User reviews

Burgess Meredith's third outing in The Twilight Zone is a much more sober affair than his previous appearances (Time Enough At Last, Mr. Dingle, The Strong): it's a preachy political parable that takes place in a futuristic totalitarian state that makes the Third Reich seem like a very reasonable bunch by comparison, but it could just as easily be a Communist regime (two sides of the same coin). Rod Serling uses the episode to point out the glaringly obvious: that any kind of dictatorship which robs an individual of their worth, suppresses freedom of thought/speech, and declares people obsolete is a bad, bad thing. You don't say!

It's a wordy piece that pummels the point home, as librarian Romney Wordsworth (Meredith) turns the tables on the Chancellor (Fritz Weaver) who condemns him to death, thus proving that, in the eyes of God, all men are equal. Performances are fine, with Meredith showing that he can play it straight when necessary, and the expressionist set design is cool, but the episode is way too lugubrious and heavy-handed for my liking: we get it, Rod... dictatorships suck, but while it's certainly a good idea to be reminded of this from time to time, it could definitely be handled with a tad more subtlety.