“Where is Everybody?” is the first episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

The place is here, the time is now, and the journey into the shadows that we’re about to watch could be our journey.

A man, Mike Ferris, finds himself alone in a strange town. He is dressed in an Air Force jumpsuit, but he does not remember who he is or how he got there. The town seems deserted, but everywhere the man goes, he seems to almost find someone — food is cooking on the stoves, water is still dripping in the sinks, and cigarettes are still burning in the trays. He grows more and more unsettled as he wanders through the empty town, looking for someone, anyone, to talk to. He finally collapses next to a street crossing, and presses a button labeled WALK. It is revealed that the walk button is in fact a panic button. He is really an astronaut confined to an isolation room for 484 hours, testing to see if he can stay sane cooped up in a small spacecraft for the duration of a trip to the Moon. The town was a complete hallucination, an escape valve for his sensory-deprived mind.

Prior to this episode, Rod Serling had written an episode called “The Happy Place” as the pilot for his new series, but it was rejected because of its subject matter — a society where people were executed when they turned 60 due to their inability to contribute to society  — was considered too depressing by network executives. This premise of “old for young” was later used, slightly modified, in the novel Logan’s Run and adaptations of the novel, as well as an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Once the episode had been given the green light and filming had concluded, it originally featured narration by announcer Westbrook Van Voorhis. As Voorhis was unavailable for subsequent episodes, however, Serling himself recorded the narration (for both the episode and the introduction) for consistency; his presence later became a hallmark of the series. This is when the Twilight Zone became the fifth dimension rather than the sixth in the original pilot naration. Additionally, because he is the only person to appear, or at least play a part, in every episode, he is technically listed as the star, with the rest of the cast considered guests.

Several years later, Serling adapted this and other episodes into short stories for a book, Stories From the Twilight Zone. Reportedly dissatisfied with the lack of science fiction content, he added an additional twist to the end by having Mike Ferris discover a movie ticket in his pocket after being carried away on the stretcher. A variation on this twist was later used in “King Nine Will Not Return“.

*This post was written with the help of Wikipedia. 

Twilight Zone – Where is everybody ?

delete reply fuzzysworld wrote on Jul 11, ’08 I remember this episode. It was a good one.

edit delete reply lauritasita wrote on Jul 11, ’08 I always loved The Twilight Zone. It scared me a little sometimes, but I always enjoyed it.