The best episodes of The Twilight Zone
Ranked by viewer rating, highs first. Vote on a placement to back it or contest it.
- 01
An elderly boys school teacher faces mandatory retirement and questions whether he's done anything with his life.
- 02
A former Nazi SS Captain arrives in a small Bavarian town, looking to visit Dachau, an old Concentration camp, wanting to remember what it was like during the war. However, the ghosts of the men he put to death soon arrive, looking to put him on trial for the part he played in their deaths and other crimes against humanity.
- 03
While traveling on a plane, a man who recently was treated for a nervous breakdown is convinced that a monster is outside, intent on destroying the plane. However, his wife and the flight attendants are hesitant to believe him.
- 04
An alien race, the Kanamits, come to Earth providing technology and guidance to turn the planet into a utopia. But one man questions their benevolence.
- 05
Henry Bemis is a bank teller who loves to read books. However, he gets in trouble for reading on his breaks at work and condemned by his wife at home when he attempts to read in his free time. Upon finding himself to be the lone survivor of a nuclear attack, Henry Bemis soon finds he has time enough to read any book he wants, only fate has other plans for him.
- 06
While shopping at a local department store, a young woman is looking for a thimble to give to her mother as a gift. After being advised to go to a non-existent floor to make her purchase, she has an encounter with a rude clerk and attempts to complain to the store manager, only to be locked in the store as it closes. It is at this time that the young woman comes to the realization that she is one of the store mannequins, who had the opportunity to live life as a real person for a month.
- 07
After learning that the wax museum that he works in will be closing down effective immediately, employee Martin Lombard Senescu frantically convinces his boss to let him store the wax figures in his "Murderers Row" exhibit until a buyer is found. However, it doesn't take long for Martin to become convinced that they're capable of killing again, and when a buyer is found, a new wax figure is added to the mix.
- 08
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
An adaptation of Ambrose Bierce's tale, Union Soldiers set out to hang Confederate prisoner Peyton Farquhar, but things don't go as planned when the rope breaks as Farquhar falls and apparently escapes in the river below.
- 09
The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street
Panic breaks out in a suburban neighborhood when the power goes out, and all contact with the outside world is lost. The people begin to suspect each other of being alien invaders out to conquer the planet.
- 10
In a not too distant future, a young woman hopes that plastic surgery will help her look "normal," after living her life as an unattractive freak.
- 11
Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up
When a pair of state troopers receive a call that an alien spaceship crashed in the woods near a roadside diner in the middle of a snowstorm, they have to try and figure out if one of the snowed-in bus travelers at the diner is not who he claims.
- 12
When a suburban dinner party is interrupted by an announcement that a nuclear attack on the U.S. is imminent, the party goers scramble home to try and find a way to survive. However, when several families discover that their neighbor, Dr. Stockton has built a bomb shelter for just such an occasion, everyone turns against one another in an attempt to be invited inside the shelter. Will things be able to return to normal if warning turns out to be false?
- 13
In a near-future fascist state, librarian Romney Wordsworth is declared obsolete and allowed to pick the method of his own execution.
- 14
While on his way back to the big city, a reporter by the name of Phillip Redfield gets lost on a series of backroads and finds his way into a small town called Paradise Valley, New Mexico. However, during his brief stay there, Redfield observes lots of spectacular events that he soon discovers occur due to advanced technology from another planet. When he informs the town elders that he plans on telling their story in his newspaper when he arrives back home, they decide to hold him prisoner. It soon doesn't take long for the town elders to reverse their decision.
- 15
Number Twelve Looks Just Like You
An unattractive young woman attempts to resist the pressure to transform into a beautiful woman and conform to new societal standards, where in a future society where everyone looks the same and lives for an extended length of time.
- 16
A six-year-old boy terrorizes the residents of Peaksville, Ohio, with special powers that control reality.
- 17
A man is given a stopwatch that halts time.
- 18
When an elderly, disabled woman starts to receive phone calls in the middle of the night, she is shocked at discovering they are from the ghost of a deceased beau.
- 19
A man named Mike Ferris finds himself walking down a deserted road toward an apparently uninhabited town. However, upon his arrival, he soon suspects that he is being watched, but not sure of by who. He then starts going crazy trying to figure out what's going on.
- 20
The dispirited residents of a nursing home are urged by one of their number to believe that they can recapture their youth by playing a children's game.Note: Steven Spielberg remade this as Segment II of Twilight Zone: The Movie, showing the nursing-home residents being offered a second chance at youth by their new arrival, Mr. Bloom (Scatman Crothers).
- 21
When a man's stepdaughter gets a new, talking doll, he gets rattled when it lets its negative feelings toward him known to only him.
- 22
When movie star Bunny Blake receives an opal ring from her hometown fan club, she sees it as an omen to go there for the town's annual picnic instead of flying to Rome to shoot a movie. Upon arriving in town, Bunny's older sister is both annoyed and curious as to why Bunny is so adamant about the picnic being called off. However, she soon learns the reason why is due to a plane crash that she has a connection to.
- 23
Three astronauts return from the first journey into space. However, one by one they disappear... and no one else remembers that they ever existed.
- 24
One night at a men's club, respected Colonel Archie Taylor grows tired of the constant chatter of fellow member Jamie Tennyson. As a result, Taylor offers Tennyson a wager: stay silent for one year and be paid $500,000 while living in a glass enclosed cell inside the men's club. However, after the wager is accepted, both men go to drastic measures to win.
- 25
A janitor (Buster Keaton) travels from 1890 to 1962, courtesy of a time helmet.
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