Competition: Are You the World's Biggest Twilight Zone Fan? Win Seasons 1-3 on BD!
 

To celebrate the release of The Twilight Zone Season 3 on UK BD & DVD on the 1st of August 2011, we're giving away seasons 1, 2 and 3 on BD to one lucky winner! That's right, one person will walk away with every season that's been released so far on blu ray in the UK!

How do I win?

1) Add a paragraph or two below telling us why you love The Twilight Zone. The aim here is find the world's No.1 fan, so did you stay up nights waiting for that showing in the early hours? Did you wear out your old VHS tapes? Basically, it's up to you to convince us that you're the biggest fan so go for it.

Note: This thread is for entries only. Please make one post and refrain from commenting on other entries (Mods may pop up from time to time though...). There's loads to explore in the forum and plenty of places to share other Twilight Zone thoughts and opinions so have a good look around. Which leads me to the second part of the competition...

2) Start or contribute to 10 threads from this date forward (previous posts don't count). You know The Twilight Zone, You love The Twilight Zone. Share your ideas and opinions on the show in the other threads in the official forum. Get out there and help make the forum the No.1 Twilight Zone fan spot on the web!

Entries are welcome from anywhere in the world.

Competition ends on August 1st 2011 12.00 am GMT. Good Luck!

Can't wait? The pre-order The Twilight Zone Season 3 here!

im the fan number 1 because..
 

Hello.

I am jaime. Im from chile, south america-

I recall my first episode that i watched. it was willoghby´s episode.

I was 8 years old, and i was in shock.My father teach me about this series.

And when internet arrives, uffff i become a real fan, collecting all episode of the saga.

I dont know, My english is very low, but, if i win this collection, ufff, i will cry all night on, if no, well, i´m the number one fan...

i know you recently and i read much your work, actually i love you, and i love hte twilight zone. La dimension desconocida.

Amo la dimension desconocida. la amo con todo mi corazon..

Its the best series ever made it.

pd: sorry for my english.

i wish i had this brilliant series in my home.

greetings from chile, south america, curico city.

jaime

Fail Safe fandom
 

I first discovered the twilight zone at a very young age, maybe around 9 or 10 in the early 90s. I had always been a sci fi fanatic since Ulysses 31 had exploded my 4 year old minds conception of the universe, the future and what ever I could make of reality.*

The twilight zone did the same to me at 9 years old and has continued to do so ever since. Tracking down VHS copies of a 1959 America program in the pre Internet era of a tiny province of the uk was not easy. But I did it. I remember discovering the (lesser but interesting) 1980s series beamed into my tv through the fuzzy signal of an odd welsh channel at 3am one night, which was an experience worthy of the twilight zone in itself.*

But what I love is the fact that before mad men, before the x files, before tv was respected as an intelligent medium that could provoke thought and inspire millions of individuals in a uniquely personal way, rod Serling got there first, at the very beginning he was there, a pioneer, changing perceptions and dogma than hadn't even arrived yet for millions of people over more that half a century. And still today, the twilight zone has the power to move me and challenge me and remains as fresh as ever.*

FAIL:SAFE.*

I love Twilight Zone-for its ability to tell interesting stories in a concise and entertaining manner. It ran the gamut from sci-fi to fantasy to horror.
I first saw The Twilight Zone on an old VHS compilation and was hooked. Revisiting some of these episodes recently, I was struck by how it remained prescient and relevant. An episode like The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street could be used as a demonstration of a mob mentality. That Rod Serling was able to create or co-create over 150 episodes of such consistent quality never fails to astound me.
This was the birth of modern genre television; its importance and influence can never be over-estimated. We owe it a huge debt.

The Twilight Zone had always seemed like a myth to me. It was nothing more than a theme tune used to describe eerie things happening, a ride in Disney World and something that the Simpson spoofed.

Despite my love of all things Sci-Fi in in all kinds of media, I never thought to find episodes of the show to discover what this show was all about.

In 2007, I was visiting my friend Wilf in Portsmouth and on a hangover morning we were deciding what to watch when I admired a few collectable figures he had in his room. The collectables in question were the 12” Slideshow Collectables Twilight Zone figures of The Gremlin (Nightmare at 20,000 Feet), The Kanamit (To Serve Man) and the Doctor and Nurse (Eye of the Beholder). Still within their packaging, he started to discuss his love of The Twilight Zone and told me that he had loads of them on DVD – the Aviva Volume releases from 2000.

