Penny Arcade Forums› Help / Advice Forum
The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.

Looking for a specific The Twilight Zone episode (or maybe it was just a dream)

RichardRichard Registered User regular
in Help / Advice Forum
I have this vague memory of a tv episode or movie but can't seem to nail down what it is or exactly what it was about. Maybe someone here knows what I'm thinking about unless I just made it all up. Please note that any or all details might be misremembered so some creativity is needed to solve the puzzle.

Plot: The story has a Twilight Zone/Planet of the Apes feel to it and the few details I remember about the episode/movie is it ending with one or several astronauts returning to Earth communicating or receiving communication but because of time dilation the information is old/outdated and something horrible has happened to Earth. You never see them land or what happens after they've landed, you just know it's bad and the credits roll. I have read through all episode summaries of the following shows but haven't found anything that really matches up with what I remember. I think the episode or movie was black & white and I watched it before 1997 or at the latest early 2000s.

The Ray Bradbury Theater
The Outer Limits (1995 TV series)
The Outer Limits (1963 TV series)
The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)
The Twilight Zone (1985 TV series)
The Twilight Zone (2002 TV series)

If my memory is way off and I filled in the blanks making things up over the years the Twilight Zone episodes The Parallel, Death Ship, or The Long Morrow could be what I saw but it doesn't feel right. Please help me out if you have any idea what I'm talking about.

Steam ID

Posts

  • JebusUDJebusUD Adventure! Candy IslandRegistered User regular
    Could it have been an old Doctor Who episode?

    and I wonder about my neighbors even though I don't have them
    but they're listening to every word I say
  • RichardRichard Registered User regular
    edited March 2022
    JebusUD wrote: »
    Could it have been an old Doctor Who episode?

    I've never watched Doctor Who actively, I guess The Timelords - Doctorin' The Tardis on repeat doesn't count, but it's not impossible that I've watched an episode not thinking about what it was as a teenager. I guess I will have to read more episode summaries. Thanks!

    Edit: Went through all seasons of Doctor Who and it doesn't seem to be it either.

    Richard on
    Steam ID
  • H3KnucklesH3Knuckles But we decide which is right and which is an illusion.Registered User regular
    edited March 2022
    Richard wrote: »
    Plot: The story has a Twilight Zone/Planet of the Apes feel to it and the few details I remember about the episode/movie is it ending with one or several astronauts returning to Earth communicating or receiving communication but because of time dilation the information is old/outdated and something horrible has happened to Earth. You never see them land or what happens after they've landed, you just know it's bad and the credits roll. I have read through all episode summaries of the following shows but haven't found anything that really matches up with what I remember. I think the episode or movie was black & white and I watched it before 1997 or at the latest early 2000s.

    I'm not going to be any help pegging down an answer for where it's from, but that synopsis of the twist definitely sounds familiar, so I don't think you imagined it. Not only does it ring a bell for me personally, but I remember hearing someone on a podcast or let's play describing it once & being like 'oh yeah, what was that from?' at the time.

    H3Knuckles on
    If you're curious about my icon; it's an update of the early Lego Castle theme's "Black Falcons" faction.
    camo_sig2-400.png
  • djmitchelladjmitchella Registered User regular
    Richard wrote: »
    I remember about the episode/movie is it ending with one or several astronauts returning to Earth communicating or receiving communication but because of time dilation the information is old/outdated and something horrible has happened to Earth.

    Might be worth going through https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TimeDilation in case it's in there. (I know the rules say that tv tropes discussion is strictly speaking banned here but I feel like in this context it's okay)


  • XaquinXaquin Right behind you!Registered User regular
    edited March 2022
    It sounds an awful lot like part of Bradbury's 'The Martian Chronicles'

    I'll see if it was ever put to film

    edit: I was thinking of 'The Watchers' (a part of The Martian Chronicles), but that wasn't quite right

    Xaquin on
    Fixer Restorations -/- Satan's Wish List!!!!
  • Local H JayLocal H Jay Registered User regular
    edited March 2022
    My first thought is this sounds like the Mark Wahlberg Planet of the Apes, from the 2000s. If not that, then there is an episode about a flight that goes missing and inadvertently flies back in time to the dinosaur age, then 1940s, before trying one last time to return home. Odyssey of Flight 33

    Local H Jay on
  • SmokeStacksSmokeStacks Registered User regular
    It doesn't really jive with every detail, but it made me think of the 1990s Outer Limits episode where a group of soldiers are flying a spaceship toward the home planet of an alien race that humanity is at war with while carrying a doomsday bomb that is powerful enough to destroy the entire planet. The ship is damaged in an attack and the crew is dying from a radiation leak but they eventually get to the alien planet. Just as they drop the bomb they find out that one of the crewmen on the ship is actually an alien spy who had turned the ship around partway through the voyage, and they just dropped the bomb onto Earth.

