The Twilight Zone Goes West--Part 4

"A Hundred Yards over the Rim," which originally aired on April 7, 1961, is one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes. The acting is great, the story is well-constructed, the dialogue sounds natural and the theme is just so darn human.

Much like "Execution," it involves time travel, so only the beginning and ending are actually set in the Old West. And, as I type this, I realize I'm cheating on the theme of these blog posts. My idea was to cover the post-Civil War Western episodes of The Twilight Zone. This episode, though definitely Western-themed, starts and ends in 1847--well before the Civil War.

I'll do the ethical thing and report myself to the National Board of Thematic Consistency of Bloggers. If this blog suddenly vanishes after this entry appears, you'll all know the punishment was particularly harsh.

Anyway, we do start in 1847. Christian Horn (played by Cliff Robertson) is leading a wagon train from Ohio to California. But they are out of water and Horn's son is very, very sick. The other families want to turn back. Horn marches off to see what lies over a nearby rim, hoping to find something hopeful.

What he finds is the year 1961. Horn has been mysteriously transported 114 years into the future. He's rather understandable freaked out by everything he sees, most notably by a truck that nearly runs him down. By the time he finds a small truck stop along the highway, he's thoroughly confused.

The couple that runs the truck stop are played by John Crawford and Evans Evans. Though Robinson's performance as Horn really stands out in this episode, they add to it--letting us know from their own performances that they are two decent people who want to help out a man that they think must be a little nuts. They also treat a cut on his arm and he finds out what pennicillin is when they give him a couple of tablets to prevent any infection. When he's told what the drug does, you can almost see the wheels turning in his head when he thinks of his sick son.

The pivotal moment of the episode comes when Horn looks in an encyclopedia and finds a listing for his son, who will grow up to be a doctor who does pioneering work in childhood illnesses. Suddenly, he's calm again. He's no longer confused. He understands almost nothing he sees here and he has no idea how he time-jumped, but now he knows he can take that small bottle of pills back with him and save his son's life.

It's Robertson's performance with the simple theme of a father who loves his son that sells the episode. This is combined with a secondary theme of Horn learning that the hardships the wagon train has endured will payoff as they help bring civilization to a savage wilderness. "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" is character-driven in the way most classic TZ episodes are. The script is another one by Rod Serling, by the way. The hectic pace of TV production  meant Serling would sometimes turn out a clunker, but when he was on his game, few writers could produce quality television on the same level as he.