Where Is Everybody?

"Where Is Everybody?"
The Twilight Zone episode
Earl Holliman in "Where Is Everybody?"
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 1
Directed by	Robert Stevens
Written by	Rod Serling
Featured music	Original score by Bernard Herrmann
Cinematography by	Joseph La Shelle
Production code	173-3601
Original air date	October 2, 1959
Guest stars
Earl Holliman: Mike Ferris James Gregory: General Garry Walberg: Colonel Jay Overholts: Man
Episode chronology
← Previous — Next → "One for the Angels"
List of The Twilight Zone episodes

"Where Is Everybody?" is the first episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

Plot summary

A man finds himself alone walking towards a diner. Inside he finds a jukebox playing loudly, and coffee hot on the stove, but no one else. He inquires for some breakfast, but no chef or waitress is to be found. He is dressed in an Air Force jumpsuit, but he does not remember who he is or how he got there.

After leaving the diner, he walks to a nearby town. The town seems deserted, but everywhere the man goes, he seems to find proof that someone had been there recently: food is cooking on a stove, water dripping in a sink, and a cigar is burning in an ashtray. He grows more and more unsettled as he wanders through the empty town, looking for someone—anyone—to talk to, all the while having the strange feeling that he is being watched.

He finally collapses next to a street crossing, and presses a button labeled WALK. It is revealed that the walk button is, in fact, a panic button. The man is really a training astronaut named Mike Ferris, confined to an isolation room located within an aircraft hangar for 484 hours and 36 minutes, testing to see if he can stay sane cooped up in a small spacecraft for the duration of a trip to the Moon. The town was a complete hallucination, an escape valve for his sensory-deprived mind.

As Ferris is carried out of the hangar on a stretcher, he sees the Moon above him, and says wistfully, "Hey! Don't go away up there! Next time, it won't be just a dream or a nightmare. Next time, it'll be for real. So don't go away. We'll be up there in a little while..."

In the written form of the story, published as a collection of Rod Serling stories, as Mike is carried on a stretcher away from the isolation booth, the ticket to the movie he saw in his "hallucination" falls out of his pocket. The TV version omits this, as Serling created this twist ending specifically for the short story version, later commenting, "it's a fillip on top of a fillip".^{[citation needed]}

Original transition after the story

Announcer: (as the title appears) "Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone, will tell you about next week's story — after this word from our alternate sponsor."

This bumper, usually seen after the conclusion of each episode, was omitted from all syndicated editions of the series.^{[citation needed]}

Production information

Prior to this episode, Rod Serling had written an episode called "The Happy Place" as the pilot for his new series. It was rejected, because the story — centered on a society where people were executed when they turned 60 due to their inability to contribute to society (see euthanasia) — was considered too depressing by network executives. This premise of old for young was later used, slightly modified, in the novel Logan's Run and adaptations of the novel, as well as an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation ("Half a Life").

Once the episode had been given the green-light and filming had concluded, it originally featured narration by announcer Westbrook Van Voorhis. As Voorhis was unavailable for subsequent episodes, however, Serling himself recorded the narration (for both the episode and the introduction) for consistency; his presence later became a hallmark of the series. This is when the Twilight Zone became the fifth dimension rather than the sixth in the original pilot narration. When the opening credits were re-recorded, the series logo was also changed to the familiar typeface.

Several years later, Serling adapted this and other episodes into short stories for a book, Stories From the Twilight Zone. Reportedly dissatisfied with the lack of science fiction content, he added an additional twist to the end by having Mike Ferris discover a movie ticket in his pocket after being carried away on the stretcher. A variation on this twist was later used in "King Nine Will Not Return".

The haunting score composed by Bernard Herrmann for this episode would be reused for several episodes of the series, most notably "The After Hours" and "The Last Flight". Several record albums of original soundtrack music from the series were released, some having alternate theme music for the series that was never used. One of the alternate themes is a cue from the episode.

