{"id":7775,"date":"2019-07-24T21:00:38","date_gmt":"2019-07-25T01:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=7775"},"modified":"2019-11-03T18:41:29","modified_gmt":"2019-11-03T23:41:29","slug":"the-twilight-zone-complete-series-review-season-5-episode-3-nightmare-at-20000-feet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2019\/07\/24\/the-twilight-zone-complete-series-review-season-5-episode-3-nightmare-at-20000-feet\/","title":{"rendered":"The Twilight Zone \u2013 Complete Series Review \u2013 Season 5 Episode 3 \u2013 Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the greatest Twilight Zone episodes.\u00a0 The magnificent awfulness of Bill Shatner\u2019s acting is on full display.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The story is simple and short enough. \u00a0Bill Shatner is Bob Wilson, a salesman who had a nervous breakdown on an airline flight and is returning home with his wife Julia after a six-month commitment to a mental institution.\u00a0 As the couple board the aircraft for their flight home, Julia tries to reassure Bob that he is cured and their lives are back on track.\u00a0 Bob pretends to agree but when he sees that they are sitting in the emergency exit row his panic is there for both to see.<\/p>\n

Julia takes a sleeping pill but Bob is too nervous to sleep.\u00a0 But as he looks out the window into the rain storm he sees a furred man-like creature with a strange masklike face walking on the wing.\u00a0 Bob rings the service bell and wakes up Julia and tells her what he saw but when she and the stewardess look out the window there\u2019s nothing there.<\/p>\n

Now Bob is afraid that he is hallucinating.\u00a0 But shortly afterward he sees the creature again and he tries to get the crew to see it.\u00a0 He tells them that the creature is tampering with one of the engines.\u00a0 The flight engineer pretends to believe but Bob sees through his charade.\u00a0 Bob says, \u201cI won\u2019t say another word.\u00a0 I\u2019ll see us crash first.\u201d\u00a0 When the flight crew gives him a sleeping pill, he pretends to swallow it.\u00a0 When Julia falls asleep Bob leaves his seat and steals a gun out of the holster of a sleeping policeman.\u00a0 When he gets back to his seat and sees the gremlin at work again, he fastens his seat belt, wakes Julia up and asks her to get him a drink of water and when she leaves, he pulls the emergency exit handle.\u00a0 The window flies out and the depressurization and wind speed almost pull Bob out of his seatbelt and pin him against the outside of the fuselage.\u00a0 The gremlin sees him and trundles toward him menacingly.\u00a0 Bob pulls his body forward, brings up the gun and fires all six rounds into the gremlin apparently killing it.<\/p>\n

The next scene is Bob under a blanket on a stretcher being removed from the plane and waiting on the tarmac for an ambulance to bring him to an insane asylum.\u00a0 He tells Julia that it\u2019s all over but no one believes what he\u2019s done but that soon they will believe.\u00a0 In the ending monologue by Serling he shows us the damage to the engine visible on the wing and tells us that soon other people will know and believe Bob\u2019s story.<\/p>\n

The story is fun because of its wild nuttiness.\u00a0 The gremlin creature\u2019s suit and facial makeup is pathetic.\u00a0 It looks like something that you might buy in a cheap Halloween Costume Store.\u00a0 Whenever anyone but Shatner is looking the monster jumps off the wing and it\u2019s obvious that a wire is involved.\u00a0 And when the gremlin is advancing on Shatner\u2019s character at the end of the episode, he walks like he\u2019s stuck on flypaper.\u00a0 The whole effect is laughably bad.<\/p>\n

But what truly makes this story so special is Shatner\u2019s facial expressions.\u00a0 Many of his grimaces at seeing the gremlin are hilarious but I have two favorite moments.<\/p>\n

The first is when Bob first sees the gremlin pull back the engine cowling and start tampering with the wiring.\u00a0 The Shatner\u2019s masklike expression of terror is uproarious.<\/p>\n

The second moment is when he is trying to steal the gun from the policeman\u2019s holster, Shatner\u2019s attempt to look guilty and sneaky at the same moment is pure Shatner gold.<\/p>\n

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, anyone who can\u2019t laugh at these two scenes has a heart of stone.<\/p>\n

This episode is obviously an A+.\u00a0 Going beyond the scope of these Twilight Zone reviews this review will be a part of the ShatnerKhan corpus of scholarly papers.\u00a0 I will use this as the basis for a more detailed examination of this very important part of the Shatner canon.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the greatest Twilight Zone episodes.\u00a0 The magnificent awfulness of Bill Shatner\u2019s acting is on full display.   The story is simple and short<\/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":[2166,1998,1997,38,1355,1194,44,309,265,1691,2168,1891,154,1692,838,837,2167],"class_list":["post-7775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-tv-reviews","category-twilight-zone","tag-a-demigod-of-bad-acting","tag-gremlin","tag-nightmare-at-20000-feet","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-rod-serling","tag-sci-fi","tag-sci-fi-tv-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-sff-tv-show-reviews","tag-shatneriana","tag-shatnerkhan","tag-tv-review","tag-tv-reviews","tag-twilight-zone","tag-william-shatner","tag-william-shatner-a-demigod-of-bad-acting"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Twilight Zone \u2013 Complete Series Review \u2013 Season 5 Episode 3 \u2013 Nightmare at 20,000 Feet - 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