The 25 Best Twilight Zone Episodes...#12 - "Judgment Night"

The 50th anniversary year of "The Twilight Zone" continues on, with October 2 the milestone date of the first episode in 1959, "Where is Everybody?" starring Earl Holliman. We move forward with this commemoration of Rod Serling's seminal television anthology series, detailing the 25 best Twilight Zone episodes using writing, performance, and compelling subject matter as criteria. The entry that stands at number 12 on this impressive list is the story of the fictional Carl Lanser, a German U-boat commander who somehow finds himself on board the British freighter, the S.S. Queen of Glasgow, in 1942 at the height of World War II. He is a combination of disoriented, confused, agitated, anxious, and downright petrified by whatever lies ahead, though he cannot identify the fear, only suffer from it.As Mr. Serling indicates: "Her name is the S.S. Queen of Glasgow. Her registry: British. Gross tonnage: Five thousand. Age: Indeterminate. At this moment she's one day out of Liverpool, her destination New York. Duly recorded on this ship's log is the sailing time, course to destination, weather conditions, temperature, longitude and latitude. But what is never recorded in a log is the fear that washes over a deck like fog and ocean spray. Fear like the throbbing strokes of engine pistons, each like a heartbeat, parceling out every hour into breathless minutes of watching, waiting and dreading. For the year is 1942, and this particular ship has lost its convoy. It travels alone like an aged blind thing groping through the unfriendly dark, stalked by unseen periscopes of steel killers. Yes, the Queen of Glasgow is a frightened ship, and she carries with her a premonition of death."This ominous characterization alone is enough to qualify "Judgment Night" as one of Twilight Zone's best in the writing category, and it joins the equally menacing mood set by score and staging to create an environment of dread. The setting is also impactful in another tangible manner. There is the vast isolation of the sea that the viewer is compelled to contemplate here. One senses the enveloping fog, leaving only the sound of the ocean, the stark conversation from the very few on board, the dark of the night, and the helplessness engendered by their sitting-duck position. The latter is enhanced by the need to keep lights muted so as not to invite attention from enemy submarines that may or may not be lurking nearby.Played by Nehemiah Persoff, a long-time Hollywood character actor, the irritable Lanser departs the dining quarters for his cabin, and his memory is prodded by the officer's hat stashed in his suitcase. Could he really be a German officer? If so, why is he aboard a British vessel? From that point forward, the sensation that something is terribly amiss heightens. The ship's engine breaks down, and now his psyche points toward doom as he watches the clock count down toward 1:15 am and the yet undetermined disaster...undetermined, yet seeming more and more like a U-boat attack. He describes to Miss Stanley (Deirdre Downs) a terrible sense, beyond déjà vu, that he'd been there before and experienced this same feeling. And then, spotlights adorn the deck. His anxieties and fears realized, he nervously dons the binoculars to note that it is indeed a German U-boat ready to fire and sink the Queen Glasgow...and he is at the helm!We are presented with a post-attack scene in which the German officer Lanser, content with this notch in his belt, is confronted by his young, troubled second-in-command who laments the loss of civilian life on the defenseless freighter and the lack of a warning that might have, saved innocent people. His moral indignation leads him to suggest they may be doomed forever for their actions...forced, in the eyes of God, to relive this injustice every day for eternity. Ultimately, of course, it is exactly the course fate has charted for Carl Lanser, as we next see him on the deck awaiting the same chain of events leading to the attack. Like "Deaths-Head Revisited," the episode that preceded "Judgment Night" in this top 25 at number 13, Serling offers justice for those who conducted themselves inhumanely during World War II. Also, one is reminded of other Twilight Zone episodes in which reliving a nightmare is the theme. "Shadow Play," number 15, comes to immediate mind.Serling concludes: "The S.S. Queen of Glasgow, heading for New York, and the time is 1942. For one man, it is always 1942, and this man will ride the ghost of that ship every night for eternity. This is what is meant by paying the fiddler. This is the comeuppance awaiting every man when the ledger of his life is opened and examined, the tally made, and then the reward or the penalty paid. And in the case of Carl Lanser, former Kapitan Lieutenant, Navy of the Third Reich, this is the penalty. This is the justice meted out. This is judgment night in the Twilight Zone."This survey is based on an unscientific poll of 250 people in the New York metropolitan area. Survey participants included college students at Ramapo University in New Jersey and Fordham University in New York, corporate professionals from Westchester, Bergen, Putnam and Orange Counties, and others.