Friday, December 30, 2011

SyFy New Year's Eve Marathon 2011


Here we are, on the cusp of a brand new year. To ring it in, SyFy is airing a whopping 44.5 hours of The Twilight Zone! Here’s the schedule….

12/31/2011

09:00 AM Escape Clause
09:30 AM In Praise Of Pip
10:00 AM Ring-A-Ding Girl
10:30 AM And When The Sky Was Opened
11:00 AM The Silence
11:30 AM The Hunt
12:00 PM I Am The Night - Color Me Black
12:30 PM The Rip Van Winkle Caper
01:00 PM Queen Of The Nile
01:30 PM Caesar And Me
02:00 PM Probe 7, Over And Out
02:30 PM Mr. Dingle, The Strong
03:00 PM A Kind of a Stopwatch
03:30 PM The Little People
04:00 PM A Hundred Yards Over The Rim
04:30 PM The After Hours
05:00 PM Little Girl Lost
05:30 PM A Game Of Pool
06:00 PM Long Distance Call
06:30 PM A Most Unusual Camera
07:00 PM Stopover In A Quiet Town
07:30 PM Number Twelve Looks Just Like You
08:00 PM A Penny For Your Thoughts
08:30 PM I Sing The Body Electric
09:00 PM Night Call
09:30 PM Five Characters In Search Of An Exit
10:00 PM Nick Of Time
10:30 PM Night Of The Meek
11:00 PM Kick The Can
11:30 PM Where Is Everybody?

1/01/2012

12:00 AM The Midnight Sun
12:30 AM People Are Alike All Over
01:00 AM Walking Distance
01:30 AM I Shot An Arrow Into The Air
02:00 AM Two
02:30 AM Uncle Simon
03:00 AM A World Of His Own
03:30 AM Hocus-Pocus And Frisby
04:00 AM The Lonely
04:30 AM A Short Drink From A Certain Fountain
05:00 AM A Thing About Machines
05:30 AM The Arrival
06:00 AM The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine
06:30 AM The Brain Center At Whipple's
07:00 AM Judgment Night
07:30 AM The Last Rights Of Jeff Myrtlebank
08:00 AM The Four Of Us Are Dying
08:30 AM The Jeopardy Room
09:00 AM Black Leather Jackets
09:30 AM A Piano In The House
10:00 AM A Nice Place To Visit
10:30 AM Twenty-two
11:00 AM King Nine Will Not Return
11:30 AM The 7th Is Made Up Of Phantoms
12:00 PM The Grave
12:30 PM Death's Head Revisited
01:00 PM One For The Angels
01:30 PM The Old Man In The Cave
02:00 PM It's A Good Life
02:30 PM Dead Man's Shoes
03:00 PM The Hitch-Hiker
03:30 PM The Dummy
04:00 PM Third From The Sun
04:30 PM The Invaders
05:00 PM The Bewitchin' Pool
05:30 PM The Midnight Sun (2nd airing)
06:00 PM The Masks
06:30 PM The Howling Man
07:00 PM The Odyssey Of Flight 33
07:30 PM Living Doll
08:00 PM The Obsolete Man
08:30 PM Eye Of The Beholder
09:00 PM Time Enough At Last
09:30 PM A Stop At Willoughby
10:00 PM The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street
10:30 PM To Serve Man
11:00 PM Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up?
11:30 PM Nightmare At 20,000 Feet

1/02/2012

12:00 AM The Shelter
12:30 AM Mr. Bevis
01:00 AM Mr. Denton On Doomsday
01:30 AM The Fever
02:00 AM Nightmare As A Child
02:30 AM What's In The Box
03:00 AM The Prime Mover
03:30 AM Mr. Garrity And The Graves
04:00 AM Perchance To Dream
04:30 AM Long Live Walter Jameson
05:00 AM What You Need


Thoughts:

“The Midnight Sun” is airing at…. midnight. Nice touch. But then they’re showing it again 17 ½ hours later… not sure why.

Since no hour-long episodes are included in the marathon, a total of 88 half-hour episodes are being shown (it would’ve been 89; thanks, “The Midnight Sun”). There are 138 half-hour episodes in the series’ run, which means 50 half-hour episodes have been left out. Here are 11 of the most egregious exclusions:

The Purple Testament
Mirror Image
A World of Difference
A Passage for Trumpet
Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room
Shadow Play
Nothing in the Dark
The Fugitive
The Changing of the Guard
Steel
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

Meanwhile, SyFy is including such clunkers as “Mr. Dingle, the Strong,” “Caesar and Me,” and… yep, the reviled, putrescent stinkfest that is “Mr. Bevis.” The mind reels. And why are the hour-long episodes being ignored, exactly?

As with any other TZ marathon… I won’t be watching. I have the entire series on blu-ray, so I don’t need to sit through hacked-up syndication prints interrupted by commercials. Still, I wish more thought went into the selections. The thought of such an extensive marathon excluding beloved episodes like “Mirror Image” and “Shadow Play” just makes me sad.

And… that’s a wrap for 2011. On to 2012, where many surprises await… including Kanamit Week, coming up in March….

5 comments:

Joel Benedict Henderson said...

Well to be fair... they've never aired An Occurance At Owl Creek Bridge before. Why should we expect them to do so now?

Craig Beam said...

...because it's the right thing to do.

Unknown said...

I have all the episodes on dvd...so no need to watch the marathon. But I do feel compelled to do my own mini-TZ marathon every new year's day (and "Mr Bevis" is not in list of episodes I'm watching). Great blog, by the way. Love reading it!

Bill Huelbig said...

Why The Midnight Sun was shown twice: they're doing a countdown of fan favorites, voted on at syfy.com, till midnight tonight. So #1 will be Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. The Midnight Sun was #13, and they always show it at midnight on New Year's Day.

Joel Benedict Henderson said...

The countdown concept is just silly. I mean where the heck is Walking Distance and The Encounter?*

*Yeah yeah, I know its the old syndication package where its banned.