‘The Time Element’ (1957) by Rod Serling. The original pilot for ‘The Twilight Zone’

‘The Time Element’ was Rod Serling’s first science fiction story. It is a story that deals with time travel involving a man named Peter Jenson (William Bendix) visiting a psychoanalyst Dr Gillespie (Martin Balsam) on October 4th, 1958 with complaints of a recurring dream in which he imagines waking up in Honolulu just prior to the infamous Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941.

The script was originally for CBS and was to be the pilot for ‘The Twilight Zone’ but for some reason was shelved. It is possible that they believed the story too raw still in the memory of the American people as only 16 years had elapsed. It is due to Bert Granet a producer of The Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse who, needing a script, found it lying in the vaults at CBS. It had been gathering dust for nearly a year.

But it premiered on November 24th 1958 and was an instant hit with audiences and critics. CBS immediately began talks with Serling about producing ‘The Twilight Zone’ after earlier talks had stopped due to their negative reception of his script. The legendary series of ‘The Twilight Zone’ began in 1959 (and was rebooted for a new series in 2019) but without Bert Granet it may never have started.