Review of Twilight Zone, The: Vol 18

Introduction

This Twilight Zone collection has the theme of “Another World…Almost like our own”


"I Shot an Arrow into the Air", Episode 15 - January 15, 1960: The stranded crew of the worlds first manned space mission must survive on a desolate and waterless asteroid. One of the crew ruthlessly grasps for life before a peculiar symbol reveals the true origin of the group’s location.

"Death Ship", Episode 108 - February 7, 1963: Three astronauts discover a wrecked duplicate of their very own spaceship and their own dead bodies! Captain Ross (Jack Klugman) launches their ship repeatedly to prove that they are alive.

"Still Valley", Episode 76 – November 24, 1961: A confederate soldier (Gary Merrill) gets a chance to win the Civil War for the South but only by using the aid of a very dubious ally.

At first glance, you may think that this collection is a little light on the episodes and consequently not as good a buy as some of the other disks in the Twilight zone collection. But of course you would be wrong as not only have you got a couple of classics here, but ‘Death Ship’ is an extended 50 min episode which ups the running time to the same running length as the other DVDs in the series.
Highlight episode of the disc must be ‘I shot an Arrow Into the Air’ which has remained an old favourite, but saying that all the episodes here are fine examples of the twilight zone series in general. ‘Death Ship’ has a distinct ‘Martian Chronicles’ feel to it and would be of interest to any Ray Bradbury fans out there just because of the similarity to a particular episode in that series. ‘Still Valley’ is a fairly simple story but remains interesting due to the fortean references to superstition and witchcraft.

Video

Another quality print to add to the collection with only the occasional bit of dirt or dust to lower the overall quality. Image detail remains good throughout with solid blacks, a good contrast and only limited amounts of grain. There were no compression problems that I noticed and the picture remained (for a made for TV series of this age) excellent throughout.

Audio

Again the standard mono mix which remained clear and concise throughout with no real problems. The track maybe a little edgy at times or have a slightly higher noise floor than your used too but overall the audio remains solid and workmanlike.

Features

Like the rest of the Twilight Zone volumes on DVD this edition contains various notes and essays about the series in general and the specific featured episodes. Inside the Twilight Zone contains a Rod Serling biography, a season by season commentary, history of the twilight zone and a review and credit section for each episode on the disk. This section is written by the author of “The Twilight Zone Companion” Marc Scott Zicree.
You also get the small postcard set that have a brief synopsis and picture of each episode printed on them.

Conclusion

Another excellent addition to the series which although it has less episodes than other disks remains an essential buy because of the classic episodes it contains.