Mirror Image

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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

This article is about the Twilight Zone episode. For the short story by Isaac Asimov see Mirror Image (Asimov).

For the album recorded by Joey Pearson, see Mirror Image (album).

Mirror Image is an episode of the television series The Twilight Zone.

Contents 1 Details 2 Cast 3 Synopsis 4 Trivia

[edit] Details

• Episode number: 21
• Season: 1
• Production code: ???
• Original air date: February 26, 1960
• Writer: Rod Serling
• Director: John Brahm

[edit] Cast

• Vera Miles,
• Martin Milner,
• Joe Hamilton

[edit] Synopsis

A woman named Millicent Barnes is waiting at a bus stop for a bus to Buffalo, New York. Upon looking at a wall clock she notices the bus is late. She walks up to ask the man at the ticket counter, but he says this is her third time there. Millicent refutes this.

Later she goes to the bathroom to wash her hands and another woman there insists this is her second time there. Again, Millicent refutes this. Upon leaving the bathroom, she sees herself in the mirror--sitting on the bench. While she waits some more, she notices a bag just like hers in the luggage pile behind her. She mentions this to the ticket counter man, who says it's her bag. She doesn't believe this until she notices her bag isn't beside the bench anymore.

Still later, she meets a man, Paul Grinstead, who is waiting for the same bus. They talk about the phenomena. Paul, attempting to calm Millicent, says it's either a joke or a misunderstanding caused by a look-alike. Just then the bus arrives and the two prepare to board it, but just as they start to, Millicent looks in the window and sees the copy of herself, seated already upon the bus. She runs back into the stop, driven almost into hysterics while her identical counterpart has a facial expression of malicious indifference and something of enjoyment.

Paul follows her in and agrees to wait for the 7:30 bus. While they wait, Millicent, laying on the bench wrapped in a blanket, insists the strange events are caused by an evil double from a parallel world; a nearby, yet distant alternate plane of existence that comes into convergence with this world by powerful forces, or unnatural events. When this happens, the malevolent copies enter this realm. Millicent's doppelganger, evil in nature, can only survive in this world by eliminating and replacing its good counterpart - Millicent herself. The real Millicent is truly brilliant and astute in her perceptions, but no one will believe her.

Paul says the explanation is "too metaphysical" for him, and believes that Millicent's sanity is beginning to unravel. Paul tells Millicent he'll call a friend to drive them to Buffalo but, in reality, he calls the police. After Millicent is taken away, Paul begins to settle himself until he, after drinking from a water fountain, notices that his valise is missing. Looking up towards the main doors, Paul notices another man running through them and away from the bus station. Pursuing this individual down the street, Paul discovers, to his absolute horror, that he is chasing his own copy, its face a mask of excited, evil delight.

As his evil copy runs away and vanishes, Paul now begins his own evening descent into a hellish mixture of madness, terror, and future uncertainty that he cannot explain to others, lest he be considered as insane as he and others thought Millicent to be.

[edit] Trivia

• An interesting fact about this episode is that the location of the bus station that provides the setting can be placed by lines of episode dialogue, which refer to previous stops at Binghamton and future stops at Cortland and Syracuse. Knowledge of central New York, where Mr. Serling was born (Syracuse) and raised (Binghamton), can lead to the conclusion that this bus station is in Ithaca, NY. In fact the Ithaca bus station resembles the set design, the walls covered by depression-era mosaics. The fact that Mr. Serling's production company was called Cayuga Productions (Ithaca is located at the southern end of Cayuga Lake, one of the Finger Lakes), and that he later taught at Ithaca College, makes it all a more likely reality.

• This episode is based on a real-life experience that Rod Serling witnessed at a bus stop.