Click HERE to see a film clip from the first episode of the Twilight Zone. You will need Real Player.

Surprisingly, there was very little written about Twilight Zone a the time. In the years that followed, both the popularity of the show and my interest in it grew. Ultimately, I ended up writing the book I wanted to read, The Twilight Zone Companion. I interviewed over 100 men and women who had worked on the series, crawled through attics stuffed with scripts and files, sat endless days in the dark watching sixteen-millimeter prints. It was a puzzle-box that opened and opened, revealing wonders and delights, all the more remarkable for the uncertainty of its beginning and the singular will of the man who first brought it to light.

Twilight Zone began with Rod Serling, creator, writer and sometime executive producer of the show, who himself wrote an incredible 92 of the 156 episodes (an inspiration to Babylon Five's Joe Straczynski, and a number to beat). Surprisingly, Serling did not start as a science fiction writer, and had no intention of becoming one. The son of a wholesale meat dealer, Rodman Edward Serling was born on Christmas Day, 1924 ("I was a Christmas present that was delivered unwrapped," he later quipped). A self-assured, gregarious child, he grew up in Binghampton, New York, enlisted in the paratroopers right out of high school, fought and was wounded in the Pacific in World War II. The war proved a turning point for Serling, filling him with an emotional turmoil that demanded release and expression. He turned to writing, selling initially to such radio shows as Grand Central Station. But the medium that proved ideal for him was just being born, and after a fitful start (during which he papered the walls of his bathroom with rejection slips), Serling began selling regularly to television. His writing improved quickly, and his mixture of passion and compassion, of earthiness and poetry was compelling. In 1955, he won his first Emmy for Patterns, then another a year later for Requiem for a Heavyweight and a third for The Comedian, all powerful, stand-alone episodes of popular anthology shows.

By this time Serling was considered the greatest writer working in TV, but he was increasingly unhappy. It was the height of the Cold War, nuclear annihilation was on everyone's mind, as were other, weighty issues - political repression was rife at home and abroad, lynchings were a regular occurrence down South. Serling had much to say on these topics, but sponsor censorship insisted on changes that often rendered his work meaningless. Of one such episode, Serling said, "They chopped it up like a roomful of butchers at work on a steer." Of another, he commented, "I probably would have had a much more adult play had I made it science fiction, put it in the year 2057 and peopled the Senate with robots."

This statement proved an inspiration. Serling realized -- as Jonathan Swift had centuries before with Gulliver's Travels -- that the way to write truthfully about one's society in fearful times was to couch it in metaphor, place it in a fantastical setting. He came up with The Twilight Zone, wrote a pilot script about a man plunged back in time to Pearl Harbor. This was bought by CBS and promptly shelved, as no doubt "too weird." But Serling was not a man to suffer defeat easily. He sold the script to Desilu Playhouse, which produced it to great acclaim. On the strength of this, CBS ordered a second Twilight Zone pilot script. Serling turned in a story about a totalitarian society of the future that exterminated citizens when they reached sixty-five. Again, it was rejected. Undeterred, Serling immediately sat down and wrote another Twilight Zone pilot, "Where Is Everybody?" about an astronaut trainee in an isolation experiment. Although outre enough to demonstrate the tone of the show, the story had an utterly realistic explanation, thoroughly comprehensible to earthbound network executives and sponsors. Twilight Zone was given the green light - but with one significant change. Westbrook Von Voorhees, the voice of The March of Time, had narrated the pilot, but he was too stentorian. Orson Welles was floated as a possible replacement but proved too expensive. With no one left, Serling timidly suggested himself - and was promptly laughed out of the room. But the idea stuck, and it proved a stroke of brilliance. Serling became the first writer-host of a major dramatic show, his trademark face and voice inseparable from it. From that moment on, Rod was a TV star.

And so began the great five-year ride, from 1959 to 1964. Serling was matched with Buck Houghton, a producer of superb taste and skill, who made Serling's imaginings take dazzling, literal form. Together, they assembled a small group of terrific writers, each of whom had a voice different from Serling but complementary to it - Richard Matheson, who went on to write such classic films as Duel and Somewhere in Time; Charles Beaumont, scripter of The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao; George Clayton Johnson, later to co-write Logan's Run and pen the first-aired episode of Star Trek; and, perhaps most unlikely of all, Earl Hamner, Jr., soon to create The Waltons. Even Ray Bradbury provided a script.

The timing couldn't have been better for such a show. The Golden Age of Film was just winding down; masterful individuals who had risen in features were now available for television work -- directors such as Mitchell Leisen, Jacques Tourneur, John Brahm and Robert Florey, actors the likes of Ida Lupino, Gig Young, Dan Duryea and Robert Cummings. Director of Photography George T. Clemens - vital to the gorgeous, stark look of Twilight Zone, so often imitated -- had himself been a camera operator on High Noon, the Frederic March Jekyll and Hyde, and Chaplin's The Great Dictator. At the same time, up and coming talents who would soon make their mark in powerful films were just starting in TV - Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson. Even directors Paul Mazursky and Sydney Pollack appeared on Twilight Zone as young actors. And then there was the music, remarkable, unforgettable strains unique to The Zone, arguably the finest ever composed for television - the distinctive theme by Marius Constant, scores by Bernard Herrmann, Franz Waxman, Van Cleave and Jerry Goldsmith.

Once viewed, Twilight Zone could never be forgotten, and many catch phrases - including the title itself - bring instant memory flashes to anyone who has seen it. "There's time enough at last," "To Serve Man," "Wish him to the cornfield," "My name is Talky Tina… and I'm going to kill you," "Room for one more," "Next stop is Willoughby," "I believe you're going my way…," "There's a man on the wing!" "I can't play Kick the Can alone!" At these simple, words, entire episodes burst like fireworks in our minds.

Although Twilight Zone was never a huge hit, it proved solidly popular, winning Serling two Emmys and George Clemens one. Serling would go on to other triumphs - the screenplay for Planet of the Apes, the TV series Night Gallery - but none were so sweet nor pure as that first, unique vision. Serling died in 1975, of complications from open-heart surgery. Shortly before, he had said, "I just want them to remember me…." His wish came true. Twilight Zone is more popular than ever, and its fans number in the millions, many of whom were not even born when Serling first set down the words, "There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is know to Man…." Which brings us to a final question, and a central one. The Cold War is over, fallout shelters are a thing of the past, the Civil Rights movement has changed our society and itself been changed. The issues that Serling addressed are very different as we face a new century. Why then does Twilight Zone still hold us, still speak to us?