The Big Whatsit

To celebrate one of the very best television shows in history (and because I’m off work this week), TBW presents a week of articles looking back over my personal favourite episodes from The Twilight Zone. These aren’t necessarily the ten best stories, more those that have gripped me the strongest - I’m sure your own top ten will be very different. Please feel free to comment and make your recommendation.

Though many of you will have seen these episodes previously, possibly on a number of occasions, I am aware there are those who haven’t, and I have structured these pieces with a short, spoiler-free synopsis at the start to whet your whistle. Afterwards, I go into a little more detail about the episode, discussing nuances of the plot that will almost certainly and unapologetically give away its intricacies - you have been warned! In any event, the Zone is available on DVD, and it’s easy enough to discover episodes on the Internet, where Google is always your friend.

So without further ado, submitted for your approval…

9. Nick of Time (Season 2, 1960)

‘The hand belongs to Mr. Don S. Carter, male member of a honeymoon team en route across the Ohio countryside to New York City. In one moment, they will be subjected to a gift most humans never receive in a lifetime. For one penny, they will be able to look into the future. The time is now, the place is a little diner in Ridgeview, Ohio, and what this young couple doesn’t realize is that this town happens to lie on the outskirts of the Twilight Zone.‘

Synopsis
A pair of newlyweds on their way to New York have to stop in a sleepy Ohio town when their car breaks down. As they wait for it to be repaired, they enter a diner and come across a ‘Mystic Seer’ napkin holder, which uncannily seems to be able to predict their future correctly. Does it? Or rather is it trapping the couple into relying on its enigmatic pronouncements?

Review
William Alan Shatner might be seen as a bit of a joke these days, a camp performer with great comic timing and clipped readings of dialogue, which to his credit he has played up to in his recent roles. His ancient turns in the likes of The Twilight Zone, however, show us a different Shatner entirely. Just like his landmark starring performance in Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, he carries this slight tale on his broad shoulders, putting in a fine piece of acting as a seemingly level-headed man whose veneer cracks as soon as he is given the opportunity to hand control of his life away.

Shatner is only one of the reasons for loving Nick of Time. Another is that it’s a perfect yarn for the Zone’s slim 25 minutes format. It covers a very specific situation, introduces two main characters and tells us as much about them as we need to know in order to get along. Unless you find soothsaying machines with little snaggle-toothed devil heads atop them the height of scariness, it isn’t a particularly sinister episode. And the twist is that… well, there isn’t one!

Instead, the show offers a psychological snapshot and asks some really interesting questions. As Don (Shatner) feeds the little machine with dimes, getting answers for his trouble that are open-ended enough to be interpreted just about any way he likes, the premise demands the level to which we want, even need somebody/thing else to be in control of our destiny. Is the machine almost a mirror of religion? After all, cynics would have it that Christianity is a smokescreen, a demand that innocent people put their lives in the hands of a higher being that may not even exist.

Even without that subtext, the episode is pretty chilling. Don is finally prised away from his growing obsession with the machine by his new wife, Pat (Patricia Breslin), but it’s a close run thing. They exit, finally seen driving out of the town, and at the close of the episode, another, older couple enter the diner. They huddle by the soothsayer and ask it whether today is their chance to leave. It’s obvious they’ve been there for years, their lives now completely in thrall to a cheap contraption that seems to provide all the answers.

It’s a rather silly concept, yet one that becomes quite earnest when taken too far. We as viewers might smile knowingly at Don’s predicament. The machine appears to know that he’s due for a promotion (he goes so far as to call the office and find out for himself) and that Pat and he might be in danger if they leave the diner (they do go out, only to narrowly avoid getting run over when they dash across a street). And yet the cards it expels, carrying their oblique messages, really could mean anything, and it’s Don himself who fills in the blanks. Watching their predicament, we can chuckle over Don’s naivete, but are we really so different, when we see something that resonates in a random newspaper Horoscope, or look for sequences that could reveal the winning numbers in the National Lottery? The truth, as ever, is in a realm that will ever be known as the Twilight Zone.