Time Enough at Last

This article is about the Twilight Zone episode. For the 2003 compilation album by The Fall, see List of compilation albums by The Fall.
"Time Enough at Last"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no. Season 1
Episode 8
Directed by John Brahm
Written by Rod Serling (teleplay)
Lynn Venable (short story)
Featured music Leith Stevens
Production code 173-3614
Original air date November 20, 1959
Guest appearance(s)

"Time Enough at Last" is the eighth episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. The episode was adapted from a short story written by Lynn Venable (pen name of Marilyn Venable).[1] The short story appeared in the January 1953 edition of the science fiction magazine If: Worlds of Science Fiction[2][3] about seven years before the television episode first aired. "Time Enough at Last" became one of the most famous episodes of the original Twilight Zone and has been frequently parodied since. It is "the story of a man who seeks salvation in the rubble of a ruined world"[4] and tells of Henry Bemis /ˈbiːmɪs/, played by Burgess Meredith, who loves books, yet is surrounded by those who would prevent him from reading them. The episode follows Bemis through the post apocalyptic world, touching on such social issues as anti-intellectualism, the dangers of reliance upon technology, and the difference between aloneness (solitude) and loneliness.

Opening narration

“ Witness Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers. A bookish little man whose passion is the printed page, but who is conspired against by a bank president and a wife and a world full of tongue-cluckers and the unrelenting hands of a clock. But in just a moment, Mr. Bemis will enter a world without bank presidents or wives or clocks or anything else. He'll have a world all to himself... without anyone. ”

Plot summary

Henpecked, far sighted bank teller and avid bookworm Henry Bemis (Meredith) works at his window in a bank, while reading David Copperfield, which causes him to shortchange an annoyed customer. Bemis's angry boss (Taylor), and later his nagging wife (deWit), both complain to him that he wastes far too much time reading "doggerel". As a cruel joke, his wife asks him to read poetry from one of his books to her; he eagerly obliges, only to find that she has inked over the text on every page, obscuring the words. Seconds later, she destroys the book by ripping the pages from it much to Henry's dismay.

The next day, as usual, Henry takes his lunch break in the bank's vault, where his reading will not be disturbed. Moments after he sees a newspaper headline, which reads "H-Bomb Capable of Total Destruction", an enormous explosion outside the bank violently shakes the vault, knocking Bemis unconscious. After regaining consciousness and recovering the thick glasses required for him to see, Bemis emerges from the vault to find the bank demolished and everyone in it dead. Leaving the bank, he sees that the entire city has been destroyed, and realizes that a nuclear war has devastated the Earth, but that his being in the vault has saved him.

Finding himself totally alone in a shattered world with food to last him a lifetime but no one to share it with, Bemis succumbs to despair. As he prepares to commit suicide using a revolver he has found, Bemis sees the ruins of the public library in the distance. Investigating, he finds that the books are still intact and readable; all the books he could ever hope for are his for the reading, and (as he gazes upon a huge fallen face of a clock) learns that he has all the time in the world to read them without interruption.

His despair gone, Bemis contentedly sorts the books he looks forward to reading for years to come. Just as he bends down to pick up the first book, he stumbles, and his glasses fall off and shatter. In shock, he picks up the broken remains of the glasses he is virtually blind without, and says, "That's not fair. That's not fair at all. There was time now. There was—was all the time I needed…! It's not fair! It's not fair!" and bursts into tears, surrounded by books he now can never read.

Closing narration

“ The best laid plans of mice and men... and Henry Bemis... the small man in the glasses who wanted nothing but time. Henry Bemis, now just a part of a smashed landscape, just a piece of the rubble, just a fragment of what man has deeded to himself. Mr. Henry Bemis... in the Twilight Zone. ”

Production

Burgess Meredith as Henry Bemis

"Time Enough at Last" was one of the first episodes written for The Twilight Zone.[5] It introduced Burgess Meredith to the series; he went on to star in three more episodes, being introduced as "no stranger to The Twilight Zone" in promotional spots for season two's "The Obsolete Man". He also narrated for the 1983 film Twilight Zone: The Movie, which made reference to "Time Enough at Last" during its opening sequence, with the characters discussing the episode in detail.

