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The Unofficial Twilight Zone Pilot That Helped Launch Rod Serling's Classic Anthology
While not officially canon, "The Time Element" laid down quite The Twilight Zone blueprint.
On the evening of October 2, 1959, TV history was made as the world entered the fifth dimension via the premiere of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone (classic episodes air regularly on SYFY). The now-iconic anthology series kicked off with a tale entitled "Where is Everybody?", which starred Earl Holliman as a wandering amnesiac who slowly loses his mind after entering a town devoid of human life.
Harvey Karman, a critic for The Hollywood Reporter at the time, praised Holliman's performance, as well as the pilot's effective use of style and suspense. His review concluded: "When word gets around, Twilight should give the competition a run for their ratings."
And he was right. Once the ball got rolling on Twilight Zone, it didn't stop until 1964 — by which time the show had aired a total of 156 episodes across five seasons. What you might not know, however, is that Serling's trailblazing magnum opus would not have been possible without the success of an unofficial pilot that convinced CBS to green light the series in the first place.
How The Twilight Zone was made possible by unofficial pilot episode, "The Time Element"
That informal impetus for the network to dabble in realms beyond the ordinary was "The Time Element," an hour-long piece for Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, a CBS-aired anthology program produced by small screen icons Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. Adapted from a script Serling wrote shortly after graduating from Antioch College, the hour-long story centers around the character of Peter Jenson (William Bendix), a nervous man who travels back in time to December 6, 1941 (a day before the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor) every time he falls asleep.
Despite his best efforts to warn the government about the impending barrage on Hawaii, Jenson is written off as a raving lunatic and ends up gunned down by Japanese warplanes before waking up. Unsure of whether it's simply a recurring nightmare or true temporal displacement, he seeks out the advice of a sympathetic therapist, Dr. Gillespie (Martin Balsam).
While not officially part of The Twilight Zone canon, "The Time Element" featured numerous storytelling elements Serling would ultimately incorporate into his beloved TV show: the metaphysical implications of time travel (as explored in "Back There" and "Execution"), the mysterious power of the unconscious mind (à la "Perchance to Dream" and "Shadow Play"), the untold machinations of unknown forces (think "And When the Sky Was Opened" and "Person or Persons Unknown"), and, of course, a twist ending (a prelude to pretty much every TZ episode ever produced).
In addition, several core cast members from "The Time Element" — particularly Balsam, Bartlett Robinson, and Don Keefer — ended up as guest stars on the Twilight Zone in "The New Exhibit" (Season 4), "Back There" (Season 2), and "It's a Good Life" (Season 3), respectively.
Per Marc Scott Zicree's The Twilight Zone Companion, Serling's jaunt back in time "received more mail than any other episode of Desilu Playhouse that year" after it aired on November 24, 1958. CBS, which initially shelved the teleplay, realized Serling's potential and handed down a pilot order for The Twilight Zone. The rest, as they say, is history.
"He wrote four pilots for Twilight Zone before one of them got the series sold," Zicree tells SYFY WIRE over Zoom. "And he was determined to get that show made, he was not going to take no for an answer. Thank God for all of us, because this is the great, great gift he gave us."
Classic episodes of The Twilight Zone air regularly on SYFY. Click here for complete scheduling info!
