Twilight Zone: Season 1, Episode 11 And When the Sky Was Opened
(11 Dec. 1959)
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Twilight Zone: Season 1, Episode 11 And When the Sky Was Opened
(11 Dec. 1959)
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| Watch Episode 0Share... |
| Episode complete credited cast: | |||
| Rod Taylor | ... |
Lieutenant Colonel Clegg Forbes
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| Jim Hutton | ... |
Major William Gart
(as James Hutton)
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Charles Aidman | ... |
Colonel Ed Harrington
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Maxine Cooper | ... |
Amy
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Paul Bryar | ... |
Bartender
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Sue Randall | ... |
Nurse
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Joe Bassett | ... |
Medical Officer
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Three U.S. astronauts blast off from Earth on an initial test flight in an experimental rocket-ship, but during the flight into space the ship disappears from radar, then reappears. On return, the rocket-ship is hangared and put under a tarp, pending an investigation. One crewman is hospitalized for a leg broken on landing, and is visited by the other two. Next the pair go for a drink, and then one crewman phones his parents from a bar phone-booth - but they say they have no son! The astronaut immediately disappears, and no one in the bar remembers him, except the other astronaut in the bar, the Captain. Written by David Stevens
This is a really wonderful episode. Rod Taylor has supposedly returned from a space trip with two of his fellow astronauts. Their ship has crashed. The story begins as he visits Jim Hutton in the hospital. He is beside himself because it seems that there was a third member of the team who, according to him, has disappeared. As a matter of fact, it's as if he never existed. We then go to flashback and are treated to an eerie sense that not only do these men disappear; then sense their own passage to nothingness. It is never explained to us, but we are quickly pulled into the psyches of the two remaining men. They try to figure out their sense of being and aren't able to do so. This is what The Twilight Zone was all about. It feeds us an enigma and then lets us try to put it all together. One can wax philosophical, but somehow these men disappear and we don't know why.