Where Is Everybody?

Do you think you could last 484 hours and 36 minutes in isolation?

Plotline:

This is the pilot episode for The Twilight Zone, first aired on October 2, 1959. It stars Earl Holliman, who carries the episode pretty much on his own almost to the very end as the singular character. He finds himself walking down a deserted road towards a diner on the outskirts of a town. Upon entering the diner he finds no one there, but the jukebox is playing popular music, so he asks for breakfast but gets no answer. He climbs over the counter and finds a pot of coffee brewing on the stove in the back and pours himself a cup, but still finds no one around. After repeated attempts to find anyone or to get an answer he leaves the diner and heads down the road to the nearest town.

We know from the outset that he has amnesia and is wearing a jumpsuit that is vaguely military looking. As he enters the town of Oakwood he hears the church bells ringing. But again the town appears to be deserted. As he stands in the center of town, the camera angle reveals as he looks around that the local theater is playing "Battle Hymn" but then he sees a woman sitting in a vehicle. He is elated and begins walking towards her explaining his predicament. As he walks up to her and opens the vehicle door the mannequin who he thought was a woman falls out onto the pavement below. The truck was part of a store which sold mannequins. He chats with the mannequin for a few moments and then enters the store, again calling out to see if anyone is around. He leaves the store and through a chain link fence he sees a public telephone across the street and the phone rings! He runs across to answer the phone, but no one's there, like everywhere else. He tries dialing the operator but only gets a recording. His anxiety is getting more and more pronounced with every turn of events. He even finds himself momentarily trapped in the phone booth, till he realizes he was just trying to open the door the wrong way.

At this point he really begins to sense that he's being watched, even though he can't find anyone. As he walks along the main street of the town he enters the police department and gets on the radio and says "Calling all cars! Calling all cars! Unknown man walking around police station. Suspicious looking character. Probably wanted by the F_ _" when he sees a smoldering cigar on the counter in front of him in the police station. From there he wanders into the back where he again finds signs of recent life with running water in a cell with fresh shaving cream. But as he's looking at it, we see the shadow of the jail cell door slowly closing behind him. He notices it and bolts out of the cell, just catching the door before it closes on him, locking him inside.
Upon running outside he wanders along the street again and finds a drug store/soda shop and goes inside and makes himself a bowl of ice cream. He also wanders over to the dime novel rack and on one of the racks is filled a novel called "The Last Man On Earth" with the date at the bottom of Feb, 1959. The present time. He runs outside and runs to the middle of the square and cries out "Where is everybody!?"

In the next scene, we find his character sitting on a park bench as it's getting dark playing tic tac toe on the ground with a stick. But then the lights start coming on in the town and he notices that the movie theater is playing "Battle Hymn" and he runs over to the billboard for the movie and notices that the main character is wearing a jumpsuit just like him. It's now that he remembers that he's in the air force. He runs inside the theater to tell everyone that he knows he's in the air force, but of course, no one's in the theater. He wonders if an atomic war has happened. But even though there are no people, the buildings are all fine, undisturbed. But then the movie screen begins playing scenes of bomber aircraft taking off and he runs upstairs to the camera room to find the projectionist. No one again... No he's losing it and runs down to the concession stand and runs right into the mirrored wall, shattering the mirror.

Finally he runs out of the theater into the main street, panicked, tripping over his own feet, and finally finds a walk/don't walk crossing button and begins pushing it over and over again saying "Help me, help me, help me..." It's then that we, the audience, are clued into what's really going on. We are shown a bevy of military officers watching him from afar as he is being monitored in an isolation chamber. It turns out he's an air force pilot who's being trained for long term isolation in preparation for a flight to the moon. As Mike Ferris, Holliman's character, is carried away on a stretcher to recover from this experiment, the doctor says, "The barrier of loneliness, that's one thing we haven't licked yet."

Analysis:

There's nothing explicitly theological about this episode. It's much more a character study of how someone would react to extreme isolation. Thus in that sense, it's a study of our human nature and our deep need to companionship, especially over long periods of time. But there are a few theological hints throughout this episode, and one which never made it into the episode, which would have brought in a supernatural element. This episode, since it was filmed in 1959, reflected the Cold War ethos of the era. The Soviet Union had just sent a satellite into orbit earlier that year, scaring Americans half to death at having Russian satellites spying on them from above. Therefore the American government instituted an all out program of getting a man into space and more importantly a man on the moon. It's ironic that this episode was filmed before JFK even became president and made his famous speech concerning getting a man to the moon by the end of the 1960's.

Within the episode, there are a few hints of theological sensibilities, such as the church bells welcoming him so to speak into the town, acting as it were as warnings of life being nearby, but not within his grasp. The part of the episode that wasn't seen was an idea Serling had along with Earl Holliman for having his character tear out a page of the phone book and stuff in his breast pocket in his delusion, but then at the end of the episode have it fall out of that pocket as he's carried away, thus implying that this illusion/delusion may have, in some real sense, been very real. But interestingly enough, when the CBS executives were approached with this idea, they rejected it as being something they didn't want to be a part of this show, since "that's not the kind of show we're doing" here. Of course as anyone knows, that's EXACTLY what the show became most famous for, it's supernatural elements raising questions of what's real and what's fantasy.