And When the Sky Was Opened

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The Twilight Zone original series Season one (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5) Fall 1959 – Summer 1960 List of The Twilight Zone episodes
Episodes: Where Is Everybody? One for the Angels Mr. Denton on Doomsday The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine Walking Distance Escape Clause The Lonely Time Enough at Last Perchance to Dream Judgment Night And When the Sky Was Opened What You Need The Four of Us Are Dying Third from the Sun I Shot an Arrow Into the Air The Hitch-Hiker The Fever The Last Flight The Purple Testament Elegy Mirror Image The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street A World of Difference Long Live Walter Jameson People Are Alike All Over Execution The Big Tall Wish A Nice Place to Visit Nightmare as a Child A Stop at Willoughby The Chaser A Passage for Trumpet Mr. Bevis The After Hours The Mighty Casey A World of His Own

“And When the Sky Was Opened” is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

[edit] Details

Episode number: 11
Season: 1
Production code: 173-3611
Original air date: December 11, 1959
Writer: Rod Serling (story by Richard Matheson)
Director: Douglas Heyes
Producer: Buck Houghton
Director of photography: George T. Clemens
Music: Leonard Rosenman

[edit] Cast

Forbes: Rod Taylor
Harrington: Charles Aidman
Gart: Jim Hutton

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Three astronauts flying the X-20 DynaSoar into space for the first time disappear from radar on a test flight, then reappear. Rod Serling's voiceover is spoken showing the ship represented in a hangar by a canvas-covered form.

However, all is not as it seems upon their return to Earth. After they land, Gart is sent to the hospital with a broken leg. During the evening, the other two, Forbes and Harrington, go to a bar. There, Harrington suddenly gets a strange feeling. He immediately goes to a phone booth to call his parents, but they tell him they have no son. Then Harrington mysteriously disappears, and no one but Forbes remembers his existence. Forbes tells his story to Gart, who says he does not know any person named Harrington. Then Forbes looks in the mirror, sees no reflection and runs out of the room. By the time Gart gets up to run after him, Forbes has mysteriously disappeared too, and nobody remembers him. Then Gart himself mysteriously disappears, and the ship does too—wiping them off the face of the earth.

Although there are no special effects showing the spacecraft in flight, the disappearances are emphasized by props. The headline on the newspaper first says "Three Men..." then "Two Men..." and finally "One Man..." There is one fewer bed in the hospital room when one man disappears. At the end, the hospital room is shown empty, and there's a sheet of canvas spread out on the floor of an empty hangar.