Is This The Best Anti-War Episode of The Twilight Zone?

One of the best things about TV in the 60s was that most shows didn’t have a huge writers' room with a lot of people getting involved in creating a single episode. Not like today, where shows are written by committee and the quality of the story suffers.

Rod Serling was clearly the head and the main director of where The Twilight Zone was going, and he made sure the writers knew it. Rod gave certain writers, like Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont, more room than others, but when it came down to the final script, Rod’s fingerprints were all over it.

One early script was titled “Third From the Sun” and was taken from a short story by Richard Matheson and turned into a knockout screenplay by Serling himself. It was the 2nd Twilight Zone script by Matheson, following up on the episode “And When the Sky Was Opened.” It was the beginning of a long relationship for Serling and Matheson, as Rod turned to him many times throughout the run of The Twilight Zone.

“Third From the Sun” was the perfect story for the Zone as it mixed all the elements that made the Zone famous. A man and his family against the world, elements of the future and science fiction, and, of course, the signature twist ending that the Twilight Zone was so famous for.