"The Twilight Zone" - '80s Episodes Quiz

Answer: False

Sadly no, he died in 1975. But as a tribute they included his face in the opening credits of the new show. The first narrator for the new show was Charles Aidmen who also starred in the 1960's episodes "Little Girl Lost" and "And When the Sky Was Opened" (I think his voice was perfect for this role!). He was later replaced in Season 3 by Robin Ward.

Answer: True

Unfortunately, it doesn't do them any good. What prompted peace was a UFO visiting the United Nations. An alien ambassador materialises before the bickering US and USSR delegates and regretfully informs them in 24 hours the world will end. The ambassador explains his race spawned human beings at the dawn of time, but they are disappointed at how humanity has turned out. Bickering, war, mass-slaughter, the nuclear threat, all achieving nothing. Sorry, but enough is enough and after centuries of debate the aliens have decided to finish all life on earth.

The UN ambassadors plead for an extra 24 hours, since they now have enough motivation to change their ways. The alien finally agrees and vanishes. The UN frantically spends the next 24 hours writing irrevocable peace treaties, disarming across the globe and ceasing all military action.

At the end of the day the ambassador returns and the UN delegates hand him their framework for world peace. The US and USSR ambassadors embrace each other, wishing they had done this years ago.

But everyone is surprised when the alien bursts out laughing. "I fear you have misunderstood me!" It turns out the aliens needed humans to evolve into better WARRIORS - to fight for them across the galaxy! Suddenly, everything outside grows darker...

Answer: A credit card

Poor Linda Woolf is not a very good credit-card user. She has a very bad history with Visa, and all of its competitors. But one day she receives a mysterious invitation from an unheard-of credit card company known simply as "The Card". She thinks this is too good to be true...until she fails to make the minimum payments and her cat, her dog, her children and even her husband vanish. And no one but her remembers them ever existing!

Answer: Shatterday

"Shatterday" was the pilot episode. Peter Novins accidentally calls his home from a bar one night, and the call is answered - by himself! The new Peter eventually takes over the old one's life, and that Peter vanishes...into The Twilight Zone.

Answer: There is no dialogue in the opening credits

The other three quotes were in the original show, spoken by Rod Serling the creator. But in the 1980s remake there are no words at all. Only a mysterious room beneath a hilltop in the twilight of evening. Then, a mysterious sphere appears, and one sees all sorts of things in it. An embryo, a nuclear detonation, an ancient tribal mask, a unicorn, you name it.

Then finally back to the room, and a brief smile from the late Rod Serling before the title "The Twilight Zone". (And not forgetting the traditional music in the background!) It's a pity Rod died before his brainchild was remade with such an innovative opening title. I think he'd have loved seeing it.

Answer: It varied

The beauty of each episode in the first season is they could contain up to three stories. It was unpredictable. In other words, no one could guess how long a story would last, thus it was harder to guess if the ending was close. From season 2 two onwards though, most episode were only one story lasting 25 minutes.

Answer: Intangible things they've lost

David Wong is one of the many who seek the famed Lost and Found Emporium. It is a mythical place where they say one can find things one's lost. Things like emotions, or self-respect, or lost youth. David is a short-tempered young man who finally locates the emporium at the back of a shop in San Francisco.

The staff unhelpfully tell him it's there...sometimes. Puzzled, he goes to check. The door opens to a vast cavernous warehouse which must surely be bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside.

He enters...and the door vanishes. In the emporium he sees many odd things on the shelves. David meets other people entering through other doors...to other parts of the world! David lost his compassion years ago, but a woman he meets in here helps him find it, and David in exchange helps her find her sense of humour.

They decide to stay in the emporium and help other visitors find what they lost (hence the name of the episode).

Answer: Kentucky Rye

I originally watched the 1980s show as a teenager, and now I've seen the original series' episodes on DVD. I was surprised to see how many 80s episodes are remakes, but "Kentucky Rye" is original. Silly Bob Spindler is driving home from a bar one night after celebrating with his colleagues. Unfortunately he had been celebrating too hard, and crashes into another car. Still drunk, he gets out and walks into a nearby bar called "Kentucky Rye". Everyone is having a good time, laughing, drinking or playing pool.

He joins them, forgetting he has just been in a crash. They, the patrons, eventually convince Bob to buy Kentucky Rye from the barman. But when Bob wakes up the next morning in his new bar, he is surprised to see dust and cobwebs everywhere.

This place has obviously not been used for years. He is even more surprised to find the door won't open. He looks outside and sees ambulance officers carrying a dead man out of the car he hit last night. But that man is one of the patrons who talked him into buying this bar last night! Bob gets an even bigger shock when he sees them carry another stretcher - with HIS body on it...

Answer: Tim Robbins

Fred Savage was in "What Are Friends For", and Morgan Freeman was in "Dealer's Choice", playing poker with the devil without knowing. Helen Mirren starred as a quiet secondhand-shop assistant who one day tries on a pair of shoes donated by the maid of a deceased rich woman.

This episode is a remake of the original show's "Dead Man's Shoes" but I think this one is a lot better. The ghost of the murdered woman possesses the assistant's body. She confronts her husband in their home (in front of the maid) and he turns pale.

Although he doesn't know this mysterious woman, she is describing the night his wife died in vivid detail. Including the fact he pushed her off the balcony. The scariest part of this episode is the woman looking in the mirror, and seeing someone else!

