Original Air Date: November 20, 1959
Writer: Rod Serling, based on a short story by Lynn Venable
Director: John Brahm

“That’s not fair. That’s not fair at all. There was time now. There was—was all the time I needed…! It’s not fair! It’s not fair!”

The first episode not to be a wholly created from the mind of Rod Serling, “Time Enough At Last” is based on a short story of the same name by American writer Lynn Venable. The story was initially released and published in If Magazine in 1953, the same year that Ray Bradbury published Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury later submitted several scripts for The Twilight Zone however the only episode he is credited with writing is “I Sing the Body Electric” in Season 3.

“Witness Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers. A bookish little man whose passion is the printed page, but who is conspired against by a bank president and a wife and a world full of tongue-cluckers and the unrelenting hands of a clock. But in just a moment, Mr. Bemis will enter a world without bank presidents or wives or clocks or anything else. He’ll have a world all to himself… without anyone.“
-Rod Serling

Henry Bemis is a clumsy Geek, obsessed with reading books, but tragically he is prevented from pursuing his one hobby. He wears large, thick spectacles and is employed at a bank which forbids him from reading David Copperfield even while isolated below ground in the vault during his lunch break. Later, he comes home to his shrew of a wife who also prohibits him from reading –even newspapers are forbidden. She marks up a book of poetry so Henry cannot read a single word. The tension between employment and reading literature is a struggle faced by every modern intellectually curious person. I remember bringing a copy of Great Expectations to read at one of my first jobs working as a cashier. If leisure is the fertile soil in which high culture must flourish, it has unfortunately struggled to find a home in the modern labor market. This contradiction is made apparent in the hopeless struggle of Henry Bemis.

The next day at work, Henry goes back down to the vault to read a newspaper. A headline reads: “H-Bomb Capable of Total Destruction” –and suddenly a massive explosion shakes the entire building, knocking Henry unconscious and spilling open his book (he was reading A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus by Washington Irving). When Henry awakens, he climbs out of the rubble to discover that the world has been destroyed in a nuclear holocaust.

“Seconds, minutes, hours. They crawl by on hands and knees for Mr. Henry Bemis, who looks for a spark in the ashes of a dead world. A telephone connected to nothingness. A neighborhood bar, a movie, a baseball diamond, a hardware store, the mailbox of what was once his house and is now a rubble. They lie at his feet as battered monuments to what was, but is no more. Mr. Henry Bemis on an eight-hour tour of a graveyard.“
-Rod Serling

As he contemplates suicide, Henry notices that the public library is still partially standing in the distance. It is filled with books, all of which have been spared destruction. Somehow the books have survived! Suddenly, this apocalyptic nightmare has become a dreamworld for a reader like Henry –he has become the last man on earth with nothing but time and space to read, fully alone but not lonely. He begins piling books into organized sections, developing literary plans for years to come. As he bends down to pick up his first book, his glasses suddenly fall and shatter on the ground, rendering him virtually blind and unable to read. He cries out:

“That’s not fair. That’s not fair at all. There was time now. There was—was all the time I needed…! It’s not fair! It’s not fair!”

The concluding narration to this episode quotes the famous Scottish poet, Robert Burns and his poem “To A Mouse” (“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley” translated as – ‘Often go awry’).

“The best laid plans of mice and men… and Henry Bemis… the small man in the glasses who wanted nothing but time. Henry Bemis, now just a part of a smashed landscape, just a piece of the rubble, just a fragment of what man has deeded to himself. Mr. Henry Bemis… in the Twilight Zone.”
-Rod Serling

My Thoughts on “Time Enough At Last”

“Time Enough At Last” is a parody of the modern drive toward productivity, anti-intellectualism, and the struggle to find quietude and space to simply read books. In the episode, we enter into the pitiable life of Henry Bemis (played by the great Hollywood actor, Burgess Meredith whose popularity skyrocketed following this episode, leading to several more appearances in future Twilight Zone episodes).

At root, every person has questioned what it would be like to survive total nuclear destruction. It is an ever-present threat, the global stockpile grows ever larger, while distant visions of mushroom clouds loom large over international affairs even today. With this in mind, we hold out hope for time and space and simplicity. For Henry his hope is to finally discover the freedom to read. His circumstances are tragic and his struggle is quixotic until finally he is the last man on earth. The presumed benefit of the total destruction of civilization is newfound joy for him as he has found leisure time for reading, never mind total isolation from other people and the absence of basic amenities. Yet in the end, his one necessity is taken from him: his reading glasses. The desire to dwell among the company of only books has in fact demonstrated the necessity of civilization.

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The Twilight Zone Trivia:

• John Brahm directed more Twilight Zone episodes than any other director, including five in the first season and another with Burgess Meredith in the lead role. Brahm directed a total of 12 episodes. Brahm was awarded a Director’s Guild Award for his work on this episode.
• Of the 92 episodes written by Rod Serling, this was his personal favorite.
• Following the episode, Burgess Meredith gained popularity almost on par with Rod Serling. This was the first of four appearances by Burgess Meredith in The Twilight Zone series.
• To give Burgess Meredith a book-wormish appearance he wore a fake moustache and thick glasses with double frames. There were two separate prop glasses used on set.
• To capture the explosion effect, George T. Clemens had the entire set built on springs so that both the camera and the set would shake at the same time.
• George T. Clemens used an innovative blue filter to bring out the clouds on the post-nuclear set. The enormous flight steps were part of an MGM backlot. The set appears in several later Twilight Zone episodes.
• This is one of four episodes to include mid-episode narration by Rod Serling.
• The long library steps were filmed later and used in an MGM film: The Time Machine (1960).

Click here to return to my survey of The Twilight Zone series.