The Twilight Zone Review: In His Image

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By William Kozy

Here’s an episode that initially might seem confusing, but upon repeated viewing, you’ll discover a much simpler story structure. It’s the curse of the Season 4, hour-long episodes. Essentially, these hour-long episodes aren’t terribly complicated but because they are padded with so much unnecessary dialogue, or repetitive scenes illustrating the same point, one’s mind clouds over as the story becomes obtuse. This episode received only 4 votes in my survey that asked, “What is your favorite episode of the original Twilight Zone series?” tying it with 9 other episodes for 124th thru 132nd place.

We begin with Alan Talbot leaving his hotel and walking into the subway. He’s played by George Grizzard who does very well in a dual role. For reasons you’ll see at the end of the episode, I do have to wonder where he got the funds to pay for a hotel. In any case, on the subway platform he encounters a religious fanatic played by Katherine Squire who was so good in “One More Pallbearer”, and she starts in on him with pestering and proselytizing there on the platform (some things never change.) Right before that though, Alan had a brief odd episode in which he heard some electronic sound effects, and light glowed on his face inexplicably. This gave him pause, but then it came time to deal with the fanatic. As she becomes more overbearing, Alan stands at the platform looking down the tunnel, and the weird sound effect and glow come again; the glow has the nice dual purpose of fooling us into thinking a train is approaching. She rants, “Oh the dear good Lord’s own sweet breath, and his voice, like an electric shock!” Well, another shock is about to befall both these characters, as Alan suffers another “episode” as a voice says in his head, “You’re perfect, you’re perfect.” The pressure mounts and her ranting gets to him causing him to toss her in front of the oncoming train.

After Rod’s monologue, Alan next shows up at his girlfriend Jessica’s apartment, all flirty and fun, seemingly unaffected by the subway incident. There is some issue about misjudging the time he was supposed to arrive at her apartment, so we can chalk up his nonchalance to some kind of blackout. After knowing each other for only four days, this couple has become engaged. That alone is crazy enough for a TZ plotline, but their plan for the day is to go visit his family back in his hometown, Coeurville. On the drive, he has a nightmare as he sleeps in the passenger seat, calling out the name “Walter”. I have to wonder if a woman would really be so quick to get engaged in only four days to a guy having these episodes. They get to his hometown and everything’s amiss—new buildings where they weren’t a week ago, some buildings with new businesses, then the coup de grace: they drive to his Aunt Mildred’s house and his key doesn’t work. He bangs on the door, and a cantankerous fellow answers, claiming to have lived there nine years. Another weird glowing episode, which is unseen by the other characters. To hammer home the idea we essentially repeat the scene with the next door neighbor who also doesn’t know the people he’s looking for. His workplace has also vanished.

Jessica has an idea. “Maybe twenty years has gone by”, she says, but Alan shoots that down because at his current age that would have meant he was 10-years-old in college and working at the office. And besides that there’s no record of him attending high school there.

He gets the idea to go to the cemetery to look for his parents’ graves. He walks to the plot where they should be, but instead of the Talbots, a Walter and Mary Ryder are on the tombstones. Aha, what’s that you say? “Walter” Ryder. That’s the name he was groaning in his nightmare. Just then the sheriff drives up with the cantankerous man in Aunt Mildred’s house. Now how did he know Alan would be here? That doesn’t make sense, but worse is that the ensuing confrontation is a scene that adds nothing new to the plot.

Driving home, Jessica suggests things like amnesia and going to see a doctor. Suddenly Alan has another episode and a voice intones “Put it down Alan! Get away!” He yells for Jessica to stop the car. He runs out and dashes into the forest. In anguish, he picks up a rock and calls to Jessica. Uh oh. Luckily his love for her allows him to fight past his desire to kill, and he yells at her to get in the car and get away. It is naggingly not believable that she would do so. That she would get in her car and leave him there in distress in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. And as it turns out she didn’t even go to get help, like from a doctor. She simply drove home!

Alan stumbles out of the woods, and gets clipped by a car. The driver stops to see if he’s all right, which he is, that is if you consider peeling back the skin of his injured arm and revealing wires, transistors, and circuitry inside all right. The driver gives Alan a ride back to his hotel, but as Alan gets out of the car, a conversation follows that seems bizarrely unlikely. The driver keeps asking Alan if he’s sure he’s all right, and Alan shoos him off telling him, “Look I signed a paper absolving you of any blame, isn’t that enough?” Is that really something that would have happened? The man drew up a statement and had Alan sign it? And Alan did? Sounds like more padding to me, especially since the parting conversation goes on and on.

