CROSSING ZONE - INTRUDER ALERT

'THE TWILIGHT ZONE'

"MIDNIGHT ZONE"

 

SPOILERS, PEOPLE!!!!

 

This episode, one of the most memorable of the series, must take place in an alternate dimension from Earth Prime-Time as the existence of the planet is finite.  Nora and Mrs. Bronson are two of the last people in New York as the Earth gets ever closer to the Sun where it will burn to a crisp.

 

From Wikipedia:

Footsteps are heard outside the apartment door. Norma asks her landlady if she locked the downstairs doors of the apartment complex, but Mrs. Bronson is uncertain if she did. They hear a knock on the door, and Mrs. Bronson starts to answer it as Norma screams for her to not open the door under any circumstances. Through the closed door, Norma threatens the mysterious man with a gun and after a few seconds he says he will leave. Unfortunately, despite Norma's warning to the contrary, Mrs. Bronson opens the door and the stranger, still present, forces his way into the apartment and drinks their supply of water. After several moments, he begs for their forgiveness and claims that he is an honest man and would never hurt them, and that he was driven to looting by the heat. He goes on to describe the recent death of his wife due to complications of childbirth, as well of the death of their newborn child. He then leaves the apartment building.

 

He is known only as "The Intruder" in the episode and technically he doesn't exist.

 

Again, SPOILERS!!!!!

 

It turns out by the end of the episode, in one of those neat little twists that made the series so distinctive, the Earth is not heading towards imminent immolation, but is instead moving out of orbit AWAY from the Sun.  That whole scenario had been part of Nora's fever dream.

 

But the other people who inhabited that dream - the Shusters and of course, the Intruder, must have come from somewhere in Nora's waking life for her to use them as her cast of characters.

 

For the Shusters, that might not have been their real last name.  He might have been Harry Snowden, the bartender at 'Archie Bunker's Place'.  (His last name would certainly make him stand out for Nora in her waking world.)

 

And as for June Ellis who played his wife - she had so many characters in her resume who were nameless New York City residents that I might just conflate them all into one character and someday even induct her into the Television Crossover Hall Of Fame!

 

And then there's the Intruder.....

 

In that world, Nora must have known him from somewhere else,  Perhaps he was the cop on the beat; maybe he was a former boyfriend of hers.  But he made enough of an impression on her that her subconscious added him to her fever fantasy.

 

But who could he have been in the real Toobworld, Earth Prime-Time?

 

He claimed to be a good man brought low by the horrific situation, but what if that wasn't the case in the main iteration of his life in Toobworld?

 

We may not have known his name in Earth Prime-Time either, but I think the claim could hold up that he had become a hit man in the main Toobworld.

 

'MURDER, SHE WROTE'

"MURDER THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS"

 

The hit man was hired to kill a DSS agent using the code-name of Adams in Hartford, Connecticut.  But soon after the tell-tale "H&H" shots, the hit man suffered a massive coronary in his car as he drove down one of the Hartford streets.  Just before he died, the hit man asked for a priest before confessing to the murder to mystery novelist Jessica Fletcher.

 

That episode took place twenty years after the other Toobworld left orbit to sail off into the galaxy as a frozen museum of Terran life.  But if we had been able to see the hit man as he looked back when his counterpart's only crimes were of unlawful entry and looting, we would have seen that both men looked exactly the same.

 

As I mentioned earlier, both characters were known only by their crimes: "The Intruder" and "The Hit Man".  But I'd like to suggest a name for them that should work in both dimensions.

 

Their family name would be Velie.

 

And their father in either dimension would have been an NYPD sergeant by the name of Thomas Velie who worked as Inspector Richard Queen's right hand man back in the 1940s.....

 

BCnU!

 

O'Bservation: Sgt. Velie, the Intruder, and the Hitman were all played by Tom Reese......