Oh my god, how do I love SciFi Channel’s annual Fourth of July Twilight Zone marathon? It’s like catching up with old friends... and there’s always the chance of coming across an episode I’ve never seen before, which has happened already a couple times today. The one with the kids whose parents are getting divorced? Never seen it before. The one with the lady waiting in the bus station who keeps seeing her doppleganger from another dimension, and they’re both caught in a chronic hysteresis? Never seen it before.
I find that the classic episodes, the ones that instantly come to mind when someone says "Rod Serling," are ones that play on some fear or neurosis that affects geeks in particular. I was once accused -- yes, accused -- of being "one a them readers," which I found hilarious, of course... but because being one a them readers truly is looked down upon by so many people, I’m especially affected by poor old Burgess Meredith’s plight in "Time Enough at Last." (Though I think the thought that I might be the last person to read all those great books might put me off wanting to read them, in much the same way that the prospect of the universe collapsing back into nothingness someday makes me wonder what the point of anything is.)
Shatner and the man on the wing keys into the mindset of some geeks -- particularly those of us who read science fiction -- that we see and understand more about why the world is the way it is than other people do, though we are thoroughly appreciated when we point this out. And pig-
