[Bibliomike]

Hi, all. I shared my "origin story" re: The Twilight Zone on the podcast forum back when Tom started the show, but thought I'd repeat it here, because I certainly came to the show a roundabout way!

The first episode I ever saw was "A Certain Kind of Stopwatch" on our local PBS station when I was about 11 years old, circa 1983. I think I was up late being sick, and my mother happened to have the TV tuned to that station. I watched the episode and was really enjoying it -- and then it just stopped, with the guy and his broken stopwatch! I asked my mom, "Was it supposed to end that way?" "Yes." "Do they all end like that?" "Most of them, yes."

Well, this was fascinating! But this was before we had a VCR, and the show was on much too late for me to stay up to watch on a regular basis. At about that time, though, one of my friends at school was reading Marc Scott Zicree's TZ Companion (then newly published, I suppose). He'd read aloud the episode summaries to me, and I was so taken by them, I got my own copy. I devoured the book several times straight through, so much so that to this day there are still episodes I feel like I've seen, even though I haven't - I just know them from those summaries and still photos!

I even used to write my own 2-page scripts inspired by the episode summaries - sometimes inventing new characters, taking things in a different direction, etc. (I remember writing a version of "The Gift," but beyond that I don't recall which episodes I "made my own"!)

I gradually saw more episodes as I could stay up later (!), and finally, I'm now working my way through the series in sequence, following along with Tom's podcasts) -- and having a lot of fun doing so.