This is what makes The Twilight Zone such a fascinating watch. Although corrupt, violent, generally unpleasant people get their comeuppance in the zone more often than not, being a good, honest, benevolent person is no guarantee that you won't end up with the rough end of the stick. However, the zone's sense of justice is often distinctly skewed. Sometimes it is a God like force which metes out justice or teaches characters a lesson.

This is because the nature of the zone is so elusive. All we know is that entering the twilight zone causes things to take a turn for the unusual but in exactly what way is impossible to tell until you're in the thick of it. Although Serling offers us a long spiel at the beginning of each show describing the zone, it is purposefully vague so as to not erase the mystery. Just as compelling was the nature of the twilight zone itself. People, their thoughts, choices, behavioural patterns and emotions were the story. Serling's wonderfully melodramatic, wordy scripts focused squarely on his characters rather than just utilising them as two dimensional pawns overwhelmed by the story. Often the supernatural element figured far less heavily in the story than the social element. To the networks it was a sci-fi show, a bunch of far fetched stories about unusual people. By adding in a supernatural element Serling could suddenly comment on whatever he wanted. It exposed corruption in authority figures, it exposed the sort of weaknesses inherent in mankind that American networks are still so unwilling to portray in their country's citizens. This was the sort of materiel that, in the 1950s, would never have made it to the screen unveiled. However, by using a genre that was generally considered to hold little creative value, Serling managed to slip plenty of subversive social and political satire past the censors without them picking up on it. This came at the price of quality entertainment and, despite the worthy targets of the scripts, it was more important for the bosses to ensure their funding was secure than it was to produce socially conscious programmes. Serling's early straight drama scripts had been cut to shreds by the networks whose main concerns were keeping the sponsors happy and not offending potential viewers. Rather than a simple collection of supernatural tales designed to give us the willies, Rod Serling set out to utilise the often underrated medium of Science Fiction and Fantasy to put forward his social commentary on mankind. The concept of 'The Twilight Zone' grabbed me immediately.

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