Especially in terms of mystery building or just plain general "what- the-hell-is-going-on-here?" level, this "Elegy" is one of the most successful TZ-episodes of the entire first season! The story begins like so many other episodes, with a trio of astronauts floating around lost in space – definitely one of Rod Serling hobbyhorse premises – and landing on an asteroid where the atmosphere and conditions are identical to earth even though they find themselves 665 million light years away from home. If it weren't for the two suns in the sky, the astronauts would swear they landed on earth the way it looked more than 200 years ago (since their ship took off in the year 2185) and the inexplicable occurrences continue to pile up. There are plenty of people and animals in a typically American village setting, but they all stand their motionless and seemingly paralyzed. They eventually run into the peculiar Mr. Wickwire who introduces himself as the local caretaker and reveals the fantastically wacky truth about the place they are trapped! In all honesty, this wasn't my personal favorite episode but admittedly it's one of the best examples to illustrate the series' creativity, versatility and crazed imagination! Not coincidentally, the cuckoo but strangely absorbing screenplay got penned down by the genius writer Charles Beaumont. Apart from nearly two dozen of terrific Twilight Zone episodes, Beaumont also wrote the scenarios of Roger Corman's best Gothic horror movies ("The Masque of Red Death", "Premature Burial", "The Haunted Palace"
) before dying at a dreadfully young age from the consequences of two incurable diseases. What entertained and fascinated me most about "Elegy" is wondering what difficult and time-consuming task it must have been to keep all these extra players frozen and completely stationary when the cameras were aimed at them! In case you ever played a game of "1, 2, 3, Red Light" when you were young, you know how impossible it is to remain perfectly still when other people are looking at you. My respect and congratulations to the literally hundreds of extras who pulled this off!
