The Twilight Zone: Seasons 2 & 3 (1986 - 1988)

This collection completes the NEW TWILIGHT ZONE run during the '80s (Season 2 & 3 had 51 episodes).

Some of the outstanding episodes were "AQUA VITA" (about a "fountain of youth" w/ side effects), "SHELTER SKELTER" (w/ Joe Mantegna & Joan Allen, an abusive man and his neighbor is trapped in his bomb shelter), "THE HELLGRAMMITE METHOD" (an alcoholic has an alcohol tapeworm in his body which threatens to kill him unless he starves it), "THE COLD EQUATIONS" (an astronaut must decide between ejecting an innocent stowaway into space or risk the lives of the colony which needs an emergency vaccine), among some other gems.

The picture quality may not be HDTV but it's still crisper and more clear than when it was broadcast back in the '80s (and definitely better than even SuperVHS quality.)

SEASON 2 & 3 Episode List:

* The Once And Future King

* A Saucer Of Loneliness

* What Are Friends For?

* The Storyteller

* Nightsong

* Aqua Vita

* The After Hours

* Lost and Found

* The World Next Door

* The Toys Of Caliban

* The Convict's Piano

* The Road Less Travelled

* The Card

* The Junction

* Joy Ride

* Shelter Skelter

* Private Channel

* Time And Teresa Golowitz

* Voices In The Earth

* Song Of The Younger World

* The Girl I Married

* The Curious Case Of Edgar Witherspoon

* Extra Innings

* The Crossing

* The Hunters

* Dream Me A Life

* Memories

* The Hellgrammite Method

* Our Selena Is Dying

* The Call

* The Trance

* Acts Of Terror

* 20/20 Vision

* There Was An Old Woman

* The Trunk

* Appointment On Route 17

* The Cold Equations

* Stranger In Possum Meadow

* Street Of Shadows

* Something In The Walls

* A Game Of Pool

* The Wall

* Room 2426

* The Mind Of Simon Foster

* Cat And Mouse

* Rendezvous In A Dark Place

* Many, Many Monkeys

* Love Is Blind

* Crazy As A Soup Sandwich

* Special Service

* Father And Son Game

The Twilight Zone aired on CBS from 1985 to 1986 as a normal Friday primetime series. Though ratings were decent enough to warrant a fullscale renewal, in the fall of 1986 it was obvious things had changed: advertising plummeted, the show moved to Saturdays at 10 (a death knell), and episodes aired infrequently. Still, the second season has some great episodes: "The Storyteller" is haunting and worthy of the original series, "Aqua Vita" was deadly appropriate for the image-conscious mid-80s and still packs a punch, "Nightsong" is an eerie, captivating character study dominated by the always wonderful, understated Lisa Eilbacher. Season 3 was actually a syndicated response to the need to make more episodes in order to sell the show into syndication. Here the quality falls, to be sure, but again, some episodes stand out..."Cat and Mouse" has one of the finest endings of any Twilight Zone. All in all, this is a worthy collection to consider buying. Image Entertainment is to be praised for putting these episodes out: we might have expected never to see them on DVD. The first season was met with a lot of whining about "picture quality" (as if these episodes were digitally perfect in 1985), but these three seasons are worth owning as a worthy part of the Twilight Zone library. Would that we could say the same about the disgraceful 2002 series.

Although the second season was cut short (the series was cancelled by CBS mid-way through the run), there were still enough gems produced to make Rod Serling proud and make this worthwhile for fans. George R. R. Martin's "The Once & Future King" about an Elvis impersonator's encounter with the King himself is quite good. "A Saucerful of Lonliness" adapted by David Gerrold from Ted Sturgeon's story and featuring Shelley Duvall also works quite well. Likewise "The Toys of Caliban" works as an update of Jerome Bixby's "It's a Good Life". The real gem, though, is Alan Brennert's "Time & Teresa Golowitz" (he also wrote the script for third season gem "The Cold Equations" which was remade as a TV movie for the Sci-Fi Channel).

The third season although wildly uneven (it existed primarily so CBS would have enough episodes for syndication)does have a handful of memorable episodes. J. Michael Straczynski's "The Wall" and "The Mind of Simon Foster" recalled the (all too brief) glory of the 80's Zone. While the third season doesn't have any extras or commentary tracks, some of the stronger performances, scripts and direction (particularly by Atom Egoyan and Paul Lynch) help make the better episodes here shine. Working with a virtually nonexistant budget, writer/producer J. Michael Straczynski managed to make the third season distinctive because he wrote a lot of the scripts (part of the reason why is he had the ideas for a story but the other reason was because they didn't have all that much money to hire outside writers).

The audio is very good and the video shows a slight improvement over the first season boxed set. Both that season and the second season (I don't know about the third season) were edited on video with effects added in video as well which means that the videotape masters are the only complete versions of the shows. As a result, the image quality varies a bit with some digital flaws. The most glaring, though, is due to something called an interlace problem. This occurs during the telecine process (where video is transformed into a home video format like DVD). You'll notice on an HDTV compatible TV that there will be a momentary visual "wire mesh" that occurs during cuts between scenes. It's distracting but shouldn't prevent fans from picking up the series. This error will be most noticeable when using progressive scan DVD players and HDTV.

I've seen the series in both its original run and in its horrible syndicated cut version where forty-five minute episodes were butchered to 22 minutes and where 15 minute vingettes were expanded to 22 ruining a perfectly good story
Since the second second was shot on film and edited on tape, the image quality varies quite a bit. Overall it's pretty solid with nice colors although the image can occasionally be a bit blurry or lacking fine detail. The third season tends to look a bit better primarily because it was shot on 16 mm and edited for film before being transfered. These are the uncut (and unexpanded) original presentations pulled from the original 1 inch videotapes for the series. Image quality is pretty good overall. What's important is that these episodes will be seen (at least for the second season) in their original first run length since they were originally broadcast. This set, like the first set, has a booklet with credits for every single episode and nontating which ones have commentary, deleted scenes, etc. Since the third season had more episodes (but they were designed to fit into a 1/2 hour format)this set runs to 7 discs. It's a pity that Straczynski wasn't asked to do a commentary track for some of the stronger episodes he wrote.

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