Interested in watching them, Wilf quite literally submitted the show for my approval. I can clearly remember watching Nightmare at 20, 000 feet and being instantly hooked. We spent the rest of the day working our way through his countless volumes and when he went to work the next day, I watched the remaining episodes. I couldn’t get enough of the excellent writing, the breathtaking performances and the overall feel of the show and found myself watching some episodes twice. It amazed me that I hadn’t got hooked on this show sooner – but I was now glad that it was in my life.

Upon returning back to my home town, I took what was left my of my paycheque and bought the 2Entertain Seasons 1-5 box sets (at a modest price of £30 each). Being an unemployed graduate at the time meant I had a lot of free hours on my hands and I worked my way through every episode one after the other – even the ones I had previously seen the weekend before. I showed them to my friends, family and anyone who would listen. I bought books, t-shirts and anything that bore the Twilight Zone branding. I was obsessed.

In 2009, I came up with the idea of creating a ‘Twilight Zone inspired’ online show called The Collector’s Room where I could flex my Twilight Zone addled mind to its full capacity. We created 3 half hour episodes, comic books and a radio play and I wrote more than I had ever written before. I never would have made this show without Rod Serling’s genius.

The Twilight Zone for me is now more than just a theme tune or a ride at Disney, it’s a part of my life. It rejuvenated my writing style and reignited my passion for script writing and filmmaking. Without this great show, I don’t think I would be the man I am today. While I may not be a ‘life long fan’, I am most certainly a devotee. I can’t wait to be able to show this great program to my own kids one day and maybe, just maybe, get my girlfriend on board too!

Hmmm... I may have gone over the "paragraph or two" limit...

Guess I love that show more than I thought! I could have talked for hours!

Well were do you start? To me the Twilight Zone is the greatest series ever made. My love of it started in the late 70's when my dad would let me stay up and watch old re-runs of the show on the BBC and I was hooked. The first episode I seen was the After Hours, I think I had to leave a light on that night! Then I remember the Movie coming out and sneaking into the 051 cinema in Liverpool to see it as I was under age. I remember the 80's series coming out on VHS before they were screened in this country and renting every single volume from my local video shop. But my favourite will always be the original series because of Serling's brilliant story telling and the acting is superb. The use of craggy faced character actors instead of glamourous Hollywood types is what sells it for me and the realistic American settings. anyway I've gone on a bit too much;)

Great entries guys. Just a reminder, to qualify you also have to post in 10 threads afterwards. Cheers.

Darn forgot about that! Better get on that sharpish!

I was well aware of the influence and significance of The Twilight Zone before I knew much about the show itself. Luckily I grew up in the 1980s, when classic black and white television was still repeated on UK TV (unlike now), so I was able to get to know this strange little American show. My parents divorced in the middle of the decade, and every other weekend I would find myself sleeping on my Grandma's sofa (my dad was too busy down the pub on a Friday night to spend time with us!), so I would watch TV and eat biscuits. Sometimes I'd get lucky and find something vaguely pornographic on one of their foreign satellite channels, but mostly I'd watch horror films and repeats of the Twilight Zone. From the opening credits to Rod Serling's introductions, I knew I was watching something that was going to be important, weird, but above all entertaining. Even at a young age I knew that these stories were allegorical. One that chilled me, and has stuck with me to this day, was episode 68, The Shelter. We were still convinced that the Russians were going to drop a nuclear bomb on us any time in the 1980s, so this story had a particular resonance for me. As these former friends and neighbours tore each other apart fighting to get into the bomb shelter, I felt sick to my stomach. It is something I have never forgotten. I wasn't to know then that this was actually a rehash of a much better story, The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, which was a thinly-veiled attack on the HUAC anti-Communist witch hunts. I was only about eight years old after all. I took The Shelter at face value. My mum had told my sister and I that when the bomb dropped, she would just take us all outside to die in the heat blast. I would rather have fought to get into that shelter.

