The Twilight Zone Reboot: 10 Classic Episodes It Should Remake

10. The Time Element

The Story:

In the 1950s a man visits his psychiatrist to tell him about a recurring dream where he is stationed at Pearl Harbor in 1941 and tries unsuccessfully to warn people of the coming attack. He is convinced that he is really time travelling in his sleep, which the psychiatrist doesn't accept, right up until the man dreams that he is shot and killed by the Japanese.

Why Remake It?

This didn't actually air as an episode of The Twilight Zone itself, but rather was a sort of pre-pilot shown on another anthology series. Its instant popularity and strong critical notices finally provided the go-ahead from network CBS for creator Rod Serling to produce an actual Twilight Zone pilot in 1959.

Redoing it today would show that the new series respects the origins of the show, and would finally make The Time Element an official Twilight Zone story.

More than that, though, it is simply a good story with perennial themes that could easily be updated. The questions of what would you do if thrown back in time to a moment of catastrophe, and would that catastrophe even be preventable if time travel were possible, are the sort of thing that I'd expect to see addressed in some respect in the new series.

Meanwhile, we are today the same amount of time after 9/11 as the original Twilight Zone was after Pearl Harbor, so that makes it pretty easy to update some of the plot specifics for an equivalent catastrophic attack relatable to today's audience.