Edgar Allan Poe for our Dreamy TV Times? By Isabella Woods

Isabella Woods takes a moment to reflect on the genius, and the legacy of Rod Serling...

The stuff that dreamers are made of

Gene Roddenberry, the dreamer, creator, and genius behind the original ³Star Trek², said the following of Rod Serling at the latter's funeral in 1975:

"No one could know Serling, or view or read his work, without recognizing his deep affection for humanity, his sympathetically enthusiastic curiosity about us, and his determination to enlarge our horizons by giving us a better understanding of ourselves. He dreamed of much for us, and demanded much of himself, perhaps more than was possible for either in this time and place. But it is that quality of dreams and demands that makes the ones like Rod Serling rare ...and always irreplaceable."

Roddenberry received his own eulogies in 1991. They seemed pretty similar to Serling's. This from the famous science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury, for example:

"In the midst of so much violence and so many shows we don't care about, so many movies we don't want to see . . . 'Star Trek' stands out as a nice, quiet, moral example at a time when we need it," said science fiction author Ray Bradbury.

But dreamers do that for us ­ they put into words so many things we already feel but do not know how to say until they tell us.

Serling the curious dreamer

Serling was a curious dreamer right from the very start: known for his imagination as well as his liberal left-leaning views ­ even at school ­ these characteristics were, perhaps unusually, coupled with an extrovert personality. Unusually because the talent of being able to see further than others often clouds one's ability to get on in a life which, wherever conservative, does not appreciate those who challenge the status quo.

Serling, however, was never backward in coming forwards. He didn't care if you didn't want to listen ­ he knew from pretty early on that what he had to say was worth hearing. The mark of a true and authentic artist in the making, in fact.

His experiences during World War Two defined the rest of his life ­ and only served to underline his views of the world around him. For his was never a lazy dreaming born out of a disconnection from reality. His was not a gratuitous excuse for not looking harsh facts in the eyes but the fruit of an honest intelligence, able to explain what he could see with an astute attention to detail.

In Serling the TV artist, we find a dreamer able to transmute that sense of dislocation many must have felt as a result of the wider political and military contexts of the time. And thus came about a television series without peers: ³The Twilight Zone². As the US emerged from the nightmare that had been McCarthyism, and still struggled to battle against the evil that was Communism, ³The Twilight Zone² was well placed to articulate through industrial art the darkness, peculiarity and contradictions of a most disconcerting century. For some people, The Twilight Zone appeared as if it was created by someone with a serious subtance abuse problem but in fact it was the work of Serling's creative genius.

Edgar Allan Poe of the Television Age

If Roddenberry, through ³Star Trek², expressed in a direct and upfront manner the kind of society he would've preferred us to establish, Serling's approach was different: in a way, perhaps it wouldn't be entirely wrong to argue that, at his very best, he was the Edgar Allan Poe of the television age. Limited by the inevitable restrictions of the medium of TV ­ sponsors, networks and that overarching instinct, when in doubt, to play safe ­ he nevertheless created true art. An art which spoke to a vast swathe of the American people in a time of considerable flux.

His philosophies, theses and opinions of the human condition were expressed less directly than they might have been ­ and yet precisely because of this, they probably had more long-term impact. The preacher never gets the message home half as effectively as the teacher who gives hands-on experience. And through the shady world that was the Twilight Zone, the experience was about as embracing as it ever got in late Fifties, early Sixties television.

It is fitting therefore that one of the best-loved episodes of this, his best-loved series, should have been titled, quite precisely, ³To Serve Man².

For that is what, in all his works and thoughts, he ended up by doing himself.

- Isabella Woods