Episode Spotlight: "Sounds and Silences" (4/03/1964)

Season 5, Episode 27 (147 overall)

Originally aired 4/03/1964

Cayuga Production # 2631

Fifty years ago, a man found himself victimized by a surreal, aural nightmare. Besieged by unknown forces, he bravely attempts to…. oh, screw it. I can’t polish this turd, nor am I inclined to try.

Roswell G. Flemington is obsessed with all things nautical, particularly recordings of actual naval battles, which he regularly blares at full volume. After twenty years of wedded misery, his wife finally leaves him, after which his hearing becomes inexplicably sensitive: quiet sounds like dripping water become deafening roars to him. He sees a doctor, who refers him a psychiatrist, who makes the staggeringly clinical diagnosis that it's all in his head; moreover, he can choose to exercise control over it.

Bolstered, Flemington goes home, where he finds his estranged wife, there to pick up the last of her things. He uses “mind over matter” to reduce her voice to a whisper. Smugly satisfied, he goes to play one of his beloved naval battle records, which he finds he can’t hear at all. He then comes to the horrifying realization that he can’t hear anything at all.

Well folks, here it is: the single worst episode of season five. I’m not quite prepared to place it below “Mr. Bevis” or “Four O’clock,” but I’ll definitely rank it in the bottom five of the entire series. First and foremost, there’s almost no story at all. Loud guy suddenly develops super-sensitive hearing, and then abruptly (and presumably) loses his hearing entirely. That's it. It’s essentially a depiction of a man losing a vital sensory function. How is that a Twilight Zone? Is causing an asshole to become disabled really Cosmic Justice?

I could almost find it in myself to sympathize with the ol' guy a bit. Almost. Not quite.

It doesn’t help matters that Flemington is such a complete and utter tool, or that there’s a ridiculous amount of overacting on John McGiver’s part, particularly every time he (over)reacts to the exaggerated sounds around him (it’s almost as if he’s using his facial expressions to compete with them). Seriously, how flagrantly obnoxious can one character be? Flemington makes previous Obnoxiometer™ placers like Roger Shackleforth and George P. Hanley seem positively likable by comparison. In fact.... I can't believe I'm about to do this, but.... 

That's right.... he's worse than James B.W. Bevis. That's quite a feat, Mr. Flemington.

“Sounds and Silences” is yet another episode that, once aired, resulted in somebody crying plagiarism and suing Cayuga Productions. Since litigation was still pending, the episode wasn’t included in the syndication package, and remained buried for 20 years. When the series turned 25 in 1984, it was resurrected along with vault-mates “Miniature” and “A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain” for a syndicated special. The episode is now easily viewed via Hulu and Netflix, and can be acquired in the various DVD and Blu-ray iterations of the series.

Rod Serling had to have known his teleplay was an utter piece of shit; however, he clearly didn’t care anymore at this late point in the series. There’s a whiff of season two’s “The Mind and the Matter” as Flemington utilizes what he calls “mind over matter” to minimize the sound of his wife’s voice. Serling wrote that one too; I guess it’s the closest to an antecedent we’ll find for “Sounds and Silences.” In the director’s chair this week is Richard Donner, who also helmed “From Agnes - With Love” (‘nuff said).

THE MUSIC

“Sounds and Silences” is notable (I guess) for having no actual underscore; aside from the copious sound effects herein, there are only a few brief snatches of nautical source cues played on Flemington’s hi-fi.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

I despise Roswell G. Flemington; however, I do like John McGiver quite a bit. We last saw him in season four’s “The Bard" but, to me, he’ll always be the noble democrat Senator Thomas Jordan in 1962’s The Manchurian Candidate.

Mrs. Flemington (no first name, apparently) is played by Penny Singleton, probably best known as Blondie Bumstead in the long-running Blondie film series (1938-1950). If she sounds more familiar than she looks, it’s because you've undoubtedly heard her as the voice of Jane Jetson on TV’s The Jetsons.

Michael Fox plays the unnamed psychiatrist (I love how the nameplate on his door reads, simply, “Psychiatrist”). This is his third sojourn into The Twilight Zone: he played the doctor in season one’s “Nightmare as a Child,” and was one half of the two-head Martian in season two’s “Mr. Dingle, the Strong.” He also popped up on the 80’s Twilight Zone revival in “A Message from Charity."

Francis de Sales plays the unnamed doctor (give these people some names, for Rod’s sake!). Genre fans may have spotted him in the Outer Limits episode “The Mice,” which also turned 50 recently.

