10 classic Twilight Zone episodes to watch before CBS All-Access launch

Twilight Zone ‘Where is Everybody’ – Image by CBS

1. Where is Everybody

Originally aired: October 2, 1959 – Season 1, Episode 1

Written by: Rod Serling

Opening narration: “The place is here. The time is now. And the journey into the shadows that we are about to watch, could be our journey.”

Plot: A man, dressed in a U.S. Air Force flight suit, finds himself in a strange town with no memory of who he is, where he is or how he got there.

There’s no one else around, despite the fact that he keeps finding evidence of people seemingly having been there recently (like a freshly brewed pot of coffee).

As he wanders the town, he becomes increasingly convinced that he’s being watched. He even winds up inside of a movie theatre. A movie begins to play, but when he runs up to the projection room, there’s no one there.

As his panic grows, he pressed a public call button screaming for help, desperate for anyone to explain what is going on.

Why it’s a classic: To start, it’s the first. It’s the original. It kicked off everything we know and love about The Twilight Zone.

Serling chose to introduce his series with a theme that is repeated probably the most frequently throughout the original run of The Twilight Zone: Loneliness.

There’s an all too human fear of being alone and lost and confused at play here. Its abandonment in its purest form and Serling was never afraid to sit and stare at what it means to leave someone truly alone.

(Plus, hey, the star—Earl Holliman—was a Golden Globe award-winning actor kicking off the series.)