"You've seen them. Little towns, tucked away far from the main roads. You've seen them, but have you thought about them? What do the people in these places do? Why do they stay? Philip Redfield never thought about them. If his dog hadn't gone after the cat, he would have driven through Peaceful Valley and put it out of his mind forever. But he can't do that now because, whether he knows it or not, his friend's shortcut has led him right into the capital of the Twilight Zone."
Opening narration
In the episode of Twilight Zone that was first shown on this night in 1963, "Valley of the Shadow," a reporter (Ed Nelson) got lost and found himself in a small, out–of–the–way town called Peaceful Valley just as his car was about to run out of gas. When he stopped to get more fuel, his dog jumped from the car to chase a cat that was being held by a little girl. The girl pulled out a palm–sized remote control–like device (many years before such devices existed), pointed it at the dog and made him disappear — and the odyssey began.
A good reporter is always in an inquisitive mood, and an already–suspicious Nelson began nosing around Peaceful Valley. What he found only made him more suspicious. The town's hotel supposedly had no rooms available yet all the keys still hung on the wall. The restaurant was closed. The residents of the town were not friendly.
Well, on that last one there, I can say, having grown up in a small town, that is not terribly unusual. Small–town folks are often suspicious of outsiders and their reasons for being there.
Consequently Nelson didn't receive a lot of cooperation from the town's residents. Well, there was one — a pretty young woman (Natalie Trundy) — who seemed to want to tell him more than she could.
But she didn't.
What he learned about the town and its strange powers he learned from the town's elders.
Perhaps the most important thing he learned was that the gadget the little girl used was a device that could manipulate atoms. It could make things disappear, disassemble and then reassemble people, animals and things. It was a limitless supplier of food, clothing, all the necessities of life. Everyone in this little town seemed to have one.
This device could also heal and even raise from the dead.
When Nelson tried to escape the town, his car collided with an invisible wall, and his dog was thrown from the car and killed. A rather dazed Nelson was led away from the wreckage by onlookers who thought he should be examined by a doctor, but one of the onlookers stayed behind. He pulled out his device and aimed it at the dog, and the animal was instantly revived.
The device also had incredible potential to eliminate human suffering.
To demonstrate this, the mayor of the town stabbed one of his associates in the chest with a letter opener, then calmly aimed the device at the victim while Nelson watched. The blood and wound disappeared as if nothing had happened.
Nelson couldn't believe the town refused to share this technology with a world that sorely needed it.
The town's elders argued that if the outside world obtained the technology, it would not be used for good but would be exploited for evil purposes. They said this technology had been given to them by a "great man of science" who came from some distant planet, and they would not share it until "men learn the ways of peace."
Nelson could not be allowed to leave so the initial plan was to execute him. But if they did that would they be any better than the outside world, resorting to violence to achieve a goal? They modified their sentence, giving him the option of remaining in Peaceful Valley for the rest of his life — and he chose that over execution.
But he yearned for freedom, and he and Trundy made a break for it one evening. He stopped at the town hall to use the technology to build a handgun, then grabbed the book containing all the equations for the technology so he could share it with the outside world. In breaking into the box that contained the book, though, he triggered an alarm, summoning the elders, who tried to stop him and were shot.
Then he and Trundy left the town, but once they were outside the city limits, he looked at the book — only to find blank pages. The next thing he knew he was back at the town hall and the elders were alive and well. They told him it had all been a test, and he had proven what they expected — that the first use of the technology by an outsider would be for violent purposes. He would have to be eliminated.
But the elimination did not take the form he expected. In the blink of an eye, he was back at the gas station where the story began.
And perhaps that was the way it should be. The elders had explained that the core of the technology was based on time reversal. Perhaps that is what they did to Nelson — reversed time. That would certainly be preferable to ending his life.
But was all that had gone before a dream or reality? At the end of the episode, Nelson and the viewers saw Trundy with what appeared to be tears in her eyes. That strongly implied that it had been real.
This episode was part of the Syfy Channel's annual New Year's Eve Twilight Zone marathon recently. Inclusion in that marathon can be misleading; there were only 18 hour–long episodes of the Twilight Zone, and few are seen in syndication.
If you do get the chance to see this one, though, watch for a pre–Star Trek James Doohan (known to Trekkies as "Scotty"). He played the father of that little girl.