Footage of the exterior steps of the library was filmed several months after production had been completed. These steps can also be seen on the exterior of an Eloi public building in MGM's 1960 version of The Time Machine.[6] John Brahm was nominated for a Directors Guild award for his work on the episode.[7] The book that Bemis was reading in the vault and that flips open when the bomb explodes is A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus by Washington Irving.

Themes

Humanity's propensity for destruction and suicide are among the episode's themes.

Although the overriding message may seem to be "careful what you wish for", there are other themes throughout the episode as well.[6] Paramount among these is the question of solitude versus loneliness, as embodied by Bemis' moment of near-suicide. Additionally, the portrayal of societal attitudes towards books speaks to the contemporary decline of traditional literature and how, given enough time, reading may become a relic of the past.[8][9] At the same time, the ending "punishes Bemis for his antisocial behavior, and his greatest desire is thwarted".[10]

Rod Serling's concluding statement in the episode—that Bemis has become "just a fragment of what man has deeded to himself"—alludes to Robert Burns' Scots language poem "To a Mouse" (1785, for which John Steinbeck's book, Of Mice and Men (1938), was also named). The poem concludes: "The best-laid schemes o' mice an men / Gang aft agley" (translation: "Often go awry").

Although "Time Enough at Last" implies that nuclear warfare has destroyed humanity, film critic Andrew Sarris notes that the episode's necessarily unrealistic format may have been what allowed its production to commence:[9]

“ Much of the implacable seriousness of The Twilight Zone is seemingly keyed by the clipped, dour delivery of Serling himself and the interlocutor. He never encourages us to laugh, or even smile, even when the plot twist is at least darkly funny. For example, in 'Time Enough at Last' ... The H-bomb is still lurking in the background of the bookworm's 'accident.' The point is that the bomb could never have gone off on network television were the plot couched in a more realistic format. ”

In the era of the Internet and eBooks, the irony depicted in "Time Enough at Last" has an information age counterpart, according to Weston Ochse of Storytellers Unplugged. As Ochse points out, when Bemis becomes the last person on Earth, he finally has time to read, with all his books at his fingertips and the only impediment is technology when his medium for accessing them—his glasses—breaks. In a hypothetical world where all books are published electronically, Ochse observes, readers would be "only a lightning strike, a faulty switch, a sleepy workman or a natural disaster away from becoming Henry Bemis at the end of the world"—that is, a power outage has the potential to give them time to read, yet like Bemis, they too would lose their medium for accessing their books—namely the computer.[8] This analogy has been taken further by those who suggest that today's technology-dependent world, where books have become passé (cf. Bradbury's "The Pedestrian"), could render an outage both a liberator and an executioner: As the gateway to both work and entertainment (be it a computer, video games, or television), removing electricity from the equation presents Henry Bemis' heaven but modern society's hell.

Similar episodes

The Twilight Zone often explored similar themes throughout its run.[11] "Time Enough at Last" has strong thematic ties to a number of other episodes in the series, starting with that of isolation, first explored in the series pilot, "Where Is Everybody?". It is also a prominent theme in the previous episode "The Lonely". Additionally, in a plot very similar to that of "Time Enough at Last", "The Mind and the Matter" tells of a man who uses his mind to erase humanity, only to find that existence without other people is unbearable. The notion of being an outsider, lost in a sea of conformity, was one of the most common themes of the series.[6]

Other thematic elements in this episode can be found throughout the series, as well. "The Obsolete Man" takes the episode's literary subtext—the notion that reading may eventually be considered "obsolete"—to an extreme: The state has declared books obsolete and a librarian (also played by Meredith) finds himself on trial for his own obsolescence. This notion, akin to Ray Bradbury's short story "The Pedestrian" (1951), is also alluded to in the episode "Number 12 Looks Just Like You", in which a perfect and equal world contradictorily considers works like those of Shakespeare "smut".[10]

Impact

Critical and fan favorite

The Scary Door, a show-within-a-show on Futurama parodying The Twilight Zone, pokes fun at the final twist in "Time Enough at Last". When the man in the episode loses his glasses, he realizes he can still read large print; his eyes fall out, but he declares he can read Braille; his hands fall off, and as he screams, his tongue falls out and then his head falls off. Bender comments, "Cursed by his own hubris."

