Your Introduction to The Twilight Zone...
 

I think my story will be like a lot of people my age (early 30's) and that's 2am showings probably on ITV back in the day. I used to stay up and watch them, then tape them and watch those tapes over and over. There's probably still the oss one I haven't seen. I doubt they were that picky about order or showing all 150 plus episodes back in the day for late night television.

Yeah,ITV used to have them on at all hours.
I used to set the old VCR to catch them.

It was the release of The Twilight Zone:The Movie that got me really interested in this.Sure I'd seen various b&w episodes on telly,but with the release of the movie,I tried to catch when episodes were on 'council telly'.

Was it not Channel 4 who reran the old episodes? :confused:

Yeah it probably was. My memory ain't what it used to be. Too many late nights watching telly. :)

BBC2 early 1980s. They started with the first episode and were showing one each Saturday night, so I was recording them in order.

Then, for some Godforsaken reason, they suddenly shifted to 2 episodes per Saturday. Unannounced in the Radio Times or anywhere. First I knew was turning BBC2 on 10 minutes before it was due to start and there was the episode Fever already half way through.

I was so p***ed off - it left me feeling awful for weeks afterwards. Even now, 27 years later, it still leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.

A friend of mine introduced me to the series a few years back. He was a huge fan and had the sideshow 12" figures. When I asked about the series he showed me Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (due to him having the figure of the Gremlin). I loved it and I've been hooked since.

Couldn't remember myself mate.:)

Probably been screened on various channels over the years! :)

I think my introduction to anything Twilight Zone would have been watching Twilight Zone The Movie taped off television for me when I was a kid.

A few years later I found out that the 80s Twilight Zone series was being shown through the night on Saturdays and ended up getting my first taste of any of the series. I would set my alarm every Saturday so I could watch and occasionally tape these episodes. This was the year 1997, and the channel that they were shown on was Channel 4.

I saved the best till last though when from 2007 onwards I watched each of the episodes from the original series for the first time, this as I was collecting and working my way through the DVD box sets.

Experience in the world of "The Fifth Dimension"
 

My experience on the Twilight Zone started when my dad talked to me about it. He had memories watching it when he was a kid (our family was one of the first to get TV in Malaysia during the early 1960s). Around 3 years ago, I was visiting my sister and her family in Oregon, and one time, my dad changed the channel to the Syfi Channel. The Twilight Zone episode, “Miniature” (starring Robert Duval) was on, and after watching it, I fell in love with the show… The one thing about the show which attracted me was the music, which I love playing on the piano. I tried to get the DVD, but one thing… IT WAS TOO EXPENSIVE! The next trip, my parents got the first season for me, and watching it, I got more into the Twilight Zone… It has been 2 years, and I just finished with the 2nd Season. I’m hoping to get the rest of the Twilight Zone (maybe until the end of next year, I should be able to finish it). Love the podcast and hope to talk more about the TZ…

Do you know when the new DiCarprio Twilight Zone will be showing?

Good story there Keith. It's nice to hear from a relatively new convert. I'm not sure what formats you're able to play, but the upcoming UK DVDs and blu rays may work out to be more affordable for you. The DVD especially is very cheap:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Twilight-Zon...2773669&sr=8-2


It's early days with the new movie, if indeed it gets made at all. From what I know, which isn't much because there's not much out there, it's really just in the development stages.

Glad you're enjoying the podcast by the way!

Thanks for the reply, Tom... Great podcast today! About the episode that you just done, it wasn't quite my favorite... I hated Corey in the episode for doing what he did. Hope to watch the next episode, and send you my review... :)

Probably repeating myself here, but back in 1994 I bought one of those compilation videos that had a few episodes on(Five Characters, People Are Alike and some others).
My friends and I spent the entire night watching them back to back until the early hours and I was hooked. I sought episodes where I could, watched the ill-fated film and now watching them again, I'm loving it all over again.
On an related note, the podcasts are wonderful; are you planning on doing every episode?

Thank you :)

Yes I'll be doing every episode of the original series for sure. I'm undecided about the newer ones. On the one hand it would be good to do them for completeness. On the other hand, there's not as much in the way of trivia for the newer ones, so it really would be just reviews. Which might not be so bad. I could probably put them out a lot quicker with less research to do. We'll see in 3-4 years when I've done the originals!

Thanks again for the kind words!

My first introduction to the zone was when I was young and used to live in the United States. I was probably around 12 years old. If I remember correctly the tv station was WPIX 11 of New York. I would catch it on friday nights at around 1 Am. I still dont think Ive seen all of them when reading episode guides. Maybe seen half of them. 1 thing is for sure, I dont think Ive ever seen any of the hour long zones. Not to get too off topic here, but that WPIX 11 New York had a killer late night lineup back in the 80s. 11.30pm The Honeymooners, 12.00am Classic Star Trek , 1am Twilight Zone.:)

It's funny how many of us caught it by watching it in syndication in the small hours. Perhaps the perfect time for The Twilight Zone....

My intro to the Twilight Zone
 

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.

I love that part :)

Good to see you again Bibliomike!

It's great to hear some memories on here especially the USA ones. I remember late night showings on BBC2 in the early 80's along with The Outer Limits. The attraction for me apart from the great stories was the whole 'Americana' aspect of them. Diners, long bars, cool cars, ice cream parlours, jukeboxes, white picket fences etc. Growing up in the port of Liverpool I was always being regaled with stories by older seafaring relatives about 50's and 60's American cities, the likes of New York, Boston and Houston. So the TZ really brought these places to life for me. I only wish they would bring back late night showings of the likes of TZ and Outer Limits, also the likes of Hammer classics and Universal horror so a new generation can see them.

I started watching the show in the 1980s, again on late night repeats in the UK. The show that I remember the most clearly is The Shelter, because I genuinely thought that nuclear war was coming and we were all going to die. The 1960s had not been that different, and Serling cleverly played on that fear in so many episodes of the show.

My first exposure to Twilight Zone was the bedtime stories my dad would tell me. Eventually when I was a little older he'd let me watch the episodes he'd been taping on BBC2 and then I actually fell in love with the 80s series first. Maybe because it was in colour and I could relate to it because it was the 80s at that time.

Then when I got older I rediscovered the original series and fell in love with it all over again.

The best ever!
 

Been a fan since the early 80's seeing it only during 'zoneathons' that
were held on local stations around Halloween growing up.

It wasn't until I moved to New York, that I gained access to the show
every night through cable tv (channel 11).

My earliest memory of the show would probably be 'Eye of the Beholder'
because that one seemed to be shown twice as much as any of the others!

..."needle please!"

Welcome Willie's Alive. Good to see you ( and good to know Willie's alive).

Mine is fairly recent, I had read a lot into it but never got round to waching one. Then I heard of them coming to blu. So I caved in and bought seasons 1 & 2, loved them ever since

Told my lot what I want for father's day.....:happy:

What's the difference between this set and the old releases ?