Review of Twilight Zone, The: Vol 10

Introduction

This Twilight Zone collection has the theme of “Time Travel”


"The Last Flight", Episode 18 - February 5, 1960: A World War II Flying ace (Kenneth Haigh) while flying through a mysterious cloud, lands in the 1960’s. Disoriented and confused, he has to convince the top brass at an U.S. Military base of his identity.

"Once Upon a Time", Episode 78 - December 15, 1961:Woodrow (Buster Keaton) is a janitor from 1890 who accidentally activates a time travelling helmet. A helmet which unfortunately breaks down in the year 1962.

"A Hundred Yards Over the Rim", Episode 59 - April 7, 1961: A settler (Cliff Robertson) sets out in the search of medicine for his dying son and just happens to stumble in to modern-day New Mexico

"The Trouble with Templeton", Episode 45 - December 9, 1960: Boothe Templeton (Brian Ahern) plays an ageing actor who wishes he could return to the “good ol’ days” when his wife was still alive. He of course gets his wish but also finds out the past is not always the way you remember.

Some solid stories here, but I came away feeling distinctly un-zoned, if you see what I mean. There is nothing particularly wrong with the stories, its just that they seemed a bit unexciting and never really left me with the cold shiver at the back of my neck that some of the best stories do. It is nice though to see the rare Buster Keaton episode included. Top marks for that one.

Video

The image quality here, like all the other collections is actually fairly good probably due to the fact that all episodes here were shot on film rather than video. There is the occasional nick or scratch but rarely does the picture shows its age with some odd variation in contrast or loss in detail.
There were no major compression problems that I could see and generally all the episodes had fairly good picture detail that remained consistent throughout.

Audio

The bog standard mono track I’m afraid. Basically its what you would expect from a made for TV series, with the soundtrack being a little edgy or raspy at times. But to be fair it’s far from unlistenable. The noise floor is also a little high than what were used to, with a hiss clearly audible in some scenes.
It’s not particularly distracting though and nothing that would stop you from enjoying the episodes on the disk.
Again at the same standard as the other disks, so if you enjoyed a previous edition then there’s nothing here to stop you enjoying this one.

Features

Like the rest of the Twilight Zone volumes on DVD this edition contains various notes and essays about the series in general and the specific featured episodes. Inside the Twilight Zone contains a Rod Serling biography, a season by season commentary, history of the twilight zone and a review and credit section for each episode on the disk. This section is written by the author of “The Twilight Zone Companion” Marc Scott Zicree.
You also get the small postcard set that have a brief synopsis and picture of each episode printed on them.

Conclusion

A decent disk although the stories didn’t appeal to me as much as some of the other zone disks have.
Video and audio quality are up to the usual standard so nothing here to stop you buying Vol 10 unless the time travel theme doesn’t appeal to you.