"Time Enough at Last" was a ratings success in its initial airing and "became an instant classic".[12] It "remains one of the best-remembered and best-loved episodes of The Twilight Zone" according to Marc Zicree, author of The Twilight Zone Companion.[6] When a poll asked readers of Twilight Zone Magazine which episode of the series they remembered the most, "Time Enough at Last" was the most frequent response, with "To Serve Man" coming in a distant second.[13] In TV Land's presentation of TV Guide's "100 Most Memorable Moments in Television", "Time Enough at Last" was ranked at #25.[14]

In popular culture

Many elements of American popular culture frequently pay homage to "Time Enough at Last".

Amusement park attractions

Comics

The comic book version of The Simpsons, Simpsons Comics, published a story called "The Last Fat Man", based partially on "Time Enough at Last", and includes a short scene where Homer Simpson shoos a bespectacled man who is reading a book out of a nuclear bunker so he can eat in it, unintentionally taking shelter in it.

Film

Games

Music

Television

There are numerous, notable television spoofs of the episode. Examples include:

Episodes of other television shows that refer to "Time Enough at Last" include:

Adaptations

"Time Enough at Last" has been released in numerous formats over the years.

References

  1. ↑ Hill, Angela (Oakland Tribune) (December 30, 2012). "Give 'Em Hill: El Cerrito woman lends 'Twilight Zone' inspiration". San Jose Mercury News. Retrieved October 14, 2013.
  2. ↑ Venable, Lynn (January 1953). "Time Enough at Last". IF: Worlds of Science Fiction.
  3. ↑ Venable, Lynn (January 1953). "Time Enough at Last". IF: Worlds of Science Fiction.
  4. ↑ Serling, Rod. Promotional spot for "Time Enough at Last". Original airdate: 13 November 1959.
  5. 1 2 "Time Enough At Last: Twilight Zone Story read by Bill Mills". Fictionwise eBooks. Retrieved 2007-09-01.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Zicree, Marc Scott. The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition).
  7. ↑ "Directors Guild of America".
  8. 1 2 Weston Ochse. "The End of Books: The Bemis Condition". Storytellers Unplugged. Retrieved 2007-09-01.
  9. 1 2 Sarris, Andrew. Rod Serling: Viewed from Beyond the Twilight Zone.
  10. 1 2 Stanyard, Stewart T. & Gaiman, Neil (2007). Dimensions Behind the Twilight Zone: A Backstage Tribute to Television's Groundbreaking Series. Ecw Press.
  11. ↑ "The Twilight Zone". Nostalgia Central.
  12. ↑ Presnell, Don & McGee, Marty. A Critical History of Television's the Twilight Zone, 1959–1964. p. 41.
  13. ↑ Gordon Sander. "Twilight Zone: A Serling Performance". The Sander Zone. Archived from the original on 2007-09-29. Retrieved 2007-09-01.
  14. ↑ "TV Guide and TV Land presents The 100 Most Memorable TV Moments". TV Land. Archived from the original on 2007-07-04. Retrieved 2007-08-17.
  15. ↑ Bruce A Metcalf & Ronnie O'Rourke. "Twilight Zone Tower of Terror or, Iago & Zazu Learn the Ups & Downs of the Hotel Business". Iago & Zazu's Attraction of the Week.
  16. ↑ "Time Enough at Last". Clock's Ticking Films. Retrieved 2007-08-17.
  17. ↑ "Fallout Tactics". Game Banshee. Retrieved 2007-08-30.
  18. 1 2 http://www.dga.org. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  19. ↑ "The Twilight Zone". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2007-08-17.
  20. ↑ "The Twilight Zone". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2007-08-17.
  21. ↑ "The Twilight Zone". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2007-08-17.
  22. ↑ "Twilight Zone Radio Dramas". Falcon Picture Group. Retrieved 2007-08-17.
  23. ↑ Levingston, Steven (2006-01-06). "CBS, Google to Make Shows Available Online". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2007-08-17.

Further reading

External links

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