The Best Episodes of The Twilight Zone
Every episode of The Twilight Zone ranked from best to worst. Let's dive into the Best Episodes of The Twilight Zone!
A series of unrelated stories containing drama, psychological thriller, fantasy, science fiction, suspense, and/or horror, often concluding with a macabre or unexpected twist.
Top Episode Ratings Summary
The best episode of "The Twilight Zone" is "Eye of the Beholder", rated 9.1/10 from 6486 user votes. It was directed by Douglas Heyes and written by Rod Serling. "Eye of the Beholder" aired on 11/11/1960 and is rated 0.1 point(s) higher than the second highest rated, "To Serve Man".
9.1/10 6,486 votes#1 - Eye of the Beholder
Season 2 Episode 6 - Aired 11/11/1960
A young woman lying in a hospital bed awaits the outcome of an experimental treatment in an attempt to make her look normal.
Director: Douglas Heyes
Writer: Rod Serling
9.0/10 5,412 votes#2 - To Serve Man
Season 3 Episode 24 - Aired 3/2/1962
The Kanamits, 9 foot tall aliens, arrive on Earth with one lofty goal: To Serve Man.
Director: Richard L. Bare
Writer: Rod Serling, Damon Knight
9.0/10 5,680 votes#3 - Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
Season 5 Episode 3 - Aired 10/11/1963
No one can see the gremlin tearing apart an airplane's wing, except a newly released mental patient.
Director: Richard Donner
Writer: Richard Matheson
8.9/10 8,075 votes#4 - Time Enough at Last
Season 1 Episode 8 - Aired 11/20/1959
A bank teller, obsessed with reading, faces conflicts at work and home because of his passion for literature.
Director: John Brahm
Writer: Rod Serling
8.9/10 6,406 votes#5 - The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street
Season 1 Episode 22 - Aired 3/4/1960
Paranoia strikes the residents of Maple Street when they believe human-looking aliens have invaded the neighborhood.
Director: Ron Winston
Writer: Rod Serling
8.7/10 4,516 votes#6 - Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?
Season 2 Episode 28 - Aired 5/26/1961
State Troopers follow the tracks from a frozen pond, into a diner. Inside they find a soda jerk, a bus driver and his seven passengers. The bus driver is certain only six people boarded his bus…
Director: Montgomery Pittman
Writer: Rod Serling
8.7/10 3,857 votes#7 - Living Doll
Season 5 Episode 6 - Aired 11/1/1963
Erich is displeased when his wife buys an expensive doll for his step-daughter. He becomes even more displeased when the doll tells him it doesn't like him!
Director: Richard C. Sarafian
Writer: Jerry Sohl, Charles Beaumont
8.6/10 4,267 votes#8 - The Obsolete Man
Season 2 Episode 29 - Aired 6/2/1961
In a future state where religion and books have been banned, a librarian is judged obsolete and sentenced to death.
Director: Elliot Silverstein
Writer: Rod Serling
8.6/10 3,709 votes#9 - The Shelter
Season 3 Episode 3 - Aired 9/29/1961
When a nuclear attack appears imminent, several suburban friends and neighbors fight over control of a single bomb shelter.
Director: Lamont Johnson
Writer: Rod Serling
8.6/10 4,723 votes#10 - It's a Good Life
Season 3 Episode 8 - Aired 11/3/1961
Little Anthony Fremont controls an entire town with his ability to read minds and make people do as he wishes. Which is a real good thing.
Director: James Sheldon
Writer: Rod Serling, Jerome Bixby
8.6/10 3,401 votes#11 - The Masks
Season 5 Episode 25 - Aired 3/20/1964
A wealthy dying man invites his family to a Mardi Gras party and insists that they wear masks specially made for them, threatening to cut off their inheritance if they refuse.
Director: Ida Lupino
Writer: Rod Serling
8.5/10 4,883 votes#12 - A Stop at Willoughby
Season 1 Episode 30 - Aired 5/6/1960
Riding home on the train one day, a stressed businessman falls asleep and dreams it is 1888, and he is entering a small, idyllic town called Willoughby.
