Prompt Images
“You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of smell. Good smells, wonderful smells. It’s probably an apple pie, maybe there will be ice cream with it. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination, but a very limited imagination, the kind that’s been used for forty years exclusively to wonder what’s on TV. That’s the signpost up ahead—your next stop, The Comfort Zone!”
Little is known about Rod Serling’s unproduced predecessor to The Twilight Zone, a series of scripts rumored in Hollywood to have been produced while he was working a cushy corporate job he never liked but that he didn’t really want to quit because of the benefits package.
For you, for the first time, we have found the scripts, and are releasing small synopses for your reading pleasure.
“Eye of the Beholder” (1960)
A woman in full face bandages undergoes the last in a series of surgeries to make her more beautiful to the rest of the world. The doctors seem kind of mean towards her. In the end, the bandages come off, and she’s totally beautiful. The doctors are too. It’s a complete success.
Everyone is nice to her, and she probably just imagined that they were ever mean to begin with. She marries a hot lawyer and they have a bunch of great kids, who all grow up to take care of them in their old age.
“The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” (1960)
When Maple Street’s peaceful residents have the power go out, they all quickly begin to blame each other, as fear and paranoia set in. Eventually though, they realize they were all just being silly, and the power comes back on. They even manage to catch the evening news!
“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” (1963)
A man on a plane spots a strange creature on the wing of a plane, slowly destroying it, but nobody will believe him! Eventually he wakes up from the dream he was having, though, and everything is fine. They land safely, and he swears off the stuff the doctor gave him—he might be afraid of flying, but dreams like that aren’t worth it!
“Time Enough at Last” (1959)
All the bank teller wanted to do was have time to read. On his lunch break, he gets locked inside a bank vault. The outside world is totally fine, though, no nuclear bombs are dropped, despite the fact that it’s the Cold War and people are afraid of that. He drops his glasses, but they’re tough, and don’t break. He’s in there so long, he finishes his book, which is super nice! Eventually, they realize he’s stuck and let him out. He makes a point to take the bus more often, which will allow him time to read.
Among these episodes sits the first discovered draft of a Twilight Zone episode—though many pieces are missing, it’s a stellar example of what made the show so successful, and we’d love to include it for you, here:
“Your Life” (1959)
Slow zoom in on you, in a crowd. You are living your life. We see from a smile that you are content with your life. There are brief moments when you are not, but they’re easy to forget and don’t impact your character arc in a meaningful way. You don’t try to forget those moments, we see that you just kind of do, naturally.
You aren’t living your ideal life, but you have so little idea of what that would be, you can’t even conceptualize it enough to want for it. You sometimes feel a longing to do something else, maybe even a strong one, but it’s easy to lose that feeling in a series of montage shots of media consumption, socialization, and basic menial chores.
Finally, one day, you have enough. You realize what you want to do. Finally, things will be different. Slow fade shot into future—you, now old, at the end of their life, but here’s the twist ending—you’re still doing exactly what you were doing before. Then you die. It wasn’t a bad life, just a little bit of an uninteresting one, people say at your funeral.
For some reason, this last script was never produced. Just kidding, we know why! It’s total garbage, and that twist is a real let down! Glad that at least Ron Serling figured that out! Anyway. We hope this article has entertained you slightly, on the break you took at your job, where you work full-time, and probably always will.
All posts in The Prompt’s #ComfortZone series are brought to you by our rad friends at 
Like what you read here? Tweet us or comment on our Facebook page!
RELATED
