Discuss The Twilight Zone
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Reported Problem for The Twilight Zone
posted by FabioSTAFFMOD on May 8, 2023 at 12:24 PM
Item: The Twilight Zone
Language: en-US
Type of Problem: Incorrect_content
Extra Details: Hello,
as per title, I'd like you pay attention that the first and second season aren't formed by single episode, but a single episode is intended to be composed by segments. Consequently, for example the pilot (S01E01) is an episode with segments titled "Shatterday" and "A Little Peace and Quiet". This criteria is used along through season 1 and season 2 in which the so-called segments range from 2 to 3.
In this way the total episodes of season 1 reduce to 24 and the total ones of season 2 reduce to 11.
I could aggregate the episodes, but after that (if you agree) you have to delete the rest that advance.
Reply by superboy97
on May 8, 2023 at 12:30 PM
Do you have official proofs about the way the series was originally released ?
Reply by Fabio
on May 8, 2023 at 2:51 PM
I have wikipedia only which says "The multi-segment format liberated the series from the usual time constraints of episodic television, allowing stories ranging in length from 8-minutes to 40-minute mini-movies."
On IMDB: "Original network episodes ran one hour, with two or three stories per instalment. These episodes were reedited into half hour episodes for syndication along with newly produced half-hour episodes, with each half hour consisting of a single story from the original one-hour version."
The dvd/bd versions (as mentioned above) are separated, but I don't think that in the 80's they would air e.g. a 9 minutes episode in one night unless to merge with other episodes.
Welcome if you could find out more sources, but anyway I think it's something to investigate.
Reply by Fabio
on May 10, 2023 at 9:37 PM
Another proof is that my US DVD version, the initial theme song is only present in the first episode and the end credits in the last one.
For example the first two episodes of season 1: "Shatterday" and "A Little Peace and Quiet". Following the "segments theory" they could be respectively the first and second segment of the whole episode aired in 1985. Indeed the opening theme song is present in Shatterday only, and the end credits are present in A Little Peace and Quiet only. Same thing for the other so-called segments.
Generally in DVD/BD versions the episodes are sold as they originally were produced (sometimes without the cut of TV network and with their own opening theme and end credits) and the eventual merges could be a clever jokes of the networks itself. But this is not the case.
By the way, didn't you find anything for example on the wayback machine?
Reply by superboy97
on May 11, 2023 at 2:13 AM
The Wayback machine wasn't available at that time.
Reply by Fabio
on May 27, 2023 at 11:06 PM
Hi there. What decisions could we take? Can we collapse the episode/segments into one episode only?
I mean, the first 3 episode of the 1st season, are three segments of the real first episode of the serie. Same for the 4th and 5th (they'll compose the S01E02 episode) and so on.
Reply by Fabio
on February 13, 2025 at 7:08 AM
Following admin suggestion in other discussions I opened, I made research on newspapers about this show and I discovered the following.
About the first season this link demonstates that every episode has two, most three episodes at evening:
new york times twilight zone premiere
Then I found out all the schedules for cbs about the first season to proof how to aggregate all the segments:
Since it takes a long time, later next days I will investigate for 2nd and 3rd season in the same
PS: I hope the links work
Reply by superboy97
on February 13, 2025 at 2:23 PM
Your links work, but the text is only correctly readable with a subscription. I suggest that you add a snippet from the relevant part of the pages.
Reply by Fabio
on February 13, 2025 at 2:54 PM
Ok, yesterday I thought to this but in the options I didn't find the button to do that. Could you kindly tell me how to add snapshots to the topic?
In this way, since I made a free 7 days subscription, I'll do it for the other 80's shows for which I have an open discussions before it expires. Thank you.
Reply by superboy97
on February 13, 2025 at 2:57 PM
You need to store them to an image storage site (https://imgur.com/ for example) and post the link here.
Reply by Fabio
on February 13, 2025 at 7:56 PM
Some notes: the fixes regard season 1 and 2 only, since season 3 was broadcasted as single half-an-hour episode. In season 2, in december 1986 were broadcasted three half-an-hour episodes. But this is true for that month only. The rest of the season was broadcasted with aggregated segments. I posted the same the snapshots of these 3 december episodes just for continuity.
Here's the links, I hope now they are ok and visibile:
Reply by superboy97
on February 15, 2025 at 6:23 PM
They are visible, but I need to check with the other moderators : On the second snippet here, for example, it is listed that there are "3 episodes", not "3 parts".
Reply by Fabio
on February 15, 2025 at 9:45 PM
Let's see what they say, but don't forget the first link I posted here in the first post (dated Sept 27th, 1985), where at a certain point it says:
"The series gets off to a strong start with two stories (most episodes will contain three)"
Sometimes they say stories, sometimes episodes.
Take in count that in these past days when I consulted the 80's newspapers online, I noted that the term "part" is mostly and widely used to indicate "part 1 of 2", or "part 2 of 2", in case of one episode splitted in two parts (or more) and aired in two (or more) different weeks.
Anyway I'll wait for this and other discussions I opened recently.
Thanks for your support and work.
Reply by superboy97
on March 3, 2025 at 5:18 PM
Done.