In the realm of science fiction, Star Wars and Star Trek are generally considered to be the two biggest and most important franchises of all time. If you’re purely talking about profitability, that’s correct; those two have dominated TV and film for decades. However, if you factor in things like influence and impact, another sci-fi property ranks right up there with the big two.
In the realm of sci-fi, pretty much all roads lead to, or derive from, The Twilight Zone. And this landmark show is currently free to stream. You can currently watch The Twilight Zone for free with ads on Pluto TV, Fandango, and The Roku Channel.
Debuting in 1959, The Twilight Zone ran for five seasons on CBS, totaling 156 episodes. It was created by Rod Serling, a television pioneer who sought to expand what had been seen on television throughout the 1950s, much of which was taped plays and multi-camera sitcoms like I Love Lucy. To do this, he created The Twilight Zone, a single-camera anthology series where each episode would operate like a little movie (for most of its run, the show ran for a half-hour, but season 4 tried out an hour-long format before switching back to half-hours for season 5).
While every episode of The Twilight Zone has its own characters and premise, it often explores science fiction subjects like time travel and aliens, as well as horror staples like ghosts and possessed dolls. But that was just the surface-level stuff, as many of the deeper messages in the series tackled things like prejudice, loneliness, morality, and regret. The show was influenced by some of the earliest, greatest authors in science fiction, including the works of H.G.
Some of the best sci-fi writers of the 1950s also penned episodes, such as Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson. Serling himself, though, deserves the most credit, as he not only hosted every episode of the series, but also wrote nearly 100 episodes, too. Despite how much early science fiction and horror influenced The Twilight Zone, it has proven to be vastly more influential to future generations.
The obvious inspirations are shows like Black Mirror and The Outer Limits, as both of them are anthology series dealing with sci-fi and horror concepts. But shows like The X-Files, Fringe, Lost, Futurama, and many, many others were also informed by The Twilight Zone. The influence can be felt in film too, as Jordan Peele has said his 2019 movie Us was directly inspired by the season 1 Twilight Zone episode “Mirror Image,” and Chucky creator Don Mancini has pointed to the season 5 episode, “Living Doll” as an inspiration for his killer Good Guy doll.
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