Up in his hotel room, he tests his hand by holding a lit match to it. No pain. But wouldn’t pain receptors be an important function to have in order to sense potential physical destruction? Eh, skip it. The phone rings and it’s Jessica who has kept calling to see if he’s all right. He tells her it’s best for her to just forget about him, but she persists, telling him she’ll pick him up tomorrow and take him to a psychiatrist for an appointment. He’s touched that she still wants to be with him. He looks in the phone book for the name of the person who was on the gravestone where his parents should have been, and he shows up at the home of Walter B. Ryder, Jr . Instead of knocking he pushes open the door and enters. We can justify these unusual decisions at this point since clearly the character knows something is amiss and perhaps wants to keep some sort of upper hand.

It’s shadowy inside, and as Alan walks deeper into the spacious house, a figure in the foreground creeps after him and slides the room’s doors behind him, startling Alan who swivels around to face….a man looking exactly like him. This duplicate is much more confident than our Alan who is still quite lost over what’s going on. The man tells Alan, “You know you almost killed me with those scissors,” and the perceptive viewer might hearken back to the nightmare Alan had: “Put it down, Alan!”

The pieces come together as to how Alan found Walter, who in return provides coy little hints about Alan’s self. How he “delivered” his birth only 8 days ago, and how Alan’s question “Who am I?” is like asking “Who is this watch I’m wearing?…Who is the refrigerator in the kitchen?” Finally, he comes out with it: Alan is a machine. A robot he made to fulfill an aspiration he had ever since he was a kid.

But Alan isn’t having it. He figures it’s an artificial arm, because after all, he eats, he drinks, he sleeps. Walter doesn’t quite answer that, and instead takes him to the laboratory where he created Alan, and hey, just like that we’ve been distracted from Alan’s sensible rebuttal. Walter turns on some switches and we hear the same sound effects that accompanied Alan’s episodes. Walter shows him some earlier prototypes, and explains at length how he got the money to fund his work, attracting brilliant minds to assist, but somehow instead of solidifying our willing suspension of disbelief we feel like the writing works too hard to reach a minimal level of believability. Oh right, and let’s not forget that all the blather helps make this an hour-long episode. On and on the details go, and actually the more he explains things the less convinced we are because it only serves to raise more scientific oddities to poke holes in.

So what makes Alan have these episodes? Walter’s theory is that we all have killer instincts, but our inhibitions hold them in check. But something went wrong with Alan. Okay, that explains why he’d want to kill the annoying evangelist at the subway, but what on Earth would induce him to want to pick up a rock with an instinct to kill Jessica? There was no provocation. Walter finally admits that getting as far as he did with creating Alan, was a huge lucky break. He doubts he could come that close again, let alone repair whatever’s wrong with Alan. Walter comes clean with the true subconscious motive that drove him—he wanted to create a being that was like him, but better. Outgoing where he was shy, ambitious instead of fanatical, etc. Alan brings up Jessica, pointing out that Walter’s actions had consequences affecting not just him and Alan.

Alan then tells Walter to create another Alan, and I have no idea what his intention was but he writes down Jessica’s address, and before he can get to the heart of his plan he finds the evangelist’s pamphlet in his pocket which triggers another episode. He attacks Walter and the two battle it out there in a melee in the lab. We dissolve however to the next scene before finding out the fight’s outcome. There is a buzz at Jessica’s apartment door and it’s Alan; the two agree to forget about the past two days. She heads to the kitchen happily turning around to him and asking if he’d like some pan fried eggs as she holds her arms out as if to welcome him to her bosom. She adds, they’re “guaranteed to make a new man out of you”, and you should see the look on Alan’s face. It’s a nice subtle take by Grizzard.

But wait a second, here comes the button on the episode. Back at the lab the camera glides across the room, settling on…a beaten Alan, dead on the floor. So Walter has decided to insinuate himself in Alan’s place and into Jessica’s life, sight unseen. It probably makes sense as he and Alan would likely have the same taste. The episode gets its title from Genesis 1:27 in which it’s said, “So God created mankind in his own image…” It looks now like Walter is ready to move onto Genesis 1:28 –“ God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number’…”

And then God said,

“Let’s rate this a 4.8”

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