We talk a lot here at SYFY WIRE about the wonders the crew of The Twilight Zone (airing regularly on SYFY) managed to pull off over the years. They managed to do a lot with limited resources and, of course, no CGI, and the deeper you look into the history of the show, the more amazing crew performances you get.
For example: In one of the best episodes of The Twilight Zone’s fourth season, the crew worked against the clock to complete an episode’s ambitious final shot, getting it done literally overnight.
How The Twilight Zone episode “On Thursday We Leave for Home” got its final shot
Written by series creator Rod Serling and directed by Buzz Kulik, “On Thursday We Leave for Home” stands out today as one of the best episodes from the hourlong format the show used in its fourth season on the air. A study of power, how it’s used, and how it’s lost, the episode followed the handful of settlers still holding out on a hellish planet they were meant to colonize. Led by the determined and confident William Benteen (James Whitmore), the settlers are holding out for rescue after a long road of twin suns and inhospitable terrain.
When the rescue ship finally arrives, Benteen feels his grip on the 187 settlers he commands loosening, as the rescuers tell them stories of Earth, and even play baseball with them. Resentful, Benteen demands that his followers remain under his control when they reach Earth, telling them that the planet is a hellscape where they’ll need his leadership more than ever.
After a vote, the settlers all decide to leave, and Benteen makes the rash decision to stay behind all alone, realizing his mistake only after the rescue ship has left the surface. In the final shot, the camera pulls back to reveal the metal shacks of the settlers and the barren planetary surface, with Benteen all alone in the center of it all.
It’s a great, dramatic, heartbreaking shot, but it wasn’t something Kulik initially planned for, according to director of photography George T. Clemens. In Marc Scott Zicree’s The Twilight Zone Companion, Clemens explained that near the end of shooting, Kulik mentioned that he wanted to shoot the finale from up high, looking out over the entire set to show the smallness of Benteen in the landscape. To make sure it would work, Clemens climbed up a ladder and noticed that the shack sets had no roofs, as he suspected. Like most TV sets, they’d been left roofless so the crew could light the interiors from above; to make Kulik’s shot work, roofs had to be added at the very end of the shoot.
“So there was a hurry-up job at night to put tack and canvas over the tops of these shacks,” Clemens said. “We really had to do this overnight.”
The effect was worth it to get one of the best endings of the show’s fourth season, an exclamation point on one of Serling’s finest scripts from this era.
“On Thursday We Leave for Home” airs June 1 on SYFY. Check the Schedule for details.