Later on I discovered some of the more famous, and perhaps sillier, episodes, such as Shatner's madness in Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, and whilst I enjoyed these as well, for me Twilight Zone will remain a sobering look at humanity, what we are capable of, and a warning of what we may become. Whilst other TV shows have come and gone, The Twilight Zone is the one that is still referred to again and again for its power and influence. I have collected episodes on VHS and DVD, and I discovered a few years ago that there had even been a Twilight Zone radio show. I have collected dozens of episodes thanks to their repeat airings on BBC radio and just can't get enough. I even used The Twilight Zone as reference material for both my degree and Masters Degree, the latter in a symposium on politics and the use of fear to drive neo-conservative policies. I have one of these pieces available on my blog: Science Fiction Television. As a media lecturer I now look for opportunities to use Serling and The Twilight Zone whenever I think he could make the point better than I can. And he usually can. If I won these blu rays I could use them in class thanks to our recent addition of a PS3, and I think it would enhance the student's education and appreciation of Twilight Zone as the precursor to the kind of television they are familiar with now.

I adore the Twilight Zone. When I was young my dad used to tell me episodes he could remember from it as bedtime stories. He used to do the voices and everything. He used to tape them on BBC2 (they were on past my bedtime) and we'd watch them together. Later he bought some VHS tapes of the '80s version, there were six on a tape. I watched them religiously (my favourites were Shatterday and A Little Peace And Quiet, both directed by Wes Craven) and wore them out to the point that my dad had to re-buy them.

When I grew older and managed to track down the original series I was able to fall in love with them all over again with a more mature mind. Every opening and closing monologue was so poetic, every plot so clever that, like the Beatles' music, it was clear it had had a big influence so much of what was to follow in the decades to come. I moved from Glasgow to London in 2006 and the first thing I bought with my first wage was an import of the Twilight Zone Complete Definitive Collection on DVD. I've spent the last five years watching them over and over again and hope to buy the Blu-rays and review them on my website when I have the money. Here's a (bad quality) photo of my pride and joy:

http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/8673/picturevnq.jpg

Due to the newsletter only going out today announcing the comp, I'm going to keep this open until the end of today. Monday 1st of August. So come on, any last entries, get cracking!

Good luck everyone!

Just to echo Scully - Good luck everyone!

*Crosses fingers*

Okay guys. The competition is now closed.

I just want to say before announcing the winner that each person's contribution is just as valid as the others. Each one shows real affection for the show so the winner has been chosen completely at random by RANDOM.ORG - True Random Number Service from the qualifying entries.

It's a shame that everyone can't win, but I think even though there were only a few entries this has given the forum a nice little boost and I hope everyone has enjoyed the interaction. We have a nice group of people here in the TZ forum who post intelligent and insightful opinions and are also respectful of the other members. I think it's very in keeping with the spirit of the television series.

New forums are always slow to start, but I think we're starting to build up a good momentum here; I personally love dropping by here every day. So I hope even though the competition has ended you'll all still enjoy posting here.

So, without any further ado, the winner of seasons 1-3 on blu ray is:

Trouserpress

DM me your address sir and I'll get it to the relevant people.

Well done Trouserpress! A worthy winner!

Wow. That's all I can say. Wow. I feel like I may actually be in the Twilight Zone right now, and there's some weird twist to this coming my way!

Thanks!

Been meaning to ask, is this available on itunes?

Congrats trouserpress! :)

It's on our website - The Collector's Room - An online sci-fi series by Luke Owen and Daniel J. Brant

Unfortunatley the show's co-creator has lost a lot of interest in the project and the show has died of death. It's hard to steer the ship on your own haha!

Sorry to hear that mate. Are you thinking about maybe continuing the audio version? Perhaps a little less work than the TV version? I thought the first one was top notch.

I've been playing around with the idea of doing that funnily enough. I just need some time to work on 10-12 scripts so I can get them all into production before launching the series.

I'm glad you liked the first (and only) episode we did - it's great to see that fans of the series I was trying to emulate like the product. Makes it all worth while.

I've got a couple of ideas floating around this tiny cranium of mine, but I'm always willing to hear from other writers that want to get involved.

Congratulations trouserpress. Im a bit jealous, but you definitely deserved the prize.

Also, I just wanted to say thanks to Sam and Tom for organising this competition.

See you on the forums-

F:S

Well done Trouserpress. Your name makes me smile for some reason as well. I take it your surname is Corby?

You know, I'd never thought of that! It's actually a Bonzo Dog Band reference, but that would be funny too!

I have to admit, I'm really looking forward to getting these sets.