“Sounds and Silences,” like its protagonist, is all bluster and no substance; there’s honestly nothing of value here. The completest in me is relieved that it’s available along with its Lost Five kin, but its relative rarity doesn’t change the fact that it’s one of the worst offerings in the entire series. I’m filing it under “S” for “sucks” and turning a deaf ear to it for the rest of my days. 

Next week:

Season three's "The Dummy" gets a late-in-the-game surprise repeat airing, and---- wait, what? It's not a repeat? It's a new episode? We're doing another dummy story?  Really....?

Special Report: The Lost Five

The original five-season run of The Twilight Zone is comprised of 156 episodes.  After the series ended in 1964, 151 of these episodes were assembled into a syndication package and began airing in local markets around the country.

But wait, that’s five episodes short.  What gives?

First, let’s list the missing episodes. 

(originally broadcast 2/21/1963)

(originally broadcast 12/13/1963)

(originally broadcast 2/28/1964)

(Originally broadcast 4/03/1964)

(Originally broadcast 5/01/1964)

Cayuga Productions accepted outside teleplay submissions for consideration; however, they rejected a great many of them.  Unfortunately, there were subsequent lawsuits filed by some of the aspiring writers they’d turned down.  Theoretical example:  Dick Johnson submits a script about a rampaging army of telepathic squirrels, which gets summarily rejected.  Serling then later writes a script that happens to incorporate a telepathic squirrel, which gets produced.  Dick Johnson believes Serling stole his intellectual property, so he screams plagiarism and files a lawsuit.  Of course I’m simplifying this some, but that’s the basic gist of things. At the time the series’ syndication package was put together, three episodes were stuck in mid-litigation (“Miniature,” “A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain,” and “Sounds and Silences”) and were therefore held back. 

“The Encounter,” meanwhile, contained some fairly heavy racial content, so it too was omitted (which is kinda odd, since it was allowed to air in the first place).  “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” was left out because it wasn’t really a Twilight Zone episode at all… but we’ll delve into that particular story when we get to it (a little over a year from now).

Aside from “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” getting a repeat broadcast during the summer of 1964, these five episodes essentially disappeared.

Fast forward 20 years. To celebrate the show’s 25^th anniversary in October 1984, a feature-length syndicated special was aired which resurrected three of “The Lost Five”:  “Miniature,” “A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain,” and “Sounds and Silences” (coincidentally the same three that had been previously suppressed for legal reasons; presumably their respective lawsuits had either been dismissed or otherwise dealt with by 1984).  The special was hosted by Patrick O’Neal (who had starred in “A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain”).  Here’s a link to the New York Times’write-up.  

I think the episodes may have suffered some minor editing (we’re talking about syndication, after all), but they seemed relatively unscathed… except for “Miniature,” the fate of which we’ll address later this week.

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” and “The Encounter,” meanwhile, first reappeared on VHS in 1992 in the two-tape Treasures of The Twilight Zone set.  The set also included “The Howling Man,” “Eye of the Beholder,” “The Masks,” and “Where Is Everybody?” This release was later broken up into two separate DVD volumes in 1999 (Treasures from The Twilight Zone and More Treasures from The Twilight Zone; incidentally the first two TZ DVDs ever released; both "Lost Five" episodes appear on the first volume).

“The Lost Five” formally rejoined the series for the first time when the entire 156-episode run was presented on VHS by Columbia House.  You had to join the club, and wait impatiently as the volumes trickled out once a month but, at the time, this was the only way for a collector like me to acquire the entire series… at a pretty enormous cost (with shipping, I ultimately paid close to $1,000.00 to complete my set; it still amazes me that the entire series can be bought now, in pristine high definition with copious bonus features, for a mere fraction of that… in 2013 dollars, no less!).

Offer no longer valid... but hey, it might be fun to try.

At some point, probably in the early 2000’s or so (I’m totally guessing here), “Miniature," "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" and "Sounds and Silences" were added to the syndication package, reducing "The Lost Five" to "The Lost Two." Despite the fact that "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "The Encounter" remain MIA from the syndication package to this date, all 156 episodes are easily available on both DVD and blu-ray (and via streaming: all 156 are available for free on Hulu, while paying members of Netflix can view all the half-hour episodes); in other words,“The Lost Five” aren't really lost at all these days.  Their unique history is little more than a footnote now, but for those of us who pre-date the digital age, “The Lost Five” were once frustratingly out of reach, and therefore hold a special unique place in the legacy that is… The Twilight Zone.

*Speaking of plagiarism claims levied against The Twilight Zone… well, stay tuned.  I’m working on a pretty big expose that I hope to publish in the next month or two.  You might find it quite eye-opening.