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TVTitles

The Twilight Zone

1959–1964CBSSci-Fi

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Three different openings in five seasons, and the one everybody can hum arrived third. Rod Serling narrates the audience into another dimension over abstractions that were, for 1959, genuinely strange television.

The Twilight Zone rebuilt its titles: three distinct opening sequences are catalogued here across seasons 1–5, running between 28 and 51 seconds.

It arrived on CBS in 1959, when Candid Camera, Guiding Light and As the World Turns were also on the network.

Only 139 of the 2,618 shows catalogued here changed their titles at all; The Twilight Zone did so two times.

3 sequences16th most looked up of 46 in the 1950sIMDb ↗
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All 3 opening title sequences

Season 1

51s

The first version: drifting grey cloud, Serling's 'fifth dimension' narration, and Bernard Herrmann's score rather than the theme the show is remembered for.

Season 2

28s

Reworked into a different abstraction, with a single point of light resolving out of the texture.

Seasons 3–5

29s

The one that became the shorthand for the whole show — the spiral, the shattering window, the eye and the door, cut to Marius Constant's two-guitar theme. Held for the last three seasons and quoted ever since.

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