Seniors Trivia Quiz Questions and Answers

Seniors trivia quiz and answers about the Twilight Zone TV show - great for seniors!

Seniors Trivia Quiz Questions and Answers

What was the “The Twilight Zone”?
A: The Twilight Zone is an American anthology television series created and presented by Rod Serling, which ran for five seasons on CBS from 1959 to 1964.

Each episode presents what?
A: A stand-alone story in which characters find themselves dealing with often disturbing or unusual events.

It was an experience described as entering what?
A: "The Twilight Zone," often ending with a surprise ending and a moral.

Although predominantly science-fiction, the show's paranormal and Kafkaesque events did what?
A: They leaned the show towards fantasy and horror.

The phrase “twilight zone,” inspired by the series, is used to describe what?
A: Surreal experiences.

The series featured both established stars and younger actors who would become what?
A: Much better known later.

Serling served as what?
A: Executive producer and head writer.

How many of the show's 156 episodes did he write or co-write?
A: 92.

He was also the show's host and narrator, delivering what?
A: Monologues at the beginning and end of each episode.

Serling's opening and closing narrations usually summarize the episode's events encapsulating what?
A: How and why the main character(s) had entered the Twilight Zone.

In 1997, the episodes "To Serve Man" (directed by Richard L. Bare) and "It's a Good Life" (directed by James Sheldon) were respectively ranked where on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time?
A: 11 and 31.

Serling himself stated that his favorite episodes of the series were what?
A: "The Invaders" (directed by Douglas Heyes) and "Time Enough at Last" (directed by John Brahm).

In 2016, the series was ranked where on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 greatest shows of all time?
A: No. 7.

In 2002, The Twilight Zone was ranked where on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time?
A: No. 26.

In 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked it as the what?
A: The third best-written TV series ever.

TV Guide ranked it as the what?
A: The fourth greatest drama and the fifth greatest show of all time.

By the late 1950s, Rod Serling was a what?
A: A prominent name in American television.

His successful television plays included what shows?
A: Patterns (for Kraft Television Theater) and Requiem for a Heavyweight (for Playhouse 90).

In Requiem for a Heavyweight, the line "Got a match?" had to be struck because the sponsor sold what?
A: Lighters.

Other programs had similar striking of words that might remind viewers of competitors to the sponsor, including one case in which the sponsor, Ford Motor Company, had removed from a picture of the New York City skyline?
A: The Chrysler Building.

But according to comments in his 1957 anthology Patterns, Serling had been trying to delve into what?
A: Material more controversial than his works of the early 1950s.

This led to Noon on Doomsday for the United States Steel Hour in 1956, a commentary by Serling on what?
A: The defensiveness and total lack of repentance he saw in the Mississippi town where the murder of Emmett Till took place.

His original script closely paralleled what?
A: The Till case, then was moved out of the South and the victim changed to a Jewish pawnbroker, and eventually watered down to just a foreigner in an unnamed town.

Serling thought that a science-fictional setting, with robots, aliens and other supernatural occurrences, would give him what?
A: More freedom and less interference in expressing controversial ideas than more realistic settings.

"The Time Element" was Serling's 1957 pilot pitch for his show, a time travel adventure about what?
A: A man who travels back to Honolulu in 1941 and unsuccessfully tries to warn everyone about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor.

The script, however, was rejected and shelved for a year until who discovered and produced it as an episode of Desilu Playhouse in 1958?
A: Bert Granet.

The show was a great success and enabled Serling to finally do what?
A: To begin production on his anthology series, The Twilight Zone.

Serling's editorial sense of ironic fate in the writing done for the series was identified as significant to its success by whom?
A: The BFI Film Classics library which stated that for Serling "the cruel indifference and implacability of fate and the irony of poetic justice" were recurrent themes in his plots.

When did the Twilight Zone premiere?
A: The night of October 2, 1959, to rave reviews.

Even as the show proved popular to television's critics, it struggled to find what?
A: A receptive audience of television viewers.

Still, the show attracted a large enough audience to survive what?
A: A brief hiatus in November.

With one exception ("The Chaser"), the first season featured scripts written only by whom?
A: Rod Serling, Charles Beaumont or Richard Matheson.

These three were responsible for how many of the 156 episodes in the series?
A: 127.

Additionally, with one exception ("A World of His Own"), Serling never appeared on camera during any what?
A: First-season episode (as he would in future seasons), and was present only as a voice-over narrator.

Serling did appear on screen in Twilight Zone what?
A: Promotional spots plugging the following week's episode – just not in the episodes themselves.

Many of the season's episodes proved to be among the series' most celebrated, including what episodes?
A: "Time Enough at Last," "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street," "Walking Distance," and "The After Hours."

The first season won Serling an unprecedented what?
A: Fourth Emmy Award for dramatic writing, a Producers Guild Award for Serling's creative partner Buck Houghton, a Directors Guild Award for John Brahm and the Hugo Award for best dramatic presentation.

Bernard Herrmann's original opening theme music lasted how long?
A: Throughout the first season.

For the final four episodes of the season, the show's original surrealist "pit and summit" opening montage and narration was replaced by what?
A: A piece featuring a blinking eye and shorter narration, and a truncated version of Herrmann's theme.

Some first-season episodes were available for decades only in a version with what?
A: A pasted-on second-season opening.

These "re-themed" episodes were prepared for airing in the summer of 1961 as summer repeats; the producers wanted to have what?
A: A consistent opening for the show every week.

During the original 1959/60 run, Herrmann's theme was used in what?
A: In every first-season episode.

When did the second season premier?
A: On September 30, 1960 with "King Nine Will Not Return," Serling's fresh take on the pilot episode "Where Is Everybody?"

The familiarity of this first story stood in stark contrast to the novelty of the show's what?
A: New packaging: Bernard Herrmann's stately original theme was replaced by Marius Constant's more jarring and dissonant (and now more-familiar) new guitar-and-bongo theme.

The blinking eye was replaced by what?
A: A more surreal introduction inspired by the new images in Serling's narration.

What new sponsor replaced the previous year's Kimberly-Clark?
A: Colgate-Palmolive.

Season two saw the production of many of the series what?
A: 'most acclaimed episodes, including "The Eye of the Beholder," "Nick of Time," "The Invaders," and "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?."

The trio of Serling, Matheson and Beaumont began to admit what?
A: New writers, and this season saw the television debut of George Clayton Johnson.

Emmys were won by whom?
A: Serling (his fifth) for dramatic writing and by director of photography George T. Clemens.

For the second year in a row, the series won what?
A: The Hugo Award for best dramatic presentation.

It also earned the Unity Award for what?
A: "Outstanding Contributions to Better Race Relations" and an Emmy nomination for "Outstanding Program Achievement in the Field of Drama."