The Decades channel Independence Day weekend marathon of Rod Serling’s
The Twilight Zone continues today, and, once again, there are some absolute classics being televised today. Chief among them: at 9 a.m. ET, Agnes Moorehead in 1961’s “The Invaders” (pictured), playing a woman defending her remote farmhouse from a sudden invasion by tiny aliens from outer space, who land on her roof in a miniature flying saucer and set out to attack her with their itty-bitty but still effective weaponry. It’s the episode I highlighted, and explained the lesson I took from it, in Mark Dawidziak’s delightful 2017 book,
Everything I Need to Know I Learned from The Twilight Zone. (And I wasn’t the only guest contributor to single out “The Invaders.” Also in Dawidziak’s book, raving about it, is someone who knows a lot more than I do about outer space: astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.) And there are other classic episodes you can
Zone out with today on Decades. At 1 p.m. ET, there’s 1963’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” in which William Shatner takes a terrifying plane ride that has nothing to do with exposure to a coronavirus. And later today, there are the show’s two iconic episodes about the pursuit of a more perfect, or at least attractive, identity. Donna Douglas, about to star as Elly May Clampett on
The Beverly Hillbillies, makes a significant appearance in 1960’s “Eye of the Beholder” at 6 p.m. ET, in an episode about a woman undergoing plastic surgery to improve her looks. And at 11:30 p.m. ET, there’s “Number 12 Looks Just Like You,” in which a young woman is less eager to conform to society’s standards – but ends up succumbing. Watch just these four episodes today, and learn why
The Twilight Zone has never been surpassed by any subsequent anthology series, not even its closest and best compatriot,
Black Mirror.