I’ve got old episodes of The Twilight Zone playing in the background while I’m working and I’m super in love with a particular episode called “I Shot an Arrow into the Air”, and for a specific reason.
In the episode, some proto-astronauts (the episode aired in 1960, 9 years before Apollo 11) land on an alien landscape and quickly devolve into Lord of the Flies shit, but (spoilers for a 55 year old TV episode!) it’s actually Earth all along. They never even escaped the atmosphere. They just landed in the desert somewhere. Not exactly mind-blowing, but they weren’t all winners.
The reason I love the episode is because of the title, plain and simple. “I Shot an Arrow into the Air” has a secret hidden in it and when you realize what it is, that’s more mind-blowing than the episode itself. What happens when you shoot an arrow into the air?
It comes back down. The twist is right in the title.
Such a small, but clever detail. It’s very Serling.
You must log in to post a comment.