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Rating:  -
A real gem for any Twilight Zone Buff! Lists all the actors as well as story line for each episode. If you see this out of print book better grab it! Hopefully now that there is a new DVD compilation out this book will be republished.
Rating: -
I love this book!!! It has everything for a twilight zone fan. It first has an introduction to Rod Serling Then goes on to tell about the show. Then it explains about each season and has every episode in order by air date. Every episode has a picture information about the episode including Rods introduction and outro,Who it was written by, the producer, Director and a few other things plus the sum of the episode then goes into a sort of interveiw with special people behind the twilight zone. so basically your learnign something special about every episode. It has all the information you would need about the twilight zone. It was a spectacular book. I suggest it as a BUY!!!
Rating:  -
Zicree's Twilight Zone Companion is alright as a reference guide for information on original airing dates, credits, and backstage tidbits. The organization of the book could have been more user-friendly but nothing to quibble about. Interviews with those associated with the program were also interesting and worth the price of admission.
Zicree is docked two stars for presenting his critiques as anything other than completely subjective. He is welcome to his opinions as we all have favorite episodes and ones that we find less enjoyable. That's the nature of art in any form. For me, the problem is with the fact that Zicree doesn't at least admit up front that his opinions have less to do with the quality of a given story and more to do with a leftist world view. His apologetics for all things Socialist (see his comments on Khruschev and Castro) coupled with a hatred for traditional American culture (see his comments about an episode concerning Custer, for example) are grating to say the least. While one may argue these geopolitical points in a different setting, a guide to a TV series, in my opinion, appears to be an ill chosen forum.
Just a closing comment here: Zicree could not bring himself to find any good thing to say about contributer Earl Hamner's episodes. It seems to me that it may have more to do with Hamner's later work in the Walton's, a series with a very traditional viewpoint that is the antithesis of Zicree's left-wing dogma, than with the quality of Hamner's TZ scripts.
Rating: -
I was watching a Twilight Zone marathon the other day and found myself constantly referring to this book each time I saw an actor with a familiar face. This would lead me to look at other interesting tidbits that the author has gleamed. There is a treasure-trove of information about each episode smartly laid out in chronological order with a complete index at the end for easy reference. Each episode has a very well written synopsis so if you find yourself interrupted during an episode you never saw before, you can always read in detail what you missed.
This is well worth the $10.85 that Amazon is offering it for and it is probably the best companion book to a television series that I have ever seen!
Rating:  -
This companion book is very necessary for any fan of The Twilight Zone. It offers, interviews, insight, cast lists, dates, EVERYTHING; even an extensive look into the lives and/or backgrounds of Rod Serling and the other writers - which I enjoyed.
Where it annoyed me is the fact that Zicree ends up criticizing and suggesting for us what to think of many episodes. Throughout the whole book, he bashes scripts (eg. "If such and such were changed or taken out, it would have been better." "This script is cliche-ed"), actors and actresses (eg. "...with and uninspired performance by..."), directors (eg. "...in the hands of any other director, this could have been great...").
Zicree even "nit picks" on facts: there's an episode in which he points out that Rod Serling had gotten the distance from Earth to the planet Venus wrong. LOL WHO CARES?!! Serling was an overworked writer (which Zicree makes very clear, but still decides to nit pick), not a NASA engineer! There's also another passage in which he proclaims an episode a disappointment just because the plot is slightly possible. "Any episode that is this grounded in reality, should be considered a disappoinment." Ok, thanks for letting us know Marc. *sigh* Pleeease... Further in the book, he starts off an episode's commentary with, "Despite the basically absurd premise..." WHAT?! It's science fiction! It's the TWILIGHT ZONE! Aren't all the stories based on absurd premises?! Not to mention, that aforementioned quote about being "too grounded in reality" - now the TZ is too absurd for him?!? What an annoying little man this Zicree dude is...
I was hoping for more behind the scenes info such as commentary from people who actually worked on the episodes, or how certain effects were accomplished in such an era. While there is a lot of those two things too; I was hoping for a lot more it. And A LOT less of the writer's feelings and bashings of the episodes he felt like picking on.
Still this book is a required read for any fan.
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