"The Twilight Zone" Room 2426 (TV Episode 1989) Poster

(TV Series)

(1989)

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7/10
You Gotta Believe!
sol121824 September 2010
Warning: Spoilers
***SPOILERS*** in the not so distance future in an un-named totalitarian controlled nation scientist Martin Decker, Dean Stockwell, is being tortured both mentally and psychically by this Dr. Megele like psycho Dr. Ostroff, Peter Boretski, who looks a lot like TV talk show host Larry King without his famous red spenders. What Dr. Ostroff wants from Martin is where he hid the notebooks on his invention of a secret pest control formula. Martin knows that if just altered a bit the formula can be used to wipe out millions of human beings in any future wars that those tyrants running the country instigate!

It's when Martin get a new cell-mate anti-government revolutionary Joseph, Brent Carves, that he's convinced by him, after many unsuccessful attempts, that he in fact can teleport himself out of his cell and into the free world only by willing it! It takes a while but after a few tries both Martin & Joseph do in fact escape in teleporting themselves out of prison and ending up in a safe house where they can contact Joseph's fellow revolutionaries and help overthrow the government!

***MAJOR SPOILER ALERT*** In his desperate attempt to escape Martin didn't realize that he was being tricked by Joseph, who was actually working with Dr. Ostroff, into telling him where the secret notes on his nerve gas was hidden. What both Joeph & Dr.Ostroff didn't quite realize was that their trying to trick Martin into telling them where the notes were they in fact gave Martin the idea as well as will power to escape his captors! In the end Martin Decker now a free man and getting his hands on the secret notes of the WMD, weapon of mass destruction, that he invented ends up burning them where they'll be in no danger of being used by those who so brutally abused him!

P.S The secret nerve gas that Martin invented was a lot like the chemical weapon invented by Nazi Germany just before the start of WWII called Sarin. Sarin was 100 times more deadly then any other poison gas around at that time and the Germans produced more then ten tons of it during the war. Yet it was so lethal and destructive that even Adolph Hitler forbid its use, that may well have won him the war, against the allies even when his beloved Nazi Germany, as well as himself, was on the brink of total destruction in the waining years of WWII.
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7/10
Room 2426
Scarecrow-8821 August 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Dean Stockwell stars as a scientist who has a notebook with a formula that could provide the government with a secret weapon which could kill millions. Martin Decker (Stockwell) is buried away in a rat'n'roach infested prison, everyday questioned, tortured through the use of a device which sends electrodes into his brain, and injected with truth serum just so the evil Dr. Olstroff (Peter Boretski) can gain access to his secret notebook containing the formula his government so anxiously covets. A new cellmate is tossed in the clink with Decker, Josef (Brent Carver), who claims he can teleport himself anywhere through thought and total belief. Will Decker have the faith to believe what seems like utter foolishness, the ravings of a possible loon? Well in "Room 2426", Martin might just become desperate enough to listen.. Thanks to the distressing environment of Decker's predicament, "Room 2426" leaves quite an impression as our hero seems destined to suffer agonizingly for the concealment of a formula which carries the threat of genocide if his government so wishes to use such a weapon, contained in written word in a notebook carrying chemical equations. Stockwell's character certainly endures his share of torture, latched to a chair as Olstroff, conveyed in up-close facial shots and shadowed from afar as if he were a mental patient's worse nightmare made flesh, performs procedures that force even the most strong-willed to buckle under the pressure. It is to Decker's credit that he can indeed tolerate a substantial amount of pain and agony because he knows what the formula could cause if fallen into the wrong hands. The teleportation technique is another device perfectly suited for The Twilight Zone to tell a story; whether this is real or imagined, the teleportation provides a possible rescue for Decker and that is all a viewer can really hope for considering what he must go through. The presentation of Decker's cell and the torture room is quite disturbing.
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Cautionary tale, for then and now
hawked-off21 August 2015
It is worth mentioning that the essence of this short episode takes its soul from Orwell's 1984 (published in 1949). It is a cautionary tale about individual freedom vs State control, in which State control seems to be winning the struggle hands-down. The episode was first aired in 1989, a time in (American) history when many "veterans" of the cultural revolutions of the 1960s (including this reviewer) were beginning to sense that their society was becoming more rigid and controlling, both at government levels and in society itself, with the "creep" of dehumanising technology that we once called "automation". In short, individuality and diversity seemed diminished and the State -- and huge corporations -- seemed to be taking over. Even so, it is easy to imagine the great unwashed masses (to coin a phrase!) viewing an allegory like this and easily convincing themselves that this "could never happen here". (Perhaps, for that very reason, it could happen anywhere.) Fast forward a full generation. Viewing the episode 26 years later, this story's depiction of "techniques" of State/social control presents chilling parallels to today's reality. For example, brutality by prison guards against inmates considered to be subhuman (like many of today's sex offenders), or the use of torture to force disclosure of information the State wants (like the water-boarding of today's terrorist suspects). There is no excuse for sex offenders, terrorists, nor other true "bad guys", but it is always helpful to have dramatic/artistic warnings like this episode to remind us that today's scientists, or social activists, or even artists could become tomorrow's "bad guys".
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8/10
Mind Over Matter
Hitchcoc4 July 2017
In some sort of totalitarian state, Dean Stockwell has developed scientific methods that could lead to the deaths of millions. He is being held in a prison-like facility where he is tortured daily to give up his notebooks, which lie hidden somewhere. He has determined that if he has to die with his secret, so be it. Another man shares his cell and claims to be able to transport himself out of the cell. Stockwell's character doesn't believe it's possible. Both of them are beaten badly it would seem. These people are pure evil and this is an interesting, though far fetched, episode.
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4/10
Lame and far out episode.
blanbrn15 August 2019
This episode from season 3 of "The Twilight Zone" was just so lame, far out and fetched and different that it did not interest me. Dean Stockwell is Martin a bio like scientist who's imprisoned by the state in room 2426 as his acts of secrets have cause him to be put away it's like he's a danger to mankind! As his cell mate sees the revealing of a weapon building formula the episode twist as like new life is abound for both away from the state. Overall lame and weak episode of the series maybe one of the worst.
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