Will wonders never cease? I find the news a wonder because I have this prejudice about thinking of old video as being inherently crappy…but my stupid mistake is to forget that they filmed their material photographically and projected it onto a TV vidicon camera for transmission. The limitation I remember came from the transmission medium, not the source material. Duh.

Which is why I was blown away to sample the first episode of the Twilight Zone, Where is Everybody? with Earl Holliman, streamed from Amazon, crisp and flawless at 720. There’s apparently a bluray edition available, and given good archival film, I have no doubt it’s beautiful at 1080p.

Black-and-white has its own aesthetic, its own artistic values including an inherent noir, and the various directors on the TZ generally adhered to that “twilight zone noir” aesthetic. You got it in the original format, on the original flickering screen, but this is like seeing the episode as Rod Serling saw it in the screening room. This remastering is closer to the film original, and I have to think, closer to Serling’s vision.

For some reason the fourth season is unavailable, streaming or purchase. Don’t know why. It was a short season, only seven episodes, and the titles (and synopses) are oddly unfamiliar to me: ”In His Image”, “The Thirty Fathom Grave”, “Valley of the Shadow”, “No Time like the Past”, “I Dream of Genie”, “The New Exhibit”, “The Bard”. I thought I’d seen every last Twilight Zone episode, but maybe not. And they would be on the season I can’t view. Ring any bells out there in ZoneLand?

I’d hate to be a commercial dupe, and I assure you I’m getting no compensation from Amazon, when I recommend trying it out at Amazon (or your own source for downloadable video; this is where I get my fix). If you have a Prime membership, you get to stream it for free anyway; or you could download an episode for $2.99. That’s a steep price in my opinion, for 26 minutes of any TV show, even the TZ; but I might download select favorite episodes to see at a higher quality than I get streaming. (Streaming can be so nasty, and given how reliably picture quality goes into the crapper at exactly seven minutes in, I know damn well ComCast is deliberately throttling it. Me watching streaming video consists of refreshing the page every seven and a half minutes to restart the clock. I hate that.)

In summary, then, let me say, Twilight Zone, medium-HD, it’s purty, watch some, enjoy.