“If they want a conventional western, they should ask a conventional writer”.

This statement, given by Rod Serling to the press in 1966, gives the idea of just how crazy could get the stories which were continuously churned out from the brain of one of the greatest creative minds ever to grace the small screen. It’s hard, even today, not to get charmed by the schizophrenic genius of this pioneer of American television; a television which was still very far from being the empty, pornographic mess that it is now.
Serling is today regarded as one of the most influential weavers of unconventional tales; as a man gifted with a superb technique and a powerful imagination.

Anyway, when in October the 2nd, 1959 the first episode of The Twilight Zone was aired none, not even who already knew Serling very well, could have predicted that in a very short time that series would have become the biggest sci-fi hit-series in all of television’s history.
And, to be fair, it would have been hard to see it coming: the series seemed to have met precocious doom when CBS bought but put on hiatus “The Time Element”, Serling’s pilot for the series.
But it was that same “The Time Element”, adjusted by Serling himself to fit into the series Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, to draw new attention on Serling’s creature; a little later The Twilight Zone was finally in production, this time for real.
The series was an instant success, and the credit for that went all to Serling and, secondly, to the other writers of the show. In The Twilight Zone, in fact, the writers were always given much more importance than the directors, often forced to follow very tightly the scripts they were given.

Nearly all of the episodes of season one were written by just three authors: other than Serling, the main writers of this season were Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont. The episode “The Chaser” was written by Robert Presnell Jr. who had already penned the famous Legend of the Lost for the big screen and would have ended up becoming the writer of some of the greatest Hollywood dramas.
There were many gems in season one, among which we remember at least “Time Enough at Last”, “Mr. Denton on Doomsday”, “The Lonely” and “Third from the Sun”.
Not all of the episodes were equally good, of course, also because of the fact that the series was naturally trying to appeal to a broad range of audience, sometimes departing from pure fantastic territory.
Nonetheless, The Twilight Zone managed to maintain a steady high quality level, quickly becoming a mandatory reference point for many writers, in Hollywood but also outside of it.