) knew that 11 million miles (per OP’s example) was barely a step away.
Didn't the sun one end with the woman being in a delirious State because she was dying of a fever in a frozen hell scape because in "reality" the earth was moving away from the sun and getting too cold to support human life?
Spoiler warning for midnight sun…
In third from sun it’s quite possible in the twilight zone there is an undiscovered planet closer than mars with human life, the scale is a small detail anyway. In Midnight sun maybe there’s another explanation for why there is no night not just how close the sun is. Also it cannon that it’s a dream so it doesn’t have to make complete logical sense.
I agree with I shot an arrow though. On first watch I thought it was clever. But after thinking about it I thought, this doesn’t really make any sense that they won’t assume they had landed back on earth. That one is too illogical for me.
Remember, you’re in the Twilight Zone…not everything should be as it is. The sign post is ahead….
It's a 60s era TV show written by people who were not astrophysicists. Why would you expect them to get everything right? Suspend your disbelief and enjoy the story.
This is important to remember. People would be able to just Google facts after the episode and know it didn't make sense. Unless someone was really into space and read a lot of books about it, I don't think the general public would really consider either of these things for those episodes. Space travel was very new.
*It’s not pronounced Robutt, you assholes!* /s
😁
I love saying it that way 🤭
It’s awesome. They make the word silly, adorable, and sophisticated all at the same time.
Agreed. This is a fun post—no ill will intended—but it also reads like someone saying, “why didn’t they quickly google that?”
That’s the story of each show You don’t have think Henry Bemis will be dead in a week from radiation? Now Aunt Tees place was real 😎
Came here to say that about Bemis.
“Arrow” came about when a woman approached Rod at a party and suggested that premise for an episode. He paid her for the idea and got to work on it. He never took suggestions from the public again. Presumably actual scientists gave him hell over it and that’s why.
Imagine Hollywood (Or any capitalist enterprise) voluntarily paying someone for their ideas, rather than stiffing them. Conversely, if they are paid, they have to sign a contract agreeing to say their ideas, work, genius, actually was the work of someone else (Drake, Elon.)
This discussion reminds me why I love TZ so much and why I feel it is so sorely missed. People mistakenly think of TZ as a sci-fi anthology series - when even Rod Serling himself acknowledged that he just used that frame to get difficult social commentary past the censors. The beauty of TZ is precisely that it doesn’t concern itself with actual scientific facts, plausibility etc. It’s all about the bigger moral issue (in most cases… not all). I find very few, if any, modern series that tackle moral commentary the way TZ did. One of the problems with our culture today is that people Google whether 11 million miles is a plausible distance from the sun for the storyline to be accurate, rather than have a conversation about the broader issue of the civilization we have created here on earth - and whether it’s worth saving.
That's why I used the term "fridge logic" in the title. It doesn't mean that the show is bad when it's unrealistic, but that the parts of it that are good (the philosophy and social commentary) is so good that you don't even realize how unrealistic it until you've watched it many times over.
This is why it is my fave show ever
I remember Serling saying something about "And When The Sky Was Opened". I paraphrase it as "Remember, we and the general public had no real idea WHAT would happen if a man went into space. In a sense, anything was possible". It's best to treat such stories as parables in a way.
I think a lot of episodes have this characteristic. While, in some instances, that may be due to a misunderstanding about the science involved, I think in a lot of cases, like The Midnight Sun, it was just a case of "not letting the facts get in the way of a good story". I think more often we see a lack of concern about the story's internal logic, but, again, that's for the same reason. There's a story they want to tell, and they have only a limited time in which to tell it. The episodes demand a certain suspension of disbelief, which I'm happy to give them. (Maybe I'm just saying that because The Midnight Sun is one of my favorites, haha!) That said ... Henry Bemis (Time Enough at Last) will definitely die of radiation poisoning within a couple of weeks. After struggling for so many years to recapture The Howling Man, would David Ellington really have left a stranger in a position to make the same mistake he did? Hector B. Poole (Penny for Your Thoughts) would have been inundated with all the incoherent thoughts of the people around him and wouldn't have been able to make sense of any of it. A bomb shelter that can be broken into by panicked neighbors probably wouldn't have been much defense against fallout (The Shelter). IIRC, Anthony Fremont (It's a Good Life) can kind of read people's minds or at least sense their emotions. Surely, he would have sensed how much everyone wanted him dead. (Maybe he did and was just toying with everyone, but the episode doesn't make that clear.) A few years ago, I would have said that the prospect of an actual Nazi gaining a foothold in American politics (He's Alive) was straining credulity, but I guess that's one I've got to give them.
