10 Must-See ‘Twilight Zone’ Episodes From SyFy’s New Year’s Marathon
For the 23rd straight year, Syfy’s New Year’s Twilight Zone marathon allows viewers to revel in aliens, robots and wowsa twists from the Rod Serling classic (1959–64).
According to the signpost up ahead, from late December 30 through early Tuesday morning on January 1, you can see 112 of the anthology’s 156 episodes, remastered in high-def. Here are 10 stops along the way:
SUNDAY LATE-NIGHT
1:30am/12:30c “The Silence” (Season 2, Episode 25)
In one of the rare Zone episodes without a sci-fi, futuristic or supernatural component, a men’s club snoot says he’ll pay a chatty member $500,000 to shut up for a year. The ending to this A Quiet Place Lite will leave you speechless.
3:30am/2:30c “Two” (Season 3, Episode 1)
A soldier (Charles Bronson) and a gun-toting Russian (Elizabeth Montgomery) tentatively connect in a postwar Anytown. Hope? Gender parity? Yes!
MONDAY DAYTIME
7am/6c “The Midnight Sun” (Season 3, Episode 10)
Extreme weather alert: Its orbit out of whack, Earth creeps toward the sun, making life for some New Yorkers a sweaty “Why us?” nightmare. The actors (including Lois Nettleton of In the Heat of the Night) shot the Serling-written episode on a stuffy L.A. soundstage in the dead of summer.
Noon/11am c “Kick the Can” (Season 3, Episode 21)
In a wistful tale, an elderly man gets his wish to be a kid again.
2/1c “Little Girl Lost” (Season 3, Episode 26)
Sci-fi author Richard Matheson wrote, Psycho composer Bernard Herrmann scored — and The Simpsons spoofed — this story of a girl who stumbles into an otherworldly realm, all pre–Stranger Things.
MONDAY NIGHT
7/6c “The Odyssey of Flight 33” (Season 2, Episode 18)
The passengers and crew of a Boeing 707 spot dinosaurs below? That one-ups Manifest!
7:30/6:30c “It’s a Good Life” (Season 3, Episode 8), “The Invaders” (Season 2, Episode 15), “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” (Season 5, Episode 3)
This trio spotlighting TV faves includes Zone’s most unsettling episode of all: A small-town brat (Billy Mumy of Lost in Space) can wish any irksome soul (even his mom, Cloris Leachman?) “into the cornfield.” Next, in an especially stark outing, a mute backwoods type (Agnes Moorehead, aka Bewitched’s Endora) is terrified by a tiny spaceship that lands in her shed.
Then, skipping ahead to 9/8c, freak out along with nervous airplane passenger Bob (William Shatner) — a role John Lithgow handled in 1983’s Twilight Zone: The Movie and Adam Scott may pay homage to in CBS All Access’s 2019 take — as he spots a monster on the wing.
9:30/8:30c “Time Enough at Last” (Season 1, Episode 8)
Burgess Meredith, as the maybe-sole survivor of a nuclear war, loves that he has endless hours to read, without all of society’s noise. The inevitable twist is shattering.
The Twilight Zone New Year’s Marathon, Sunday, December 30, 11/10c, Syfy
