In His Image

This article is about an episode of The Twilight Zone. For the novel, see In His Image (novel).

"In His Image"
The Twilight Zone episode
Alan discovers that he is a robot.
Episode no.	Season 4 Episode 1
Directed by	Perry Lafferty
Written by	Charles Beaumont (From his short story.)
Production code	4851
Original air date	January 3, 1963
Guest appearance(s)
George Grizzard: Alan Talbot/Walter Ryder Jr. Gail Kobe: Jessica Connelly Katherine Squire: Old Woman Wallace Rooney: Man James Seay: Sheriff George O. Petrie: Driver
Episode chronology

"In His Image" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone aired on January 3, 1963. This was the first episode of the fourth season. Each episode was expanded to an hour (with commercials) from In His Image until The Bard. The fourth season is the only season of The Twilight Zone to have each episode one hour long.

Opening narration

“

What you have just witnessed could be the end of a particularly terrifying nightmare. It isn't – it's the beginning. Although Alan Talbot doesn't know it, he's about to enter a strange new world, too incredible to be real, too real to be a dream. It's called The Twilight Zone.

”

Plot

Alan Talbot seems to be an average man leading a normal life. He falls in love with a woman named Jessica Connelly. One day, he starts hearing strange noises that give him headaches and the urge to kill. He throws a religious fanatic under a train.

He takes Jessica to visit his hometown, but his memory seems to betray him. Nothing in the town is as he remembers. While seeking answers, he comes face to face with his double. It turns out that he is an android created by Walter Ryder in his own image, provided with Walter's memories from twenty years before. Walter has been trying to create a less flawed image of himself with mixed success. Alan is the third such creation, and has been "living" for only eight days. Alan is mentally flawed and can't be fixed; when Walter explains this to him, Alan stabs Walter with a pair of scissors and escapes.

Finally accepting the truth, Alan returns to Walter and tells him about Jessica. Alan wants Walter to replace him with a properly functioning android who will love and care for Jessica, but after seeing a religious pamphlet on which Alan writes Jessica's address for Walter, Alan malfunctions again and tries to kill Walter. After the struggle, the survivor goes to Jessica and asks her to marry him. In the final scene, it is revealed that the survivor is Walter and that Alan's broken form lies amid the wreckage of the laboratory where he was "born".

Closing narration

“

In a way, it can be said that Walter Ryder succeeded in his life's ambition, even though the man he created was, after all, himself. There may be easier ways to self-improvement, but sometimes it happens that the shortest distance between two points is a crooked line – through the Twilight Zone.

”

Allusions

The opening sequence between Alan Talbot and the old woman is sampled in the song, The Seer, The Poet by Killah Priest.^[1]

The Burgess Meredith monologue is also used as the ending of the song "Threatened" by Michael Jackson. The sample ends with a fading echo of the word "beginning" repeated as the sound decreases.

References

↑ Killah Priest – The Seer, The Poet (Prod. Jordan River Banks of Godz Wrath). YouTube. 24 February 2013. Retrieved 8 November 2015.

Sources

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

External links

"In His Image" at the Internet Movie Database

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" "The 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"

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