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction
I agree with a lot of your observations, but for some of these I have thought about the episode and have some headcanon explanation: Contrary to popular belief, I don't think telepathy necessarily has to hear everyone's thoughts all the time (as if everyone is always "broadcasting" and telepaths are always "receiving"). Since telepathy doesn't exist, there are different ways it can be interpreted. For example, there could be only certain kinds of thoughts that get "broadcasted" akin to an FTP or email. Anthony can read thoughts of people around him, but there's a big point made that everyone constantly thinks happy thoughts to avoid their hatred of being detected. The only exception is when one person contemplated killing Anthony while he was distracted turning another man into a jack-in-the-box. The American Nazi Party definitely existed in the 1960s and I feel like someone with Hitler's charisma would be moderately successful, just not on a national level. There are recent movies that spawn from this same concept.
Anthony could sense their emotions, but they were constantly on guard and saying to themselves and thinking “Anthony did a good thing” over and over so he is content hearing that much.
The thing that bugs me about the “think happy thoughts” is that - you cannot truly betray your own line of thought. If you’re scared/angry/frustrated, you can’t just suddenly actually believe happy things and the hatred disappears. So Anthony should be able to sense very easily that you’re just covering (poorly) your hatred with “boy it sure is hot as shit hell today…and that’s a good thing!! A real good thing!”
Eh that's why there were only a couple of people left.
I'm wondering if it's just because he doesn't know any better. People have treated him that way his whole life, he's never had a normal human interaction or even read a normal unobscured human thought really, so I figure just he doesn't really pick up on the ambient fear and hatred unless you stop trying to cover it, like birthday guy.
“The Jeopardy Room” and the timing of that final phone call. I mean, HOW???
That bugged me about “The Midnight Sun” until the twist ending, when it made a lot more sense … probably still not on an astrophysics level, but more sense than everywhere on earth being in eternal daylight
Hypothetically if Earth was far enough away then the Sun would appear dimmer to the point it might look like night, so it's more forgivable
Well, these stories do happen in the dimension of imagination
There’s a parallel, (not the episode, lol) between “Arrow” and “Death Ship” in so far as people who are scared and disoriented have a tendency to let their fears and confusion rule their thought processes. It’s one of the elemental things about the show. The examination of human nature in circumstances both banal and extraordinary. Just relax and vibe to it, baby!
You're a real bummer, man. Suspend disbelief
No
The viewing public and for that matter most writers in 1959 were largely ignorant of how shall I put it Science Matters. A lot of people felt that Venus and Mars were probably livable. Why couldn't there be asteroids that were livable also? Further the stories were intended to be improbable. The whole idea was what happens when a regular person gets thrown in completely impossible situation. You're the only pretty person in a world of ugly people. You meet the ghost of Abraham Lincoln marching home from the end of the Civil War. But most of these problems could have been solved by a little bit more exposition. This planet wasn't 11 million miles away it was 11 light years away. This rocket has a experimental hyperspace Drive. This is a parallel world split off from our own at some point. Rod Serling basically made that deal of suspension of disbelief with his audience every week. What if you woke up hungover only to find that you've been captured by Giants? Never mind how could there be Giants or why would they speak English. How would you feel how would you act if you were suddenly inexplicably thrust into that. The movie Groundhog Day follows the same format. We're never told what caused the time Loop. No explanation whatsoever. Just that it provides an opportunity for Bill to grow. They could in each episode spend a minute or two adding in the necessary exposition to make the science work if you will. But would it actually improve the entertainment value? Or would it in fact disturb the tempo of the story. In the end you choose to go with it or you don't. The devil can be caught by monks and held imprisoned. Will Robinson kidnaps a town and torments them with unexplained psionic powers. You just accept it or you don't. Personally I have to say that almost every single episode I'm more than willing to accept what Rod is selling.
