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"Walking Distance" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. The episode was listed as the ninth best episode in the history of The Twilight Zone by Time.^[1]

Plot summary

While in the country, middle-aged executive Martin Sloan (Gig Young) stops to have his car serviced at a gas station within walking distance of his hometown, Homewood. After walking into town, he sees that it apparently has not changed since he was a boy, including the drugstore with a soda fountain that still sells sodas for a dime, and whose proprietor (that Sloan remembers as having died) is, unbeknownst to him, still alive.

Sloan walks to the park where he is startled to see himself as a boy, and following him home, meets his parents as they were in his childhood. Trying to convince his disbelieving parents that he is their son, he shows them his identification, but succeeds only in alarming the couple, who tell him to leave.

Confused, he wanders back to the park and finds his childhood self on a carousel, and tries to tell him to enjoy his childhood while it lasts. His advances scare young Martin, who falls off the merry-go-round and injures his leg. After young Martin is carried away, Sloan is confronted by his father who, having seen the documents and money with future dates on them in Sloan's wallet, now believes his story. The man advises his son that everyone has their time, and that instead of looking behind him, he should look ahead, because the happiness he is seeking may be in the places he hasn't looked yet.

Finding himself in present-day Homewood again, Sloan makes his way back to the gas station, now walking with a limp. He picks up his car and drives away, content to live his life as it is.

Themes

Similar themes are explored in "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" and, to a lesser extent, "Young Man's Fancy". The episode also deals with the relentless pressures of the business world and the attempt to relive and recapture the past and how such attempts are misguided. Similar themes would be explored in "A Stop at Willoughby", "The Brain Center at Whipple's" and two Serling teleplays from before and after The Twilight Zone: Patterns and the Night Gallery episode "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar".

The park in the episode is said to be inspired by Recreation Park in Binghamton, New York. Like the park in "Walking Distance", Recreation Park has a carousel and a bandstand. There is a plaque in the Recreation Park bandstand commemorating the episode.^[2]

Critical response

"Walking Distance" has continued to be one of the most popular and critically acclaimed of all Twilight Zone episodes. Lost creator and Star Trek director J. J. Abrams claimed the episode as his favorite, saying, "[The episode] is a beautiful demonstration of the burden of adulthood, told in The Twilight Zone, which everyone thinks is a scary show, but it's actually a beautiful show," and "The Twilight Zone at its best is better than anything else I've ever seen on television."^[3] The story was even revived in the form of a graphic novel. His 2011 film Super 8 includes a reference to the episode: the military's plan in the movie is called Operation: Walking Distance.

One reviewer noted that the episode "was a little more depressing than most, in that it does not have a happy ending and the man’s problems are never really resolved. But it is a deep meditation on life and lost youth that was compelling and interesting." Paul Mandell, of American Cinematographer magazine, wrote: "[Walking Distance] was the most personal story Serling ever wrote, and easily the most sensitive dramatic fantasy in the history of television." The episode was listed as the ninth best episode in the history of the series by Time Magazine in celebration of the series' 50th anniversary. Internet celebrity James Rolfe also listed this as his favourite Twilight Zone episode, saying, "it leaves you with a bitter-sweet feeling that you can relate to. I don't know how to explain it, but I just feel touched by it."

Musical score

Unlike some episodes of the show that were accompanied by pre-composed stock music cues, Walking Distance was underscored with music specially written for it. As for other Twilight Zone episodes, Bernard Herrmann—also composer of the first season's main title music and most of its stock music—wrote the music for this one. The very intimate and tuneful score has an isolated running time of about 19 minutes and is played by a 19-piece-orchestra consisting of strings (violins, violas, cellos, basses) and one harp. Due to the high popularity of the episode and the music itself the score has received several releases on CD in its original film version in monoaural sound and two re-recordings in stereo as well, one done by Joel McNeely with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (the only complete version) and the other by William Stromberg conducting the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. Orchestrator John Morgan enlarged all sections of the orchestra for the latter, referring to Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings as Herrmann's main influence on the score in the liner notes.

References

^ "Top 10 Twilight Zone Episodes". www.time.com. 2 October 2009. Retrieved 11 May 2011.
^ Rod Serling official website
^ J. J. Abrams comments in Time Magazine

External links

"Walking Distance" at IMDb
Walking Distance review at The Twilight Zone Project
Walking Distance music score
Full video of the episode at CBS.com (only in the United States)

[1] "Top 10 Twilight Zone Episodes". www.time.com. 2 October 2009. Retrieved 11 May 2011.

[2] Rod Serling official website

[3] J. J. Abrams comments in Time Magazine

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[2]

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 ==Plot summary==
-While driving cross-country, middle-aged executive Martin Sloan  ([[Gig Young]]) stops to have his car serviced at a [[gas station]] within walking distance of his hometown, Homewood. After walking into town, he sees that it apparently has not changed since he was a boy, including the drugstore with a [[soda fountain]] that still sells sodas for a dime, and whose proprietor (that Sloan remembers as having died) is, unbeknownst to him, still alive.
+While in the country, middle-aged executive Martin Sloan  ([[Gig Young]]) stops to have his car serviced at a [[gas station]] within walking distance of his hometown, Homewood. After walking into town, he sees that it apparently has not changed since he was a boy, including the drugstore with a [[soda fountain]] that still sells sodas for a dime, and whose proprietor (that Sloan remembers as having died) is, unbeknownst to him, still alive.
 Sloan walks to the park where he is startled to see himself as a boy, and following him home, meets his parents as they were in his childhood. Trying to convince his disbelieving parents that he is their son, he shows them his identification, but succeeds only in alarming the couple, who tell him to leave.

v t e The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes
Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgment Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"
Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble with Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"
Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"
Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"
Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander with Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"