galacticjourney

by Gideon Marcus

I feel badly, I really do. Earlier this year, I was given an award by Rod Serling's people. It's an honor I treasure tremendously. After all, Mr. Serling has given us some of the greatest television since the medium was invented.

But now the wheels are coming off The Twilight Zone, and I can't help but be candid about it. This half hour show that used to be the highlight of Fridays is now something of a chore, an event I might well skip if I hadn't committed to covering it in its entirety.

Serling himself confessed last Spring, "I've never felt quite so drained of ideas as I do at this moment. Stories used to bubble out of me so fast I couldn't set them down on paper quick enough – but in the last two years I've written forty-seven of the sixy-eight Twilight Zone scripts, and I've done thirteen of the first twenty-six for the next season. I've written so much I'm woozy. It's just more than you really should do. You can't retain quality. You start borrowing from yourself, making your own cliches. I notice that more and more."