Creator Rod Serling’s anthology show defined the genre and shaped untold numbers of science-fiction yarns, but also dealt with issues that resonate to this day. Those include, in no particular order, racism, loneliness, the fragile nature of society, and the enduring notion that the biggest threat to humanity is usually what we tend to do to ourselves.
It’s worth noting that when “The Twilight Zone” premiered in 1959, the lessons of World War II and horrors inflicted by Nazi Germany were relatively fresh in viewers’ minds. The Cold War was also in full swing, so the idea of oppressive regimes informed Serling and his collaborators.
Still, as the program made clear on multiple occasions, fear and distrust were potentially our most dangerous enemies, qualities that could quickly upend ordinary people and shatter seemingly idyllic neighborhoods.
Nothing exemplifies that better than two episodes: “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” in which the fear of alien intruders causes neighbors to suspect and turn on each other; and “The Shelter,” where one family’s bomb shelter sparks a crisis among those seeking protection and sanctuary amid the threat of a nuclear strike.