Chris and Ruth Miller wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of their six-year-old daughter Tina crying for them.\u00a0 Chris puts on his slippers and goes into Tina\u2019s room but she\u2019s not in her bed.\u00a0 He calls to her and she answers him but he can\u2019t see her.\u00a0 Thinking that she\u2019s rolled off and under the bed he looks underneath but she\u2019s not there.\u00a0 Ruth comes into the room and turns on the light.\u00a0 Now they see she\u2019s not in the room but they can still hear Tina crying out for them and now her voice seems to be coming from different places in the house.\u00a0 Chris says he\u2019s going to check under the house but as he opens the kitchen door the little family dog Mack runs inside and runs past Ruth and under the bed.\u00a0 But Mack disappears too and only his bark indicates that he\u2019s still nearby.<\/p>\n
Chris rushes back in the room and after catching up with what happened from Ruth, he tells her that Tina isn\u2019t under the house and he is going to call for help.\u00a0 He calls his friend Bill and tells him to hurry over.\u00a0 Ruth wants to know what Bill can do.\u00a0 Chris tells her that Bill is a physicist and maybe he can explain what is happening.<\/p>\n
When Bill arrives, he listens to the story from the couple and then with Chris\u2019s help he moves the bed out of the way.\u00a0 After some trial and error poking at the floor and wall behind the bed he finds a door sized area of the wall that, though it appears solid, allows his hand to pass through it.\u00a0 Borrowing a piece of chalk from Ruth he draws an arch around where the portal to another dimension seems to have opened.<\/p>\n
Bill tells the Millers that the portal is an opening between our three-dimensional universe and a higher dimensioned space that temporarily are juxtaposed next to each other.\u00a0 Bill asks why he can\u2019t just go in and get Tina and Bill says that the other dimension may not be normal enough for human sight to navigate it successfully.\u00a0 He suggests that they call to Tina and tell her to hold onto Mack and follow him back out when they call the dog.\u00a0 Apparently, the sharper senses of the dog would be a more reliable conduit for escape back into our world.<\/p>\n
Tina does indeed see Mack and she begins to follow their instructions but while Chris is coaxing her to follow the dog, he falls into the portal and now is standing in the strange murky and confusing space inside the wall.\u00a0 With much back and forth talk between Chris and Tina she slowly follows Mack back to where Chris is waiting.\u00a0 Meanwhile Bill is imploring Chris to hurry the process as much as possible.\u00a0 Finally, Chris has Tina by the hand and all at once the two people and the dog come tumbling out onto the floor of Tina\u2019s bedroom.\u00a0 Ruth grabs Tina and takes her out of the room for safety.\u00a0 Bill stands talking to Chris about the escape.\u00a0 Chris asks Bill how he was able to see him to pull him out of the portal.\u00a0 Bill explains that Chris was never fully in the portal.\u00a0 His back was still in the room.\u00a0 And now Bill slaps his hand on the wall where the portal used to be.\u00a0 It was shut.\u00a0 Bill told him that it was closing all the time he was half in and half out of it.\u00a0 Another few seconds and he would have been cut in half by its closing.<\/p>\n
This is a weird one.\u00a0 The dramatic effect of the episode is marred by a few problems.\u00a0 The voice of Tina is actually noticeably that of a grown woman affecting a childish sound.\u00a0 I found it quite annoying.\u00a0 And the scene in the other dimension where Chris is calling to Tina and each can\u2019t see the other but keep calling back and forth is also kind of monotonous and annoying.\u00a0 I get that they were trying to build suspense and excitement but I thought it was overly long and not very effective visually.\u00a0 And the fact that Chris would call a physicist to handle a missing child is kind of \u201cGhostbusteresque.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the use of the dimensional portal as a plot element in the conventional setting of a normal American household is original and interesting.\u00a0 Well, at least original for TV.\u00a0 After all, I remember Heinlein had that story \u201cAnd He Built a Crooked House.\u201d\u00a0 Either way it\u2019s an interesting story concept.\u00a0 Despite the less than brilliant dramatic elements I\u2019m giving this a B+.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chris and Ruth Miller wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of their six-year-old daughter Tina crying for them.\u00a0 Chris puts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[237,4,244,240,1661],"tags":[1874,38,1355,1194,44,309,265,1691,154,1692,838],"class_list":["post-6996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-tv-reviews","category-twilight-zone","tag-little-girl-lost","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-rod-serling","tag-sci-fi","tag-sci-fi-tv-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-sff-tv-show-reviews","tag-tv-review","tag-tv-reviews","tag-twilight-zone"],"yoast_head":"\n