There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man.

It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity.

It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears

and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call

the twilight zone.

The twilight zone. Tonight we welcome back to the Twilight Zone Richard Matheson.

Although welcome back is probably not strictly accurate, depending on how you look at it.

His short story disappearing act had been very loosely adapted into the episode and when the scow was opened. But apparently the episode that we'll be discussing tonight was the first non-sailing episode to actually go into production,

despite us haven't already seen the Charles Beaumont episode,

perchance to dream much earlier in the season.

So it's actually maybe a case of welcome Richard Matheson I think.

He was paid $1,750 for the script, which was actually the lowest fee he ever received for

a Twilight Zone episode, which I suppose makes sense if it was his first episode he needed to show what he could do.

Now the way this story started off is actually quite interesting and in the book

Unlocking the door to a television classic, Matheson says this, he says, I know I had to go in

and pitch the first one, which was extremely simple. World War I pilot gets lost, lands,

and he's in a 1959 SAC base.

That was enough.

I didn't have a story. I didn't know where it was going to go. I had to figure that out. But because the image was so vivid, they said, yeah, go ahead. I had been published and they knew more or less what I could do. It wasn't as if they were taken that big of a chance. Now the story originally was called flight, which in a lot of ways because of the way you can interpret that, I like better than the last flight, but I'll talk more about that later. Now there was an open a narration that wasn't used and it goes like this.

There's a loneliness to the sky, a sense of isolation, a rootless bewilderment translated

into fear when a pilot is lost, as this man is. His name is William Smith Decker, Royal Flying

Call. He returned from patrol somewhere over France. He is hopelessly, desperately lost. This this is 1919 as of this moment

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