Great Moments In Television History #38: The Twilight Zone Premiers On CBS

“There is a sixth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call The Twilight Zone.”

66 years ago today, viewers heard those words for the first time when The Twilight Zone premiered on CBS. Those words were delivered by the show’s creator and the writer of its first episode, Rod Serling. (In future episodes, “the sixth dimension” would be relabeled “the fifth dimension.”)

The first episode of The Twilight Zone starred Earl Holliman as a man who finds himself walking down a dirt road with no memory of how he got there. He sees signs of civilization — a police station, a diner, and a movie theater — but no people. The isolation and the loneliness threaten to drive him mad but, at the end of the episode, it’s revealed to have all been a simulation performed by the military to test whether the man, as astronaut, will be able to mentally handle being alone in space.

The barrier of loneliness: The palpable, desperate need of the human animal to be with his fellow man. Up there, up there in the vastness of space, in the void that is sky, up there is an enemy known as isolation. It sits there in the stars waiting, waiting with the patience of eons, forever waiting… in The Twilight Zone.

With no supernatural or extraterrestrial elements, this episode was not typical of what The Twilight Zone would eventually become. But, on October 2nd, 1959, it was enough to launch the show and make television history. It was truly a great moment in television history.