Twilight Zone marathons are one of my favorite things about New Year’s and the Fourth of July. Sure, I have every episode on DVD, and I could watch them online. I still love watching the marathons though. Maybe it’s like hearing a song I like on the radio vs. listening to it at home on my iPod. It’s like there’s a communal thing going on. Somewhere out there, someone’s sharing the experience with you. Plus, it’s part nostalgia.
I’ve been watching the marathons since the mid-80s when 11 Alive in New York used to run them. (Channel 11 was one of the first cable channels we got when I was a kid, and it carried a lot of my favorite stuff including Tom & Jerry and the super cheap Marvel Super-Hero cartoons where it looked like they just cut characters out of comic book panels and moved them around.) Does anyone out there know when the first Twilight Zone marathon ran? The earliest I remember was connected to The Twilight Zone movie. I can’t say for sure if it was when the movie was released in theaters, or when it first went to basic cable as opposed to premium channels like HBO. I know I watched one or two or more of the marathons in the 80s, but it wasn’t until sometime in the early 90s that I started watching them twice a year. Early on, I would just come across them while channel surfing. I noticed that it seemed to be a regular event, and I’d make a note to watch the next one, but I’d forget and find the next one while channel surfing. After a few years of that, I finally came to expect the marathons, and I’d scan the TV listings close to the Fourth and New Year’s. Between marathons I often got an intense craving to watch lots of Twilight Zone episodes, so for awhile I recorded the marathons so I could watch them again. I had a goal of taping all the episodes. There are so many episodes, that no marathon I remember ever used them all. So for years, I kept coming across episodes I hadn’t seen before, or which I didn’t remember seeing before. Once the series came out on DVD, I didn’t have a reason to record the episodes any more. When the Sci-Fi Channel got the rights and announced they would be doing the marathons, I was frantic to get the Sci-Fi Channel. My cable provider at the time didn’t carry it though. Fortunately, 11 Alive continued to run the marathons. Unfortunately, they didn’t carry them regularly anymore. For instance, there was a 4th of July or two where I had to settle for Star Trek marathons instead. (I love the original Star Trek though.) By the time 11 Alive completely stopped running them, we finally had the Sci-Fi Channel.
I no longer try to watch the marathons all the way through, BUT lately I’ve been keeping lists of which episodes appeared and when they appeared. For years, I’d watch the marathon and suddenly feel tormented trying to remember which episodes I’d watched in the previous few hours. Plus, I’d wonder what episodes I missed when I fell asleep late at night or other times I wasn’t watching. Now since I no longer even attempt to stay awake though the whole marathon (and I sometimes get stuck working through parts of marathons), I depend on the program guide for our satellite or cable TV (depending on which one we have at the time) to look up the episodes before the marathon starts.
This year there was a problem. I had to work the first day and the episode titles from 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM weren’t listed. The guide simply gave a generic series description for the episodes broadcast at those times. Fortunately, someone found TV listings online which had all the titles. I got home part way through “The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms.”
One thing I noticed especially on the first day is that the commercials came in at bizarre times rather than in natural breaks for them. Characters would virtually be in the middle of saying or doing something and suddenly a commercial was going. It was pretty annoying. Commercials for the “Definitive” edition of Twilight Zone DVDs appeared again this year. I didn’t notice them mentioning the extras about Rod Serling’s writing classes. They mainly pushed commentaries by actors involved in various episodes. Yeah, they’re commercials, but they enhance the marathons. Of course, it’s not as cool as the time (or maybe it’s times) that 11 Alive had commentators/ guests discussing the episodes or when they had factoids and things like that between episodes.
One thing I really loved about this marathon is that it was a true marathon. Sci-Fi usually breaks away for a few hours to show infomercials before resuming the marathon. This time, it went straight through from start to finish. That was awesome!
