Rod Serling: The War Veteran Who Built The Twilight Zone to Confront What He'd Seen

You’re traveling to another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. Your next stop: the Twilight Zone.

With those words, Rod Serling began what is now considered one of the most iconic television series of all time. So iconic, in fact, that it’s been remade as a series three times and turned into a feature motion picture.

But the story behind the show — and the man who made it — is stranger and darker than most people realise.

A Kid Who Put On Plays in the Basement

Rod Serling was born on December 25th, 1924. Encouraged by his parents, he would frequently put on plays in his family’s basement for family and friends. By high school, he was writing for the school newspaper and had a reputation as a social activist.

He was interested in sports, but everyone said he was too small for the varsity football team. Listening to the radio was his favourite hobby — especially horror shows — while he worked at a local Binghamton, New York radio station.

Although he was accepted into college, Serling wanted to enlist for the war effort. After graduating high school in 1943, he was stationed in the Philippines to fight the Japanese — even though he had hoped to fight the Germans in Europe.

His battle experiences influenced his writing and personal views for the rest of his life.

What War Did to Him

Serling was no stranger to death. He saw it daily during his service — including a freak accident that killed another private he was stationed with. A food crate dropped from a plane landed on the man’s head, instantly decapitating him.

Serling would later write many scripts using the unpredictability of death as a theme. During his time in the service, he was awarded the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star, and the Philippine Liberation Medal.

He experienced nightmares and flashbacks for the rest of his life. As he’d later say, he turned to writing to get it off his chest.

After being discharged in 1946, Serling worked at a rehab hospital. He’d been wounded in the knee during combat in the Philippines — an injury that would plague him for the rest of his life.

When he finally entered college, he quickly became interested in theatre and broadcasting. He wrote, directed, and acted in radio programs at school while earning his Bachelor of Arts in literature. That’s where he met Carol Kramer — the woman who would become his wife.

But Serling was also a daredevil. He worked part-time while in college testing parachutes for the US Army Air Force. He earned fifty dollars for each jump, and once was paid five hundred dollars for a particularly hazardous test jump. He was also paid a thousand dollars when he tested a jet ejection seat that the previous three testers had been killed on.

The Pilot That Almost Didn’t Happen

In 1957, Serling wrote a teleplay intended to be the pilot episode of his new television series, which he called The Twilight Zone. The episode was titled The Time Element — and it was initially rejected by the networks.

But it was picked up a year later and produced as an episode of Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse. The show was a huge success and allowed Serling to begin production on his new, untested anthology series.

Although Serling himself is remembered as an on-camera presence in the original Twilight Zone, he actually only appeared physically in one episode during the very first season. That episode was titled A World of His Own, the very last of season one. In it, Serling actually interacts with one of the characters.

Up until that point, he was present only as a voice-over — until the end of episodes, where he’d preview the next week’s story.

A First Season That Changed Television

The first season included some of the most memorable episodes ever made: Time Enough at Last with Burgess Meredith, The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, Third from the Sun, and The Hitchhiker.

Serling himself wrote 19 of the first season’s 36 episodes and did the teleplays for another 10. That incredible output won him his fourth Emmy Award for dramatic writing.

Season Two: Budget Cuts and a New Theme

The second season saw production problems come into play — as well as a new theme song by Marius Constant, which replaced the dreamy Bernard Herrmann theme from season one.

That’s the theme everyone now knows. The one with the unforgettable guitar and bongo motif.

A new network executive took over at ABC and decided the shows were running over budget. His name was James Aubrey, and he ordered seven fewer episodes to be produced and six episodes to be shot on videotape to cut costs.

Two other episodes filmed in season two — The Grave and Nothing in the Dark — were held over for the third season.

In the end, the savings only amounted to an average of six thousand dollars per episode. Less than the cost of a single episode. Serling again penned 19 of the second season’s 29 episodes.

The Episode That Was Banned for 52 Years

One episode — The Encounter, the 151st of the series — came from a story by Rod Serling with a teleplay by screenwriter and novelist Martin M. Goldsmith. It was directed by Robert Butler, who also directed episodes of Batman, Star Trek, and The Fugitive.

The episode was originally broadcast on May 1st, 1964. But due to its racial nature, it was banned from the television syndication market until January 1st, 2016 — when it was finally shown as part of a Twilight Zone marathon on the Sci-Fi Network.

In the episode, George Takei — known as Mr. Sulu from Star Trek — plays a Japanese American named Takamori who is spoken to in a racially offensive way by a World War II veteran named Fenton.

It was because of this, and its racial overtones, that the episode was banned from syndication for 52 years.

The story centres on a samurai sword Fenton used to kill a Japanese soldier twenty years earlier in World War II. The sword itself has a strange effect on Takamori, seeming to have him under its spell. After a scuffle, Fenton — attempting to retrieve the sword — instead falls on it and dies. Takamori then takes the sword and leaps out of the window to his death.

Not one of the more uplifting of Twilight Zone stories.

The End of the Original Run

The Twilight Zone was on the air for five seasons, from 1959 to 1964, and won many awards — but never had more than modest ratings.

So when it was cancelled for the third time after five years and 156 episodes, Serling — who had grown tired of the series — decided not to appeal the decision.

He then sold the rights to the show to CBS, partly because it frequently went over budget and he didn’t think he could recoup the production costs.

Thus ended the original five-year run of arguably the best television anthology series ever made.

What He Left Behind

In Rod Serling’s own words: “Every man is put on earth condemned to die. Time and method of execution unknown.”

That’s the philosophy that ran through every episode. Not just the horror ones. Not just the twist endings. The idea that death is arbitrary, that life is fragile, and that the only thing we can control is how we treat each other in the time we have.

Serling went to war. He saw a man decapitated by a falling crate. He tested an ejection seat three men had already died in. He came home with nightmares he never fully escaped.

And instead of trying to forget, he built a dimension where he could talk about all of it — wrapped in science fiction and fantasy, so the censors wouldn’t notice until it was too late.

That’s the real legacy of The Twilight Zone. Not the monsters. Not the twists. A man who saw the worst the world could do and decided to spend the rest of his life writing about it, so the rest of us might understand.

Thanks for visiting the dimension of imagination. We’ll see you next time.