Season 1, Episode 1: Where is Everybody?
Airdate: October 2nd, 1959
Directed by: Robert Stevens
Written by: Rod Serling
SUMMARY
A man finds himself alone on a dirt road, walking towards a diner. Inside he finds a jukebox playing loudly, and a pot of hot coffee on the stove. He inquires for breakfast, but no chef or waitress is to be found. He is dressed in an Air Force flight suit, but he does not remember who he is (or his name) or how he got there.
After leaving the diner, he walks to a nearby town. The town seems deserted, but everywhere the man goes, he seems to find proof that someone had been there recently: food is cooking on a stove, water dripping in a sink, and a cigar is burning in an ashtray. He grows more and more unsettled as he wanders through the empty town, looking for someone—anyone—to talk to, all the while having the strange feeling that he is being watched.
In a soda shop after talking to himself he idly spins racks filled with paperback books –all the same book, titles: “The Last Man on Earth, Feb. 1959”.
Day turns to night and the man is still alone in the town. Street lights turn on all around him. Even the movie theater is illuminated. As he goes into the theater, he sees a poster advertising the film playing Battle Hymn, which causes him to remember that he is in the US Air Force. Finding no one in audience or the projection booth, he desperately runs through the theater until he crashes into a mirror. In a panic, the man runs through the streets, until he finally collapses next to a street crossing and presses a button labeled WALK. As he whimpers for someone to help him, It is revealed that the walk button is actually a panic button. And the man is not alone in a deserted town, but is instead in an isolation booth being observed by a group of uniformed servicemen.
His name is Mike Ferris, an astronaut in training who has been confined to an isolation room located within an aircraft hangar for 484 hours and 36 minutes. He has been undergoing tests to determine his fitness for spaceflight and whether he can handle the psychological stress of a prolonged trip to the Moon alone. The town was a complete hallucination, an escape valve for his sensory-deprived mind.
As Ferris is carried out of the hangar on a stretcher, he sees the Moon above him, and says wistfully, “Hey! Don’t go away up there! Next time it won’t be a dream or a nightmare. Next time it’ll be for real. So don’t go away. We’ll be up there in a little while.”
THE GOOD
First of all, I’d just like to acknowledge the intro by show creator, Rod Serling. I have always loved listening to his introduction in every episode of classic Twilight Zone episodes, and the intro to the pilot was definitely a memorable one!
The running theme, as the sergeant mentions towards the ending is human psychology and how we cope with loneliness and isolation. It’s sort of a huge and extreme subject for a television program of the 50’s but what makes it a timeless episode is the fact that it’s based off a psychological fear (monophobia) many of us have to this day. In fact, it was such a ground breaking form of story-telling during that period that the ratings shot through the roof!
My favorite scene is where he is talking to himself in a reflection at the soda shop, and quotes Scrooge from A Christmas Carol:
“I just remembered something. Scrooge said it. You remember Scrooge, old buddy? Ebeneezer Scrooge? That’s what he said to that ghost Jacob Marley. He said…
‘You may be an undigested bit of beef, a crumb of cheese, a blot of mustard, a fragment of an undone potato, but there’s more of gravy than of grave about you.’
…You see, that’s what you are. You’re what I had for dinner last night. You must be. But now I’ve had it. I’d like to wake up. I’d like to wake up now. If I can’t wake up, at least I’d like to find somebody to talk to. Well, I must be a very imaginative guy. Nobody in the whole bloody world could have a dream as complete as mine, right down to the last detail…”
In a mere half hour we see a fully sane man in an impossible situation, only to find out that he was really just lonely. Would it have been nice to have some sort of sci-fi –like explanation as to why he was the only man present? And as to why he kept popping into places where there are traces of recent activity (cigar in ash tray, hot coffee pot)? Of course that would have been awesome! but the fact that this whole scenario was simply a world created by the subject in own imagination is just as powerful, if not more realistic to say the least.
THE BAD
Was there anything bad about this? The only thing I could think of is the fact that his story of isolation turned out to be a hallucination -making his struggle less significant toward the ending. However, it’s a tiny wrinkle of the cloth that is too subtle to even look at as a flaw.
FINAL SCORE
Score out of 10: I give this episode a solid 9 – it was very entertaining to watch a man loose his marbles over being alone, and the mystery as to why that is keeps a solid grasp on your attention until the ending is revealed. It makes you start to wonder how you yourself would personally handle the situation. Would you be able to handle a trip to the moon??
by the way… did anyone else notice they used the Back to the Future set??
For more info on Loneliness, Monophobia, and the Fear of Being Alone, Check out This Article.
Much Love,
~Virginia, Team Nostalgia
Nostalgic Reviews 