Sixty years ago, on October 2, 1959, television was irrevocably changed with the airing of The Twilight Zone’s pilot episode, “Where is Everybody?” This episode, and its writer Rod Serling, blended science fiction with adult drama and fear in a way that hadn’t really existed before. In a decade dedicated to atomic monsters aimed toward kids, no less. The pilot episode heralded in an anthology series that spanned 156 episodes and multiple revivals, which paved the way for more grown-up sci-fi fare like Star Trek and The Outer Limits. Moreover, it established the blueprint for the show, and classic tropes and elements that made it one of television’s most influential episodes of all time.
In “Where is Everybody?”, Mike Ferris (Earl Holliman) finds himself alone on a road with no memory of how he got there. As he explores the nearby town, he finds signs that life was recently there – cigarette smoke, running faucets- but no actual human beings. Only mannequins. The further he investigates, the more desperate and panic-driven he becomes. Once Ferris finally snaps from loneliness and isolation, the episode’s twist is revealed; he’s an astronaut in training, confined to an isolation chamber to test his ability to withstand being alone for the length of a trip to the moon and back.
The episode established Serling’s opening and closing narration, a central mystery, and the infamous twist ending. “Where is Everybody” also happens to be one of the few episodes that don’t have any supernatural or otherworldly elements, but the lack of supernatural is only revealed in the twist ending- when the viewer ultimately discovers Ferris’ broken mind was hallucinating the empty town.
Serling, an Army vet and radio and television scriptwriter, had grown tired of corporate censorship. An activist, he purposely wrote and created a sci-fi/fantasy show, knowing he could hide his social commentary from the censors within the genre space. It worked like a charm, too. Each episode focused on psychological or emotional drama, and the critics ate it up. Serling went on to explore all sorts of mature subject matter through the morality tales in this series.
As for the pilot episode, “Where is Everybody?” helped set a standard for the Last Man on Earth trope. Ferris winds up mistaking a mannequin for a woman in the episode, and once he realizes his mistake, he strikes up a conversation with the inanimate object. How many times have we seen that before? In the Omega Man and I Am Legend, both adaptations of Richard Matheson’s novel, the lead protagonist and last man on Earth speaks to mannequins in lieu of actual human interaction. In May, the titular character is isolated despite actually being near people, and uses her doll Suzy as a stand-in for a real-life friend.
The episode opens with Ferris coping with amnesia. He’s immediately dropped into a new setting with no idea how or when he arrived. We’ve seen this in the decades since, too. In episodes of Doctor Who and The Outer Limits. The entire plot revolves around this in Dark City, and even Hancock. Then there’s Jacob’s Ladder, a movie about an Army combat medic that begins in Vietnam before suddenly waking up in New York City, where he subsequently embarks on a hallucinogenic trip that blurs the lines between reality and horror fantasy. Only in the final moments do we see the twist that clicks the truth in place. American Psycho follows a similar formula as well. The town of Oakwood that Ferris is exploring might look familiar to eagle-eyed cinephiles; The Oakwood town square is the same set used as Hill Valley in the Back to the Future films.
“Where is Everybody?” wasn’t even the initially intended pilot. Serling planned to kick off the series with “The Happy Place”, which revolved around society killing citizens once they reach the age of 60. The network, CBS, felt it was a bit too grim, so Serling gave in and wrote the pilot that came to pass. What made this series, and this episode, resonate over the past six decades was Serling’s ability to tap into the human condition in thought-provoking ways with the palatable delivery system of fantasy and sci-fi. Isolation was a recurring theme of The Twilight Zone, but also in general fiction stories and media.
Serling didn’t invent science fiction, but he did permanently alter perception of what it could be. Both his series, and the pilot, remains one of television’s most influential of all time.