Steel (The Twilight Zone)

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The Twilight Zone original series Season five (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5) Fall 1963 – Summer 1964 List of The Twilight Zone episodes
Episodes: In Praise of Pip Steel Nightmare at 20,000 Feet A Kind of a Stopwatch The Last Night of a Jockey Living Doll The Old Man in the Cave Uncle Simon Probe 7, Over and Out The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms A Short Drink From a Certain Fountain Ninety Years Without Slumbering Ring-a-Ding Girl You Drive The Long Morrow The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross Number 12 Looks Just Like You Black Leather Jackets Night Call From Agnes—With Love Spur of the Moment An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Queen of the Nile What's in the Box The Masks I Am the Night—Color Me Black Sounds and Silences Caesar and Me The Jeopardy Room Stopover in a Quiet Town The Encounter Mr. Garrity and the Graves The Brain Center at Whipple's Come Wander With Me The Fear The Bewitchin' Pool

“Steel” is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

[edit] Details

Episode number: 122
Season: 5
Original air date: October 4, 1963
Writer: Richard Matheson based on his story, first published in the May 1956 edition of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science-Fiction
Director: Don Weis
Music: Nathan Van Cleave

[edit] Cast

Steel Kelly: Lee Marvin
Pole: Joe Mantell
Maynard Flash: Chuck Hicks

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In a future where any boxing involving human fighters has been criminalized, the sport is now dominated by fighting robots. Former boxer Steel Kelly manages a B2-model robot that breaks down right before a fight. In order to collect the money necessary for repairs, Steel enters the fight disguised as a robot. Steel is almost killed in the ring by the B7 robot he is fighting against, but he manages to survive and collects half the prize money.

[edit] Trivia

Reportedly Richard Matheson's favorite Twilight Zone episode.

The episode was also rumored to be the inspiration for The Simpsons episode I, D'oh-Bot.

[edit] Themes

An update of the legend of John Henry. The stories of both John Henry and Steel Kelly tell of an exceptional human being who attempts—and fails—to prove man’s superiority to the machines that seek to replace him but succeed in showing man’s ability to rise to all challenges with “blind animal courage”. Similar themes are revisited in “The Brain Center at Whipple’s”.