that essential quality that is Media As Viewed By Sonya's Brain.
Thank you. I always hope it bears some relation to Media as Viewed by Other Interested Parties! I would like people to be able to see what I see and appreciate/disagree with it, not wonder where the hell I got that incomprehensible headcanon.
(I mean, I'd read you review the phone book, but that's because in any case you'd only review the phone book if you had interesting things to say about it.)
Well, I would try to find an interesting phone book.
I've never actually seen any of The Twilight Zone, but I get the impression it specialized in fascinatingly ambiguous, or at least that it was at its best when walking that tightrope.
It's one of the shows I have difficulty evaluating in the aggregate because I saw so much of it in childhood and adolescence: "The Last Flight" was actually unusual in staying so completely off my radar until now. The constant between all the episodes was some kind of speculative element, whether science fiction, the supernatural, the fantastic in all grades from ambiguous to outright, or just plain weird fiction, almost always combined with some socially or politically relevant theme. Some of the stories were comedic, although a percentage of the funny ones also have really nasty bites. The twist ending is the best-known feature, but it's not actually universal. There isn't one in "The Last Flight," for example—hearing the end of Decker's story from a character who didn't know the middle of it is the last click of a puzzle-piece, not a zinger. What I really like about the script in addition to Haigh's performance is how explicitly it engages with the show's title conceit. Serling's first-season voiceover describes the Twilight Zone as "a fifth dimension . . . as vast as space and as timeless as infinity . . . the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition . . . it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge . . . the dimension of imagination." Most episodes, then, use it as license for any kind of non-mimetic fiction: if it couldn't quite happen in our world today, it's taking place in the Twilight Zone. Which is a nice destabilizing idea of its own, that at any moment you could step out of the ordinary world and into somewhere the rules of reality don't quite apply (and never notice until it's too late), but I just enjoy that Matheson straight-out builds his story around a liminal space, a little window of uncertainty within which the course of history is undecided until Terry Decker makes the choice either to save his own skin or risk sacrificing it, not just for his old friend but for people he's never met, many of whom aren't even alive in his past-present day; an uncollapsed wavefront. And history ends up going the way it has always gone, but it didn't have to. Nothing worse would have happened to Decker than having to live with himself, in 1959. You can envision a downer version of the story where he decides to wait for the arrival of Air Vice-Marshal Mackaye, only to find himself waiting forever for a man who ceased to exist in 1917. I'm just think it's neater, and definitely more ambiguous, as it is.
(I realize also, belatedly, that the way that Decker talks about time in this episode reminds me of The Dark Is Rising. I'm not sure what to make of that, but at this hour fic is probably not the best option.)
no subject
Thank you. I always hope it bears some relation to Media as Viewed by Other Interested Parties! I would like people to be able to see what I see and appreciate/disagree with it, not wonder where the hell I got that incomprehensible headcanon.
(I mean, I'd read you review the phone book, but that's because in any case you'd only review the phone book if you had interesting things to say about it.)
Well, I would try to find an interesting phone book.
I've never actually seen any of The Twilight Zone, but I get the impression it specialized in fascinatingly ambiguous, or at least that it was at its best when walking that tightrope.
It's one of the shows I have difficulty evaluating in the aggregate because I saw so much of it in childhood and adolescence: "The Last Flight" was actually unusual in staying so completely off my radar until now. The constant between all the episodes was some kind of speculative element, whether science fiction, the supernatural, the fantastic in all grades from ambiguous to outright, or just plain weird fiction, almost always combined with some socially or politically relevant theme. Some of the stories were comedic, although a percentage of the funny ones also have really nasty bites. The twist ending is the best-known feature, but it's not actually universal. There isn't one in "The Last Flight," for example—hearing the end of Decker's story from a character who didn't know the middle of it is the last click of a puzzle-piece, not a zinger. What I really like about the script in addition to Haigh's performance is how explicitly it engages with the show's title conceit. Serling's first-season voiceover describes the Twilight Zone as "a fifth dimension . . . as vast as space and as timeless as infinity . . . the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition . . . it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge . . . the dimension of imagination." Most episodes, then, use it as license for any kind of non-mimetic fiction: if it couldn't quite happen in our world today, it's taking place in the Twilight Zone. Which is a nice destabilizing idea of its own, that at any moment you could step out of the ordinary world and into somewhere the rules of reality don't quite apply (and never notice until it's too late), but I just enjoy that Matheson straight-out builds his story around a liminal space, a little window of uncertainty within which the course of history is undecided until Terry Decker makes the choice either to save his own skin or risk sacrificing it, not just for his old friend but for people he's never met, many of whom aren't even alive in his past-present day; an uncollapsed wavefront. And history ends up going the way it has always gone, but it didn't have to. Nothing worse would have happened to Decker than having to live with himself, in 1959. You can envision a downer version of the story where he decides to wait for the arrival of Air Vice-Marshal Mackaye, only to find himself waiting forever for a man who ceased to exist in 1917. I'm just think it's neater, and definitely more ambiguous, as it is.
(I realize also, belatedly, that the way that Decker talks about time in this episode reminds me of The Dark Is Rising. I'm not sure what to make of that, but at this hour fic is probably not the best option.)