    It was called "The Light Brigade".

  • SatanIsMyMotorSatanIsMyMotor Fuck Warren Ellis Registered User regular
    edited March 2022
    Now this has me half remembering an episode of a similar kind of show where a single man working in a mine is left behind on Earth after it's evacuated only to find out that some crazy lady has also been left behind in the same area and she just actively wants to kill him.

    I'm gonna go nuts tracking this down.

    edit: NM! It was The Silent Towns from The Martian Chronicles.

    SatanIsMyMotor on
  • RichardRichard Registered User regular
    edited March 2022
    A lot of good suggestions and thanks for everyone who is taking an interest in solving this but so far nothing feels right. I will dig into the tropes-page and see if something jogs my memory there. I was briefly considering if it could be a Star Trek episode but I remember it as very dark and moody which doesn't it most Star Trek episodes.

    Richard on
    Steam ID
  • SatanIsMyMotorSatanIsMyMotor Fuck Warren Ellis Registered User regular
    Any chance it's Journey to the Far Side of the Sun aka Doppelganger? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelgänger_(1969_film)

  • JebusUDJebusUD Adventure! Candy IslandRegistered User regular
    Richard wrote: »
    JebusUD wrote: »
    Could it have been an old Doctor Who episode?

    I've never watched Doctor Who actively, I guess The Timelords - Doctorin' The Tardis on repeat doesn't count, but it's not impossible that I've watched an episode not thinking about what it was as a teenager. I guess I will have to read more episode summaries. Thanks!

    Edit: Went through all seasons of Doctor Who and it doesn't seem to be it either.

    You went through synopes of every episode? Aren't there like 40 seasons?

    and I wonder about my neighbors even though I don't have them
    but they're listening to every word I say
  • RichardRichard Registered User regular
    JebusUD wrote: »
    Richard wrote: »
    JebusUD wrote: »
    Could it have been an old Doctor Who episode?

    I've never watched Doctor Who actively, I guess The Timelords - Doctorin' The Tardis on repeat doesn't count, but it's not impossible that I've watched an episode not thinking about what it was as a teenager. I guess I will have to read more episode summaries. Thanks!

    Edit: Went through all seasons of Doctor Who and it doesn't seem to be it either.

    You went through synopes of every episode? Aren't there like 40 seasons?

    26 seasons (who says you can't do important things on your work commute?) before they revived it in 2005 but I'm sure I saw it earlier than that.

    Doppelgänger sounds cool but I've never seen that so it can't be that either. Sorry for dragging you all along this wild goose chase.

    Steam ID
  • bwaniebwanie Posting into the void Registered User regular
    battlestar galactica had some weird episodes

  • JebusUDJebusUD Adventure! Candy IslandRegistered User regular
    things that sort of sound similar.

    I think there is a Tom Paris centric episode of Voyager where he is talking to a love interest he has only heard on the communicator through a crisis to save her planet only for it to be revealed at the end that she lives in a different timeline and then he is sad, because she has been dead for like 200 years. Think it was voyager. Not sure the episode.

    There may have been a similar one on TNG.

    I think there was something like this on Farscape too.

    Not exactly the same, but the dead romance trope might be a thing that got plugged into the old memory banks. I'll see if I can find any of those.

    and I wonder about my neighbors even though I don't have them
    but they're listening to every word I say
  • JebusUDJebusUD Adventure! Candy IslandRegistered User regular
    https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Eye_of_the_Needle_(episode)

    Let's see, that must be one of the episodes I was thinking of. Talking to a guy from the past through a wormhole.


    https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sound_of_Her_Voice_(episode)

    This one is closer to what you mentioned. Must have been one of the episodes I was thinking of.

    It's a Deep Space Nine episode, but it works in the opposite direction, they are rushing to save someone that they are communicating with only to find out she has been long dead before they even got the message.

    and I wonder about my neighbors even though I don't have them
    but they're listening to every word I say
  • NobodyNobody Registered User regular
    Carl Sagan’s Cosmos (the one in the 80s) had an episode along those lines I think, but it was explicitly a nuclear war.

Sign In or Register to comment.
Penny Arcade Forums› Help / Advice Forum