Judgment Night (The Twilight Zone)

"**Judgment Night**"
"Judgment Night"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 1; Episode 10
Directed by	John Brahm
Written by	Rod Serling
Featured music	Stock
Production code	173-3604
Original air date	December 4, 1959
Guest appearances
	Nehemiah Persoff as Carl Lanser; Ben Wright as Captain Wilbur; Patrick Macnee as First Officer; James Franciscus as Lt. Mueller; Hugh Sanders as Potter; Leslie Bradley as Major Devereaux; Deirdre Owens as Miss Stanley; Kendrick Huxham as Bartender; Barry Bernard as Engineer; Richard Peel as 1st Steward; Donald Journeaux as 2nd Steward;
Episode chronology
← Previous; "Perchance to Dream"	Next →; "And When the Sky Was Opened"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series, season 1)
	List of episodes

"Judgment Night" is the tenth episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. In this episode, a passenger aboard a British cargo liner has no memory of how he came aboard, and is tormented by unexpected clues to his true identity and a sense that the ship is headed toward impending doom.

Opening narration[edit]

Her name is the SS Queen of Glasgow. Her registry: British. Gross tonnage: five thousand. Age: Indeterminate. At this moment she's one day out of Liverpool, her destination New York. Duly recorded on the ship's log is the sailing time, course to destination, weather conditions, temperature, longitude and latitude. But what is never recorded in a log is the fear that washes over a deck like fog and ocean spray. Fear like the throbbing strokes of engine pistons, each like a heartbeat, parceling out every hour into breathless minutes of watching, waiting and dreading... For the year is 1942, and this particular ship has lost its convoy. It travels alone like an aged blind thing groping through the unfriendly dark, stalked by unseen periscopes of steel killers. Yes, the Queen of Glasgow is a frightened ship, and she carries with her a premonition of death.

Plot[edit]

Carl Lanser is a passenger aboard the SS Queen of Glasgow, an isolated British cargo liner crossing the Atlantic in 1942, but has no idea of how he got aboard or who he is. Sitting with the captain and several passengers, Lanser dismisses fears of the ship being hunted by a U-boat "wolfpack", saying only one U-boat would be necessary and it would not bother using a torpedo on the ship. He is unable to explain how he knows any of this and recalls only that he was born in Frankfurt, but says that he finds the ship, its crew and passengers oddly familiar. When called to the bridge by the captain he cannot provide proof of his identity. Still confused, Lanser is sent back to his cabin with a steward, where he finds a Kriegsmarine officer's cap among his possessions with his name written on the inside.

The captain is forced to stop the ship for repairs when the overworked engines break down at 12:05. Lanser becomes increasingly restless, haunted by an inescapable sense of impending doom. Convinced that everyone aboard the ship will die at 1:15, Lanser panics and runs through the passageways, attempting to raise an alarm. He finds the ship is mysteriously empty. When he finally locates some of the passengers, they silently stare at him as he implores them to abandon ship. At exactly 1:15, a searchlight illuminates the ship, and a surfaced U-boat, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Carl Lanser, opens fire with its deck cannon and machine guns. The ship quickly sinks, leaving no survivors.

Some time later, Captain Lanser is in his cabin aboard his U-boat, recording that night's kill. His second-in-command, Lt. Mueller, is deeply troubled by what the crew of the boat has done, not warning the people on board the ship before firing upon them, and wonders "if we are not all damned now". Lanser dismissively says he is sure the British Admiralty thinks so, but Mueller clarifies that he meant damned in the eyes of God. Despite Lanser's skepticism and sarcasm, Mueller grows more convinced that the crew of the U-boat may one day answer for their crime by reliving the act for all eternity.

Granted his own private hell as the man who ordered the massacre, the former U-boat commander re-materializes on the deck of the ship and the nightmare begins again.

Closing narration[edit]

The SS Queen of Glasgow, heading for New York, and the time is 1942. For one man it is always 1942—and this man will ride the ghost ship every night for eternity. This is what is meant by paying the fiddler. This is the comeuppance awaiting every man when the ledger of his life is opened and examined, the tally made, and then the reward or the penalty paid. And in the case of Carl Lanser, former Kapitan Lieutenant, Navy of the Third Reich, this is the penalty. This is the justice meted out. This is judgment night in the Twilight Zone.

Production[edit]

In the first 18 episodes, Serling only had one minor conflict with CBS regarding episode content. In an interview with Mike Wallace on September 22, 1959, Serling said, "We changed, in eighteen scripts, Mike, we have had one line changed, which, again, was a little ludicrous but of insufficient basic concern within the context of the story, not to put up a fight. On a bridge of a British ship, a sailor calls down to the galley and asks in my script for a pot of tea, because I believe that it's constitutionally acceptable in the British Navy to drink tea. One of my sponsors happens to sell instant coffee (Sanka), and he took great umbrage, or at least minor umbrage anyway, with the idea of saying tea. Well, we had a couple of swings back and forth, nothing serious, and we decided we'd ask for a tray to be sent up to the bridge. But in eighteen scripts, that's the only conflict we've had."

Short story adaptation[edit]

The episode was adapted into a short story (by Walter B. Gibson) in the 1963 collection Rod Serling's Twilight Zone. The short story reveals how Lanser died, showing that his U-boat was sunk by a British destroyer after a crewman on the Queen of Glasgow radioed for assistance. It also adds a final scene, set 20 years after the episode, in which Barbara Stanley (revealed to have survived the sinking of the Queen of Glasgow by boarding a lifeboat) sees the ghosts of Karl Lanser and Lt. Mueller. Mueller does not share in Lanser's punishment but is doomed to witness it over and over for eternity.

References[edit]

Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 ISBN 0-553-01416-1 (second edition)
DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0
Broadcasting (1960) Broadcasting Publications pg 42

External links[edit]

"Judgment Night" at IMDb

v t e The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes
Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgment Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"
Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble with Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"
Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"
Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"
Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander with Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"