Season 1, Episode 5: Walking Distance
 

Airdate: 30/10/59
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: Robert Stevens
Starring: Gig Young

Tiring of life in the fast lane, a middle aged advertising exec, Martin Sloan, visits the town where he grew up to remember the care free summers of his childhood. Little does he know, that when he walks into town, he also walks into his own past.

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Possible influence on a certain '80's Zemeckis sci-fi blockbuster?:eyebrows:

Episode number five "Walking Distance" would be my favourite episode of The Twilight Zone. It is also one of the most popular and highly acclaimed of all Twilight Zone episodes and it was Rod Serling’s most personal story.

The acting, directing, music score, atmosphere and writing are all top notch in this episode and there are many great and unforgettable scenes. The wonderful and quite powerful scenes of Martin giving the childhood speech at the merry-go-round and Martin having his last ever conversation with his dad would be my favourites.

In Serling’s hometown of Binghamton, New York, there is even a plaque located in the Recreation Park bandstand that commemorates this fantastic episode. Binghamton’s Recreation Park was the inspiration for the park which features in Walking Distance and there is a very memorable scene that takes place there.

Yeah,this was a good 'un,and one of the things that the TTZ did best.

People walking into another dimension.

Three scoops of ice cream?;)

These kinds of time travel episodes must be so influential that you can't help but see traces of them in things like Back to the Future. It's probably because the protagonist is in a situation that seems attractive but conversely extremely dangerous. This one is technically superb and brilliantly acted by everyone.

As I've said to Tom before, I've never really "got" Walking Distance. It could just be because I am only 25 and have never left a place for a long enough peroid of time only to return and find its different.

I wasn't overly keen on the comic book version of the story too.

I still live in my hometown and haven't left it for more than 18 months but I found this to be a haunting and extremely influential piece of science fiction which uses the space-time continuum extremely well with events being changed in the past to have repercussions in the future.

There is probably is an element to every Twilight Zone episode where you either empathise with the main characters and their plight or you don't and that's the key to pretty much every episode.

Perhaps its an episode I need to return too for a second watch. I may have judged it too harshly...

I've read others opinions who say they don't connect to it either, so I don't think you're alone. I really like the episode myself, but hey, Rod Serling himself was quite critical of it, so you're in good company!

Below is what Lost creator and Star Trek director J.J. Abrams had to say about "Walking Distance" when he did an interview with TIME Magazine back in Spring 2009.

"'Walking Distance' is maybe the show's best episode. It's about a businessman. He's almost 40, he's got a suit, and he hates his life. He's miserable. The stress of work is just getting him down. And his car breaks down in the middle-of-nowhere countryside. He goes to the gas station to get his car fixed and he realizes that he grew up very close to where they are. It's walking distance.

"So he says, 'I'm just going to take a walk back to the town I grew up in.' He gets there and he soon realizes he's walked back not just to where he grew up, but when he grew up. He's back in the time when he was a kid. And it's just this beautiful story of a guy who, as an adult, wants to go back to his young self, and tell himself to be aware of what it is to be alive, to be young, and to enjoy that. And of course, you can never go back and tell yourself that. It's a beautiful demonstration of the burden of adulthood, told in The Twilight Zone, which everyone thinks is a scary show, but it's actually a beautiful show. The Twilight Zone at its best is better than anything else I've ever seen on television."

'Walking Distance' 1959 - Top 10 Twilight Zone Episodes - TIME