Also, during certain stretches, I assume Sci-Fi continues to show uncut versions of the episodes. I’m guessing that’s what accounts for the odd start and end times of a number of episodes. When Sci-Fi first showed uncut episodes a few years ago, they hyped it a great deal. I don’t remember them mentioning it at all this year, but again, I believe they continue to do it in the stretches where the episodes aren’t starting and ending at regular half hour intervals while at other times they are probably showing “cut” versions as they appeared in syndication for years. Again, I don’t know for certain. I’m just assuming.
Here’s the list for the 2009 New Year’s Marathon on the Sci-Fi Channel.
December 31, 2008
8:00 AM The Thirty-Fathom Grave (hour long)
9:00 AM Mr. Garrity and the Graves
9:30 AM A World of His Own
10:00 AM Nothing in the Dark
10:30 AM The Fear
11:00 AM Hocus-Pocus and Frisby
11:30 AM The Arrival
12:00 PM Deaths-Head Revisited
12:30 PM The Shelter
1:00 PM The Hunt
1:30 PM The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms
2:00 PM Queen of the Nile
2:30 PM Night Call
3:00 PM Mr. Dingle, the Strong
3:30 PM Mr. Bevis
4:00 PM One for the Angels
4:30 PM The Little People
5:01 PM A Hundred Yards Over the Rim
5:31 PM The Old Man in the Cave
6:01 PM Long Distance Call
6:32 PM Little Girl Lost
7:02 PM The Odyssey of Flight 33
7:34 PM The Hitch-Hiker
8:05 PM The Eye of the Beholder
8:39 PM Where is Everybody?
9:10 PM Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?
9:44 PM The Obsolete Man
10:17 PM To Serve Man
10:51 PM The Masks
11:24 PM The Invaders
11:57 PM The Midnight Sun
January 1, 2009
12:31 AM Five Characters in Search of an Exit
1:01 AM A Most Unusual Camera
1:31 AM I Shot an Arrow Into the Air
2:01 AM A Kind of Stopwatch
2:31 AM The Rip Van Winkle Caper
3:01 AM Dead Man’s Shoes
3:31 AM In Praise of Pip
4:01 AM What’s in the Box?
4:31 AM And When the Sky Was Opened
5:01 AM Jess-Belle (Hour)
6:00 AM I Dream of Genie (Hour)
7:00 AM Twenty-Two
7:30 AM Once Upon A Time
8:00 AM Black Leather Jackets
8:30 AM Nightmare as a Child
9:00 AM A Thing About Machines
9:30 AM A Nice Place to Visit
10:00 AM The Silence
10:30 AM Escape Clause
11:00 AM Mirror Image
11:29 AM Two
12:01 PM The Changing of the Guard
12:31 PM Mr. Denton on Doomsday
1:01 PM Walking Distance
1:31 PM The Last Flight
2:01 PM People Are Alike All Over
2:31 PM The Grave
3:01 PM Night of the Meek
3:32 PM A Game of Pool
4:02 PM Nick of Time
4:32 PM Number Twelve Looks Just Like You
5:02 PM Stopover in a Quiet Town
5:32 PM The Bewitchin’ Pool
6:02 PM Probe 7 - Over and Out
6:32 PM The Dummy
7:02 PM The Howling Man
7:36 PM I Sing the Body Electric
8:09 PM Time Enough at Last
8:43 PM Living Doll
9:17 PM The Monsters are Due on Maple Street
9:51 PM Kick the Can
10:24 PM Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
10:58 PM Third From the Sun
11:31 PM A Stop at Willoughby
January 2, 2009
12:04 AM It’s a Good Life
12:37 AM A Penny for Your Thoughts
1:07 AM The After Hours
1:37 AM The Lonely
2:07 AM Execution
2:37 AM I Am the Night - Color Me Black
3:07 AM The Mighty Casey
3:37 AM The Midnight Sun (Repeat)
4:07 AM The Four of Us Are Dying
4:37 AM The Mirror
5:07 AM No Time Like the Past
THE END
