The 25 Best Twilight Zone Episodes...#24 - "Third from the Sun"

Rod Serling adapted Third From the Sun from a short story written by frequent Twilight Zone contributor, Richard Matheson, who brilliantly characterized doomsday scenarios in his multi-layered work. Matheson, after all, was the author of I Am Legend, which has been filmed several times, as The Last Man on Earth in 1964, The Omega Man in 1971, and most recently as I Am Legend in 2007 with Will Smith in the starring role.

There are many similar story lines in Twilight Zone episodes, and, generally, in many television anthology series, feature films, and literary works of the era. Nuclear war was a constant threat, hovering over everyday life like the black cloud a push of the red button would create. The lurking peril is smartly underscored in Serling's opening thoughts: "Quitting time at the plant. Time for supper now. Time for families. Time for a cool drink on a porch. Time for the quiet rustle of leaf-laden trees that screen out the moon. And underneath it all, behind the eyes of the men, hanging invisible over the summer night, is a horror without words. For this is the stillness before storm. This is the eve of the end."

As with any life-menacing issue, either panic or clear-headed critical thinking might ensue. In Third From the Sun, it's the latter in the midst of airtight, palpable tension that endures throughout the entire half-hour. The episode is number 24 on this "best of" list, the result of an unscientific poll of 250 people in the New York metropolitan area who were asked to rank their favorite Twilight Zone episodes based on writing, performance, and compelling subject matter. The historic television series turns 50 this year, and to commemorate Rod Serling's masterpiece, the 25 best episodes will be chronicled here.

The episode is dominated by the acting of Fritz Weaver, who also appears in another classic Twilight Zone, The Obsolete Man, and Joe Maross, who graced Serling's Twilight Zone TV stage a second time in The Little People. They are poised to get out of Dodge, as it were, because they are privy, by virtue of their work at the nuclear plant, to a pending holocaust. Thirty million casualties, we are told. Their goal is to hijack the experimental spaceship they helped design, and spirit away from the madness to a world not unlike their own. They encounter government intervention along the way, but eventually succeed in lifting off.

Serling's script and the actors' performances capture magnificently the sense of dread in a world that could be reduced to rubble at any moment, coupled with the sense of the characters' isolation as they deserted everything and everyone they loved to escape. The irony, of course, is their destination, which is Earth.

Mr. Serling helps deftly provide the closing chill: "Behind a tiny ship heading into space is a doomed planet on the verge of suicide. Ahead lies a place called Earth, the third planet from the sun. And for William Sturka and the men and women with him, it's the eve of the beginning in the Twilight Zone."