Abstract

While it is nowadays often difficult to think of television apart from film, thanks to their mutual functioning as what Henry Jenkins terms 'convergence media', the early days of American television were marked by an industry focus on media differentiation. However, in Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone (1959–64) we can glimpse an early and successful effort at developing what we might term a 'convergence aesthetic' by merging an often-acknowledged theatrical influence with a seldom-noted cinematic consciousness that derives from both the series' nature as sf and its marshalling of a variety of film industry resources. By reading The Twilight Zone in this 'cinematic' light, we can better appreciate the contribution the sf series made to the eventual convergence of film and television, and thus more accurately sketch a significant part of television history.

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