And When the Sky Was Opened

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“And When the Sky Was Opened”
The Twilight Zone episode

Jim Hutton in "And When the Sky Was Opened"
Episode no. Season 1
Episode 11
Written by Rod Serling (story by Richard Matheson)
Directed by Douglas Heyes
Guest stars Rod Taylor : Col. Clegg Forbes
Charles Aidman : Col. Ed Harrington
Jim Hutton : Major William Gart
Maxine Cooper : Amy
Sue Randall : Nurse
Paul Bryar : Bartender
Joe Bassett : Medical officer
Gloria Pall : Girl in bar
Elizabeth Fielding : Blonde nurse
Featured music Leonard Rosenman
Production no. 173-3611
Original airdate December 11, 1959
Episode chronology
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"Judgement Night" "What You Need"
List of Twilight Zone episodes

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

Contents

[edit] Opening Narration

“ Her name: X-20. Her type: an experimental interceptor. Recent history: A crash landing in the Mojave Desert after a thirty-one hour flight nine hundred miles into space. Incidental data: The ship, with the men who flew her, disappeared from the radar screen for twenty-four hours. But the shrouds that cover mysteries are not always made out of tarpaulin, as this man will soon find out on the other side of the hospital door. ”

[edit] Synopsis

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 (for the note, there is no reflection in the mirror when he looks at it) 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 "Lone 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.

[edit] Closing Narration

“ Once upon a time, there was a man named Harrington, a man named Forbes, a man named Gart. They used to exist, but don't any longer. Someone or something took them somewhere. At least they are no longer a part of the memory of man. And as to the X-20 supposed to be housed here in this hangar, this too does not exist. And if any of you have any questions concerning an aircraft and three men who flew her, speak softly of them, and only in the Twilight Zone. ”

[edit] Episode notes

This episode is thinly based on the short story "Disappearing Act" by Richard Matheson.[1] The story was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (March 1953).

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Zicree, Marc Scott (1982). The Twilight Zone Companion, 2nd edition, Hollywood: Sillman-James Press. 
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