A Scene From The Twilight Zone

[lame54]

http://takemycountryback.com/great-quote-day/

Here is a nice quote from the Twilight Zone – “No Time Like the Past“, Season 4, Episode 10, March 07, 1963, written by Rod Serling. You can read up on the plot and watch most of it on youtube. Warning: Part 6 is missing. I just thought this dialogue was great and needed to be shared:

Dinner Guest #1: You some kind of pacifist are you Driscoll?

Dinner Guest #2: No, I’m just some kind of sick idiot whose seen too many young men die because of too many old men like you who fight their battles at dining room tables.

Dinner Guest #1: Oh my goodness. I take offense at that remark Mr. Driscoll.

Dinner Guest #2: And I take offense at arm chair warriors who don’t know what a shrapnel wound feels like. Or what death smells like after three days in the sun. Or the look in a man’s eyes when he realizes he is minus a leg and his blood is seeping out. Mr. Hanford, you have a great enthusiasm for planting the flag deep. But you don’t have a nodding acquaintance with what it’s like to bury men in the same soil.

Dinner Guest #1: I’ll not sit here and take talk like that!

Dinner Guest #2: No no. You’ll go back to your bank and it will be business as usual until the next dinner time when you’ll give us another of your vacuous speeches about a country growing strong by filling its graveyards. Well you’re in for some gratifying times Mr. Handford you can believe me. They’ll be alot of graveyards for you to fill…and you can sit on the sidelines and wave your pennants because according to your definition, this country’s going to get virile as the devil…We’ll show how red our blood is because we’ll spill it.
There are two unfortunate aspects of this. One is, that you won’t have to spill any. And the other is you won’t live long enough to know I’m right.

Dinner Guest #1: What a violent man!

Taking a closer look at Rod Serling’s life and military past, it is easy to see where such a love of great political dialogue like this emanates from:

[femrap]

1. Timeless words.....nt

[Kablooie]

2. There's another Twilight Zone quote that seems appropriate from "The Eye of the Beholder" episode.

NO CHANGE! NO CHANGE AT ALL!

[RadiationTherapy]

3. Wonderful, bright, bizarre mind. I love Serling.

[ChoppinBroccoli]

4. I've Been Watching All The Old Twilight Zones Lately, And It's Frightening........

........how prophetic a lot of them were.

I created a thread here a few weeks ago urging people to check out the episode called (I think) "He's Back." It's the one featuring a young Dennis Hopper as the main character. Once again, a TV episode written almost 50 years ago lays out an exact blueprint for the start and the continuing operations of the Tea Party.

[redirish28]

5. My wife has been telling me that for years. She grew up watching them and NEVER tires of them

She kind of says that Obama is like the fool with the fortune telling machine (The one with William Shatner.) Where as Williams character walks away from th machine the Guy who comes in after wards still let's the machine control his life. My wife this morning was telling me the Guy is Obama and the Fortune machine is the GOP.



(I really want to get her the definitive complete series but I don't think I will swing it this year.)

[deutsey]

6. Most of the episodes of Twilight Zone were like mini-morality plays

Yeah, they could be bizarre and trippy, but at their heart, many episodes dealt with matters of right and wrong and how they play out in our lives.

I saw a show on Serling a while ago that linked his combat experience in the Pacific to what he wrote about, I suddenly saw The Twilight Zone (one of my favorite shows) as a modern morality play.

One of the reasons I think the revival of the show back in the '80s wasn't as good is because it focused too much on oddities and not the more engaging struggles Serling explored.

[redirish28]

7. Not only that they just re-made classic episodes. (My wife says)

[lame54]

8. .

[Jeffersons Ghost]

9. K&R

[sarcasmo]

10. Great series, will have to revisit this winter.