A Matter of Minutes

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“A Matter of Minutes”

The Twilight Zone episode

Episode no.

Season 1
Episode 15, Segment 3

Written by

Harlan Ellison
Rockne S. O'Bannon

Directed by

Sheldon Larry

Guest stars

Adam Arkin : Michael Wright
Karen Austin : Maureen Wright
Adolph Caesar : Supervisor
Marianne Muellerleile : First Woman in Accident
Alan David Gelman : Heavyset Man

Original airdate

January 24, 1986

Episode chronology
← Previous	Next →
"A Small Talent for War"	"The Elevator"

List of Twilight Zone episodes

A Matter of Minutes is the third segment of the fifteenth episode from the television series The New Twilight Zone. It is based on the short story "Yesterday Was Monday", by Theodore Sturgeon first published in June 1941.

This episode is also similar in concept to the Stephen King novella The Langoliers.

[edit] Synopsis

A young married couple wake up one day to the sounds of construction. When they get a good look at the world around them, they find everything has stopped. Apparently they have discovered a rip in the fabric of time. A crew of blue-clad construction workers are busy removing their furniture and replacing it with new. The Wrights run outside to find things being rebuilt that have already existed. The workers set up a crash, and distribute litter in the streets. Confused, the couple run in the direction of the voice barking out orders to the workers. They discover a man in yellow, who explains to them he is the supervisor of the maintenance of time. They have somehow slipped into a loophole of time. Showing them exactly how time is maintained, he reveals to them a new understanding of how the universe works: every minute in history is essentially a separate world, which must be built, maintained, and torn down once the world finishes with it. The supervisor informs them they cannot return. They flee from the foreman and his crew, and try to find a way to slip back to their own time. They hide inside a theatre ticket booth waiting until their time, 11:37, rolls around and catches up with them. Back in their own time, they find a "blue" wrench, a souvenir as proof of their experience.

[edit] Closing narration

“

Time, a handy fiction to explain why everything doesn't happen all at once. Or maybe we're the fiction, moving minute by minute—through the Twilight Zone.

”