“The Twilight Zone” Predicted The First Man On The Moon

The 1959 pilot episode, airing a decade before the first moon landing, bore what would become the series' hallmark: narrating Cold War anxieties through a mix of science and superstition.

The 1959 pilot episode of The Twilight Zone eerily predicted the Apollo 11 moon landing that would happen in 1969. The 60s cult series depicted a country in its early attempts to fly across the vast universe. Little did the audience know that what they saw on the show was an astronaut trainee who has been inside an isolation chamber for more than three weeks.

At the time, Americans were still scared about the launch of Sputnik two years earlier. Uncertainty was scaring them so bad that the show's first episode was nerve-wracking. The opening scene’s narration (done by series creator, Rod Sterling) gave goosebumps to its audience with the words “as vast as space and as timeless as infinity.”

Sterling was known for writing successful dramas during the 1950s. However, the censorship required by advertisers and networks pushed him into a different genre. The allegories he could draw in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction realm allowed him to tap into sensitive topics. So, he tackled Cold War issues like prejudice, mechanization, suspicion, alienation, the atomic bomb, and blind conformity.

The pilot episode was entitled “Where is Everybody?” and was broadcast on October 2, 1959. It was about an amnesiac wandering through a deserted town. As he tries to remember everything, he realizes that someone is watching him. After much suspicion and dread, the character enters a state of hysteria.

As the story unfolds, the audience discovers that the amnesiac was an Air Force sergeant who has mentally collapsed from utter loneliness after being in an isolated chamber for 484 hours and 36 minutes. The entire episode was about him hallucinating as his supervisors observe his every reaction. According to Serling, the pilot episode was heavily inspired by an article published by Time magazine. It was about a NASA-type isolation chamber and an astronaut trainee named Don Farrell.

The ghost town arose when Serling walked through an empty movie studio. He thought about how nightmarish it would have been to live in a deserted city.

Serling wanted “Where is Everybody?” to become “the middle ground between light and shadow, science and superstition.” While isolation chambers could have everything that a body physically needs to survive, they cannot quench our thirst for companionship. The Twilight Zone pilot wasn't an overly outlandish concept, yet it still offered something new.

In an interesting twist, the pilot wasn't always planned to come out this way. Rod Sterling had a different idea, and it was entitled “The Happy Place.” However, CBS turned it down, so he had to change the whole concept. The scrapped idea was to portray a dystopian society where people at the age of 60 would be consigned to extermination camps. CBC thought it was too dark, which angered Sterling at the time. However, in hindsight, he agreed that “The Happy Place” would have been hard to sell at the time.

The first day they tried filming the pilot was nothing short of a nightmare. It was one of those long days filled with setbacks, topped off with a camera malfunction that meant no shot was ever salvaged. Everyone went home angry and disappointed. But it was worse for Earl Holliman, the actor who played the protagonist, as he left the set with a fever of 102 degrees.

At the time, Holliman wasn't the most secure actor, so he would try to ask for advice and assurance from his director, Robert Stevens. But Stevens wasn't really fond of holding conversations with actors, so he would avoid poor Holliman at all costs.

Critics loved the small details that suggest the main character wasn't alone. Images of cigarettes, running faucet, and a steaming coffee pot was enough to indicate that someone is watching the antagonist.

The last part of the episode depicts a Ferris looking up at the moon as he is carried away on a stretcher across a tarmac. Ferris says ,'Hey — don't go away up there! Next time it won't be 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.'

Little did anyone from the set know, that man would finally take its first step in 1969. A billion people would witness Neil Armstrong say, 'That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.'

Rod Sterling made the promise, and he kept it. Welcome to 'The Twilight Zone.'