The Purple Testament

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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

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

[edit] Details

Episode number: 19
Season: 1
Production code: 173-3619
Original air date: February 12, 1960
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: Richard L. Bare
Music: Stock

[edit] Cast

Lt. Fitzgerald: William Reynolds
Captain Riker: Dick York
Captain Gunther: Barney Phillips
Jeep Driver: Warren Oates

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

William Fitzgerald, a lieutenant serving in World War II, suddenly gains the mysterious ability to discover who is about to die via a strange flash of light across their face. After correctly predicting several deaths, he eventually sees the light flash across his own face. On the way back to headquarters, his jeep drives over a landmine.

[edit] Trivia

Serling's closing narration reads: “From William Shakespeare, Richard the Third, a small excerpt. The line reads, ‘He has come to open the purple testament of bleeding war.’ And for Lieutenant William Fitzgerald, A Company, First Platoon, the testament is closed. Lieutenant Fitzgerald has found the Twilight Zone.” However, this passage is from Richard the Second.

Set in the Philippines during during World War II, the episode may have been inspired by Serling's service there in the 11th Airborne Division, during which he was wounded in the battle for Manila.

Originally cast as Lt. Fitzgerald was Dean Stockwell, who was unable to appear but would later star in the similarly themed episode “A Quality of Mercy”.

The concept of seeing a light on the face of those who are about to die was readdressed in the second revival episode Into the Light.

This chapter was parodied in The Simpsons, in the chapter Treehouse of Horror XV. In "The Ned Zone", after an accident in which Ned Flanders is hit with a bowling ball by Homer Simpson. When he gets to the hospital, and Dr. Julius Hibbert tells him he had had a brain tumor and the ball saved him, Ned tries to thank him but ends watching the death of the doctor: he makes a free fall while laughing and crushes against the floor. This comes reality when Homer asks the doctor to retrieve a frisbee from the window, and Hibbert falls. After that he saves Hans Moleman's life, only to drop him afterwards and watch him die chewed up by alligators - as he had seen before. Finally, when Homer hears about it, he taunts Flanders - who had seen he was going to kill Homer with a gun - to try and make his vision reality. Flanders throws away the gun and when he hugs Homer, he has another vision: Homer will push a button in the nuclear center that will kill everybody, but when Ned begs Homer not to go, the latter goes in spite of his adverts. Flanders follows him and finds him in a sound-proof chamber, in which stands the button he had seen. Ned tries to avoid Homer to push the button, but the static converts the message in something that leads Homer to push the button. Desperate, Ned takes the gun of a security officer and kills Homer - just like in the way he had seen the first time - but Homer pushes the button with his tongue in the last moment, fulfilling what Flanders had seen.