Things I like

The other night, Steve asked me which was my favorite Twilight Zone. Despite the fact that there are any number of good classic options, I had to confess that the one I liked and remembered best, "A Matter of Minutes," wasn't from the original series at all and indeed wasn't even all that eerie. The plot is reminiscent of the later Stephen King novel The Langoliers (and Wikipedia tells me that it was in fact based on a Theodore Sturgeon story), but less creepy:

A married couple wake up one morning to the sound of construction. Workers in blue outfits, with blue vans and blue ladders, are busily taking all their furniture away and replacing it with new, identical furniture. Other workers are out in the street, building all kinds of things that already existed, artfully strewing litter about, and so on.

After some confusion, they meet up with the foreman. He explains to them that time is like a train, and every minute is like a train car. Each one has to be individually constructed and torn down later, once we're done with it. Our protagonists have somehow accidentally slipped into a minute a few hours ahead of the rest of the world.

Then there's a miniscule bit of narrative tension, because the powers that be don't want to let them get back to reality, but no one really tries all that hard to stop them. Eventually, they find their way to some out-of-the-way spot and hide out until their minute comes around, and poof! Time snaps back into place and all is well.

I loved this episode when I first saw it. It will already be manifestly evident to you why this is, even though it didn't dawn on me until well after the conversation reported above. To belabor the point:

• Forced layover
• In which nothing bad actually happens
• Despite some excitement and inconvenience to spice things up
• And there are no lasting unfortunate consequences
• Furthermore, you have pleasant company along for the ride
• And, thus, someone else who can share your memories of that time you had to spend three hours in the barren ol' future, where the faceless blue people are.

What could be nicer, really? Obviously the next step here should be to create a company called Inconvenient Inc. Sign up for their services and they will intervene in your daily life to cause carefully calibrated levels of disruption along any number of randomly assigned lines of mild adventure. Then, of course, you'll be in a Philip K. Dick novel, and you'll end up informing on yourself, joining a religion based on the principles of mercerized cotton, and hand-coding your emotions so that you feel more loyal to your employer. The choice is yours!

Comments

[ben]

If you know that you've arranged for it, will it be the same? You might reason that life already has some inconveniences so you'll never be able to tell whether any particular one has been arranged by the company or is endogenous, but in that case, why retain their services in the first place? And you'd only really be in a PKD novel if the efforts of Inconvenient, Inc. were, for whatever reason, stymied or subverted (life is inconvenient), resulting, by some incommodious vicus, in … precisely the inconveniences you would have had anyway. Differently caused, perhaps, but indistinguishable for your own purposes.

[matt]

Huh. That's, like, the only Twilight Zone episode I've ever seen.

[Ray Davis]

I showed Juliet the twitted owl pictures and read some of the accompanying post (editing as best I could on the way), she asked where that story was from, and I said you, and she said "What!?", and I explained a _link_ from you, and she said OK, and we agreed the startle was from the prose style not matching your standard.

The two "Twilight Zone"s I remember best are both super-creepy and neurotic (the plastic surgery episode from the original series, and "A Little Peace and Quiet" from the later series), but again the why is manifestly evident.

[snarkout.vox.com]

"Number 12 Looks Just Like You", Ray! I called it out as one of the original series episodes I remember.

Meanwhile, I was delighted to discover that the Wikipedia page for "I of Newton", a revival series episode in which mathematician George Jefferson accidentally summons the demonic Shepherd Book, has a list of the Devil's t-shirts. "Hell is a City Much Like Newark", indeed.

[redfox]

Ben: Excellent point re: the true PKD outcome. I like it. It reminds me (as many things do) of the "Ultimate Machine" that Claude Shannon made -- when you turn it on, a hand reaches out, flips the switch back to the off position, and retracts. The end.

Matt: I have a curious feeling it would not entirely stand up to re-watching.

Ray: On the other hand, I'd be delighted if my standard for photos matched those surly, surly pictures.

Steve: I was thinking "Eye of the Beholder," the one that might as well be titled "They're All Pig-Faced."

[snarkout.vox.com]

Alternate title: "Like 'Number 12 Looks Just Like You', But Stupider". At least it featured Elly Mae Clampett.