As always, this episode was highly topical at the time, having obviously been heavily influenced by Castro's rise to power. The fake beards were not the best prosthetics that man has ever created, as other people have mentioned, true. However, they were far and above better than the prosthetics seen in many other episodes of this series, or even many other series at the time.
There certainly are touches of that age-old concept of "power corrupting", and as we view it now, to many it may indeed seem quite clichéd. These people fail to note one major thing, however; while such stories have been seen by us, now, in the 2010's time and time again, the Twilight Zone was among the first of its kind. At the time it was produced, it was truly a revolutionary program in so many ways, not least of which was its ability to flaunt sponsor censorship in order to put forth stories that were in many ways quite controversial. This story (and others from the show) that seems so very cliché by current standards was something very new to television at the time.
Nor is that the only (or even primary) theme of the episode. Indeed, it has always seemed to me that the primary theme was more a point that those take power by force and violence needs must forever live in fear of being victims of the same, as evidenced by Clemente's growing paranoia and ultimate fate.
It is true that Castro lived to a ripe old age, despite having risen from violence. But the fact is that he acted in a manner suggesting he knew full well that he could meet the same fate; a fear of violent revolution was what compelled him to imprison so many political opponents and clamp down so hard on the media. Serling may not have guessed his fate correctly, but he was seemingly not so very far off on the man's state of mind, or that of many other despots over the years.
There certainly are touches of that age-old concept of "power corrupting", and as we view it now, to many it may indeed seem quite clichéd. These people fail to note one major thing, however; while such stories have been seen by us, now, in the 2010's time and time again, the Twilight Zone was among the first of its kind. At the time it was produced, it was truly a revolutionary program in so many ways, not least of which was its ability to flaunt sponsor censorship in order to put forth stories that were in many ways quite controversial. This story (and others from the show) that seems so very cliché by current standards was something very new to television at the time.
Nor is that the only (or even primary) theme of the episode. Indeed, it has always seemed to me that the primary theme was more a point that those take power by force and violence needs must forever live in fear of being victims of the same, as evidenced by Clemente's growing paranoia and ultimate fate.
It is true that Castro lived to a ripe old age, despite having risen from violence. But the fact is that he acted in a manner suggesting he knew full well that he could meet the same fate; a fear of violent revolution was what compelled him to imprison so many political opponents and clamp down so hard on the media. Serling may not have guessed his fate correctly, but he was seemingly not so very far off on the man's state of mind, or that of many other despots over the years.