This is one of several episodes from Season One with its opening title sequence plastered over with the opening for Season Two. This was done during the Summer of 1961 as to help the season one shows fit in with the new look the show had taken during the following season. The Treasures of the Twilight Zone VHS/DVD and Definitive Edition Season One DVD set do feature the original intro albeit in a reconstructed format which features a snippet of the Season Two intro at the very end. The original intro of this episode can later be seen in the episode "Walking Distance"

This was the only Twilight Zone episode filmed at Universal Studios, the rest of the entire series was filmed at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The centerpiece of the episode is the Courthouse Square set, most well-known for being used as the town square of "Hill Valley" in the Back To The Future series of films over 25 years later. The alleyway in which Mike Ferris enters the manikin shop is the alleyway in which Marty and Doc discuss the 'Greys Sports Almanac' in Back To The Future II.^{[citation needed]}

Themes

The main theme in this episode, as the title suggests, is the difference between aloneness and loneliness and its effect on humans. The commanding officer in the final scene sums this up, observing, "The barrier of loneliness — that's the one thing we haven't licked yet." Serling would return to this theme in several other episodes, most prominently "The Mind and the Matter", in which a man finds he can eliminate outside influences and uses the power to rid himself of all humanity, only to realize the extreme loneliness that comes with deprivation of human interaction.

As part of the Syfy's participation in Cable in the Classroom, "Where is Everybody?" may be recorded and retained indefinitely for educational exhibition. A suggested lesson plan expands on the concept of aloneness vs. loneliness by shifting the focus to "using a gift for personal gain or for the benefit of others" and how students might help those who are most affected by isolation and the effects of social deprivation.

Critical response

The pilot episode began a trend for The Twilight Zone of critical success accompanied by adequate, if not phenomenal, ratings. A New York Times review of the episode on October 3, 1959 stated:

Mr. Serling conceived his playlet in imaginative terms and underscored his point that science cannot foretell what may be the effect of total isolation on a human being. Indeed, the play's situation was almost bound to be better than its resolution, which by comparison seemed trite and anticlimactic. In the desultory field of filmed half-hour drama, however, Mr. Serling should not have much trouble in making his mark. At least his series promises to be different.

Later that year, in the December issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science-Fiction, Charles Beaumont wrote:

... I read Serling's first script. It was, or seemed to be, an end-of-the-world story. Resisting the impulse to throw the wretched thing across the room, I read on. A man is alone in a town which shows every sign of having been recently occupied. He finds cigarettes burning in ash trays. Stoves are still warm. Chimneys are smoking. But no one is there, only this one frightened man who can't even remember his name ... Old stuff? Of course. I thought so at the time, and I think so now. But there was one element in the story which kept me from my customary bitterness. The element was quality. Quality shone on every page. It shone in the dialogue and in the scene set-ups. And because of this, the story seemed fresh and new and powerful. There was one compromise, but it was made for the purpose of selling the series.

Lunar Travel Time

The isolation experiment is said to simulate a trip to the moon with the subject "losing it" after 20 days. But a real trip to the moon with chemical rockets executing an impulsive Hohmann transfer takes 5 days at most; a longer flight cannot reach the moon at all (each Apollo flight took about 3 days). However, the episode did mention him orbiting the moon several times. A continuous maneuver with an ion thruster could take much longer; SMART-1 took over a year. A trip to another planet would have been a more realistic basis for this experiment as such trips would take months or even years. However, the crew on such a flight would still be able to communicate with earth, albeit with delays.

In popular culture

"Where Is Everybody?" was the title of a song on the 1999 album The Fragile by industrial rock group Nine Inch Nails.

Further readings

• DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1593931360
• Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0970331090

External links

• "Where Is Everybody?" at the Internet Movie Database
• "Where Is Everybody?" at TV.com
• Full video of the episode at CBS.com
• John's Twilight Zone Page