Many of you likely know that there is a new reboot out there of the Twilight Zone provided by CBS All Access (for the uninitiated, that’s CBS owned streaming service that provides all of their back load–everything from I Love Lucy to Big Bang Theory—and new original content just for streaming, such as Star Trek: Discovery).

There was and perhaps still is some hope for this reboot. However, from the first two episodes provided, there’s trouble ahead! The first episode, called “The Comedian” is really just a new way to provide us with the old cliched sci fi plot of “oh no, every one is disappearing.” It seems a bit too obvious too soon what the resolution is going to be (so, can’t even call this a “twist”, though its a bit of a myth that every TZ or even the best TZ epsiodes had a twist ending).

The second episode provided is a remake of the original “Nightmare at 20,000 feet” (you know, the one with William Shatner and the creature on the wing of the plane). Though that episode has come to be iconic, I think I actually like Martin Short’s (as recurring character, Ed Grimley) SNL parody better! Anyway, the reboot has its interesting takes on this (they decided, wisely, not to try a frame by frame remake, but something that captures some of the spirit of the original) . One of the best ideas was to go with the idea of this version’s victim listening to a podcast that happens to be talking about a doomed plane, and its the flight he’s on! Most of the rest though lacks the frenetic energy of the original and its redo in the TZ film.

Anyway, there’s still hope…and I hope some of them have some physics or astro to comment on, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to talk about TZ since I was excited about this coming to us, and I was glad that CBS All Access was giving us something besides Star Trek: Discovery (which, by the way, has provided us with some physics to comment on, but I’ll wait until a future post).

If you like what you see, read the past posts and take a look at my (Steve Bloom’s) book, The Physics and Astronomy of Science Fiction, available from McFarland Publishing and your favorite online retailer (such as Amazon or Barnesandnoble) in print and electronic formats.