Answer: Parents

Poor Debbie does not have the best parents one could have. They argue, cheat on each other, shout at their daughter, and generally regard her as a nuisance. But a friend tells Debbie about the mysterious "Children's Zoo". Debbie visits it with her parents one day.

She goes in by herself while the bickering couple are escorted into another room. Debbie goes down a tunnel looking in all the different windows. Each windows contains a trapped couple; other children's discarded parents. Like Debbie's, they were brought here because they were bad parents and their children exchanged them for new ones. Debbie soon emerges into the sunlight with newly chosen-parents.

Her old ones are shouting after her to come back and let them out. Not least because they realise they will have to spend a long time locked up until they're picked - with each other!

Answer: He is from the past

September 16th 1912, to be precise. The two men meet, and they argue about this and that. Then the second miner mentions he's 35...and he was born in 1877. Although this is bizarre they eventually believe each other and accept they are from different times.

It's a good thing too; the miner from 1912 is rescued first and once back above ground he writes a letter. A letter that he instructs his church not to deliver until 1986 to an as-yet-unborn woman. It works. If not for that letter, the other miner's wife and the rescuers would never have known where to find him!

Answer: "Quantum Leap"

Dean Stockwell is a very good actor and later became Al, the hologram pervert, in "Quantum Leap". In this "Twilight Zone" episode he was a university biochemist committed to an asylum. That was the official story, anyway. The truth was he was sent there so the authorities could torture him for as long as it took to reveal where he'd hidden notebooks about a deadly weapon. No matter how much "therapy" they give him he never spills the beans; he will not help the military murder thousands of people. One night, however, he gets a new cell-mate.

This new prisoner claims he got sent here on purpose - to free the biochemist. But how? The mysterious newbie tells the biochemist there is a way to magically transport oneself out of this hellhole - all he has to do is BELIEVE he can.

This is absurd, but what has the biochemist got to lose? He closes his eyes that night, concentrates with all his might like the man says, and in the morning...he wakes up in a different place. He cannot believe his eyes! His new friend is there too; the two men are in an apartment; a safe-house.

They can hear the morning traffic through the curtains. The biochemist is enormously relieved, and tells his savior where he'd hidden the notebooks. The man runs out and the biochemist relaxes for the first time in weeks...until he opens the curtains and finds the traffic noises are coming from a tape recorder! Oh no! The asylum authorities have tricked him! He is in a state of shock...until he closes his eyes and is able to vanish - FOR REAL. The bad guys who have been watching him on camera are shocked, too. The theory of mental teleportation was just something they made up! Apparently it was real after all...

Answer: Confess his darkest deeds

Billy Diamond is America's hottest new comedian...until he dies in a car accident. He wouldn't have been in that accident if he hadn't stolen a starving competitor's act. That poor man (played by Xander Berkeley before he was famous) appears with a gun in the backseat of Billy's car and Billy tries to grab the gun but crashes and dies instead.

But when Billy wakes up he's backstage in a strange place, with no memory of how he got there. His new "agent" takes him to a room resembling a nightclub and pushes him onto the stage.

At first Billy tells his usual jokes, but no one laughs. Them someone in the audience calls out "Why don't you tell them how you beat the girl up?" Only then do people start laughing. Billy eventually confesses he's a drunk and a coke-head, and only then do people crack up laughing.

The audience keep demanding more and more. Finally Billy reluctantly tells his nastiest secrets, what a horrible person he is, and the audience are beside themselves with hilarity. In tears Billy staggers off stage amidst the applause.

He feels even worse when his new agent congratulates him, and tells him he must come back every night and do the same routine...forever.

Answer: True

Well...it does. But what the salesman doesn't tell his victims is once the water wears off one looks a lot OLDER than they started off. Poor newscaster Christine Copperfield only wanted to look younger to avoid losing her job and keep her boyfriend. But the salesman never warned her this would happen.

When her hair starts turning white and he starts charging her outrageous amounts for the water, she has no choice but to comply. She asks him once "How old are YOU?" He just smiles. "Don't ask."

Answer: False

In a small Irish town beside Killany Woods, folk have heard stories for years about the "Little People". No one knows if anyone's really seen them or not. But one night Liam, a small man generally regarded as the village idiot, bursts in to the pub. He exclaims "I seen the little people!" Everyone stares at him. Liam claims they have green clothing, lots of gold and a giant "sparkling" toadstool.

The town bully throws poor Liam out the pub. But later he learn Liam has been going around town buying various supplies - and paying in gold, no less! He follows Liam into Killany Woods that night and demands Liam gives him some of the gold.

But Liam claims the gold is "The Little Peoples'" and he has been buying supplies for them. The thug doesn't believe him and chases him.

He receives the biggest shock of his life when they arrive at a clearing bathed in unnatural light. The light comes from a stranded UFO, shaped like a giant toadstool. Repairing it are the little people...but they're not leprechauns at all, they're aliens! Liam is laughing and pointing his finger at his assailant. "Do ye believe me now?" The terrified thug runs back to the pub and tells all.

But like Liam earlier, no one believes him. (Liam, incidentally is never seen again. Rumour has it the little people took him away with them. To a very green corner...of The Twilight Zone.)