The 25 Best Twilight Zone Episodes...#4 - "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"

It has been recited over and over that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In entertainment circles, adulation and respect often takes the form of an "homage,"a reference, a nod, a mention. These are the ultimate forms of respect for a writer, performer, director, et al and a revealing indication of quality.

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet is one of the special Twilight Zone episodes, often referred to in popular culture, occasionally alluded to in other television programs and films, and many times saluted by air travelers particularly at their first sight of the wing from their passenger seat. It was selected as one of the four segments re-imagined for Twilight Zone: The Movie in 1983 with John Lithgow reprising the William Shatner role. Lithgow also referenced it in a scene with Shatner on his television series Third Rock from the Sun. It's been parodied on The Simpsons and in Madagascar 2. (You may recall in the very first article of this series a reference to the original Madagascar film in which they honor the classic Twilight Zone episode To Serve Man with their own To Serve Lemurs...someone connected to Madagascar likes The Twilight Zone.) These represent but a few of the bows extended to this extraordinary episode.

"Portrait of a frightened man: Mr. Robert Wilson, thirty-seven, husband, father, and salesman on sick leave," begins Serling. "Mr. Wilson has just been discharged from a sanitarium where he spent the last six months recovering from a nervous breakdown, the onset of which took place on an evening not dissimilar to this one, on an airliner very much like the one in which Mr. Wilson is about to be flown home - the difference being that, on that evening half a year ago, Mr. Wilson's flight was terminated by the onslaught of his mental breakdown. Tonight, he's traveling all the way to his appointed destination, which, contrary to Mr. Wilson's plan, happens to be in the darkest corner of the Twilight Zone."

Authored by Richard Matheson and featuring a classic performance by the future Captain Kirk, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet is #4 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 turned 50 this year, and to commemorate Rod Serling's masterpiece, the 25 best episodes are being chronicled here

Shatner is priceless as Robert Wilson, particularly with his patented look of sudden shock he uses to such great effect. You would imagine that the last thing Wilson wanted or expected to see, as a man on a get-well mission, was a gremlin on the wing right outside his window. The magnificence of the teleplay as it unfolds is the audience's role and participation as fellow traveler. You're never quite sure whether the gremlin is real and you're seeing it just as Wilson is seeing it, or if the grotesque being tampering with the engine is a figment of an already compromised mind and the previously confirmed "insanity" of the passenger.

While Wilson's frayed nerves gives him cause for concern about his supposed recovery, Shatner's portrayal of him influences the viewer to believe this rather inconceivable situation...sort of. Ultimately, your confidence in his renewed state of mind is rewarded at episode's conclusion, but it is touch-and-go for a vast majority of the half-hour. After all, every time Wilson wants to call attention to the gremlin, it conveniently disappears...not reassuring for the former mental patient or anyone wanting to believe in him.

Several highlight moments include Wilson's lifting of the window shade to reveal the full-faced gremlin inches away from him separated only by a pane of glass. The sheer shock effect of this scene is rather unlike Twilight Zone, and more reminiscent of the horror movie genre, but it is used here strategically to enhance the story rather than simply elicit screams. There is an exceptional scene which occurs after Wilson is embarrassed by a brief patronizing visit by the aircraft's captain. It is here he finally decides that warning others is not working, and worse, diminishing his credibility as a rational whistle-blower. Now it's just he and the gremlin. He devises the only plot that would save the airliner from engine-tampered doom and quietly implements it...quietly, that is, until he opens the emergency window, de-pressurizes the cabin, and employs the handgun he lifted from a fellow passenger.

Once aground, we are treated to another moment rarely featured in Twilight Zone episodes...the breaking of the fourth wall. It was unusual in dramatic television at the time, but somewhat common in comedies, undertaken with great accomplishment by George Burns in Burns & Allen, for example. Serling, of course, spoke to the audience twice in every broadcast, but his role was outside the fabric of the story. Shatner, while lying on the stretcher, informs us directly he is no longer afflicted by his former condition as we are visually escorted to the tampered engine.

"The flight of Mr. Robert Wilson has ended now, a flight not only from point A to point B, but also from the fear of recurring mental breakdown," concludes Serling. Mr. Wilson has that fear no longer, though, for the moment, he is, as he said, alone in this assurance. Happily, his conviction will not remain isolated too much longer, for happily, tangible manifestation is very often left as evidence of trespass, even from so intangible a quarter as the Twilight Zone."