What bugs me about “person or persons unknown” is that Dave Gurney wakes up one day and his wife doesn’t know who he is and nobody else ever heard of him either, he goes to work and nobody at work never heard of him either, then he sees a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist tells him that there is no David Gurney, that he doesn’t exist and his name isn’t in the phone book or anything, then Dave asks the psychiatrist, “if I’m not Dave Gurney then who am I?” Then the psychiatrist says to him, “that’s what we’re gonna try to find out”. What bugs me is that nobody ever asks why does he know his wife’s name and he knows everyone’s name at work and he also knows the bartender’s name and he calls his mother up on the phone and she doesn’t know him either but how did he know her phone number if Dave Gurney doesn’t exist?
It was. . . A fantasy series. The science fiction aspects of the show obviously leaned much more heavily towards the fiction rather than the science. It’s no less logical than most sci-fi stuff you can watch today. Ever heard Ben affleck’s commentary on the movie Armageddon?
I was just talking on another thread about how it hit me one day (during the pandemic) that the moral logic for “Time Enough At Last,” seems off to me. How does someone who was mistreated by the world for wanting to read deserve that fate?
That is a good point. The moral of the story is supposed to be that "no man is an island" because although he wants to be left alone, he cannot survive on his own for long. They needed to show a plausible reason why he wanted to be alone, but I can see the argument that they pushed a bit much in that direction.
Yeah, like some of the others, I was going to mention Henry Bemis but the whole series kind of hinges on the bizarre and suspension of belief/logic as we know it. To me most of the episodes are social metaphors using surreal plotlines to get a real message across, so if we pick them apart too much as being illogical, it takes a lot of the fun away. I actually do have a real question though--the Aunt Tee thing with the old lady in the pool. I think I took it as the kids ended up drowning because the parents were materialistic and self-absorbed, but it was definitely one of the scariest episodes to me.
The Hunt - this one is about the old man and his dog who die, and his dog is refused entry into the first gate, but the second gate lets them both in: what if the second gate was “the bad place”? The Obsolete Man - a bomb? Really? They gave him an explosive device? The Little People - astronauts land on a plant with a tiny civilization, and one of the astronauts proclaims himself king, and the tiny aliens build a life size statue of him. Their city was about 6 feet across, and their buildings were centimeters high, how could they build a 6 foot statue so quickly? It would be like humans building a statue 50 miles high in a week.
The moral of the story is that only the devil wouldn't like dogs
The obsolete man one cracks me up because, ultimately the “leader guy” was done in by a simple ordinary household bathroom style door lock! Lol. A simple hardware store Schlage brand door lock. Not even a deadbolt. And it’s hilarious the scene where he’s in the apartment with Mr Wordsworth, telling this hoity supreme speech, then turns to leave. Twists the handle and it’s locked. And the tables are instantly turned. He’s fucked. Don’t get me wrong, I lovE TZ episodes very deeply. But I do derive actual enjoyment out of finding these types of things. So it’s just part of my process of enjoying a show.
Repeat to yourself “It’s just a show — I should really just relax.”
Did you know that coyotes can run much faster than roadrunners?
Beep-beep!
egghead
I’m glad you expanded this topic. We were discussing this briefly in another thread. I simply can’t believe the easy mistakes made on basic science stuff. It’s not like the solar system was unknown in 1959-64. Your average kid who was interested in space (and there were very many due to the budding space race) knew that 11 million miles (per OP’s example) was barely a step away.
Didn't the sun one end with the woman being in a delirious State because she was dying of a fever in a frozen hell scape because in "reality" the earth was moving away from the sun and getting too cold to support human life?
Spoiler warning for midnight sun… In third from sun it’s quite possible in the twilight zone there is an undiscovered planet closer than mars with human life, the scale is a small detail anyway. In Midnight sun maybe there’s another explanation for why there is no night not just how close the sun is. Also it cannon that it’s a dream so it doesn’t have to make complete logical sense. I agree with I shot an arrow though. On first watch I thought it was clever. But after thinking about it I thought, this doesn’t really make any sense that they won’t assume they had landed back on earth. That one is too illogical for me.
Ya, you seem fun