Director: Robert Parrish
Writer: Rod Serling
8.5/10 3,998 votes#13 - Five Characters in Search of an Exit
Season 3 Episode 14 - Aired 12/22/1961
A hobo, clown, bagpipe player, ballerina and military officer are trapped in a huge cylinder.
Director: Lamont Johnson
Writer: Rod Serling
8.4/10 4,713 votes#14 - The After Hours
Season 1 Episode 34 - Aired 6/10/1960
Puzzled and unsettled by the odd behavior of the salespeople, a woman discovers that the floor of a department store, on which she bought a gold thimble, doesn't exist.
Director: Douglas Heyes
Writer: Rod Serling
8.4/10 3,495 votes#15 - The Silence
Season 2 Episode 25 - Aired 4/28/1961
A talkative man takes an offer to keep silent for a year for $500,000.
Director: Boris Sagal
Writer: Rod Serling
8.4/10 3,972 votes#16 - The Midnight Sun
Season 3 Episode 10 - Aired 11/17/1961
The Earth's orbit has been changed, drawing ever closer to the sun and promising eminent destruction.
Director: Anton Leader
Writer: Rod Serling
8.3/10 5,229 votes#17 - And When the Sky Was Opened
Season 1 Episode 11 - Aired 12/11/1959
Recovering in the hospital after a space mission, Major William Gart is visited by his co-pilot Lieutenant Colonel Clegg Forbes, who insists on the existence of a third astronaut.
Director: Douglas Heyes
Writer: Rod Serling, Richard Matheson
8.3/10 4,260 votes#18 - Nick of Time
Season 2 Episode 7 - Aired 11/18/1960
A superstitious newlywed becomes obsessed by a penny fortune-telling machine when he and his new wife are stranded with car trouble.
Director: Richard L. Bare
Writer: Richard Matheson
8.3/10 3,525 votes#19 - Nothing in the Dark
Season 3 Episode 16 - Aired 1/5/1962
A lonely old woman refuses to leave her apartment for fear of meeting "Mr. Death."
Director: Lamont Johnson
Writer: George Clayton Johnson
8.3/10 2,804 votes#20 - An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Season 5 Episode 22 - Aired 2/28/1964
As a Confederate spy is about to be hanged, the rope breaks and he falls to the water below. Finally free, he races for his home where his family awaits... as does the terrible truth of his future...
Director: Robert Enrico
Writer: N/A
8.2/10 6,319 votes#21 - Walking Distance
Season 1 Episode 5 - Aired 10/30/1959
A stressed advertising executive, driving through the country, leaves his car and starts to walk toward his hometown, Homewood. He finds things exactly as they were when he was a child.
Director: Robert Stevens
Writer: Rod Serling
8.2/10 5,437 votes#22 - The Hitch-Hiker
Season 1 Episode 16 - Aired 1/22/1960
Alone on a cross-country trip, a woman continually encounters the same mysterious hitch-hiker who inexplicably reappears at various points in her journey.
Director: Alvin Ganzer
Writer: Rod Serling, Lucille Fletcher
8.2/10 4,252 votes#23 - The Howling Man
Season 2 Episode 5 - Aired 11/4/1960
A man on a walking trip of post-World War I Europe gets caught in a storm. He comes across a remote monastery with a mysterious prisoner.
Director: Douglas Heyes
Writer: Charles Beaumont
8.2/10 2,876 votes#24 - The Changing of the Guard
Season 3 Episode 37 - Aired 6/1/1962
An elderly private school teacher wonders if his life has meant anything as he contemplates suicide on Christmas Eve and is reminded by former students that he has, indeed, made an effect on the lives of his students over the years.
Director: Robert Ellis Miller
Writer: Rod Serling
8.1/10 5,595 votes#25 - The Lonely
Season 1 Episode 7 - Aired 11/13/1959
In 2046, imprisoned for murder on a distant asteroid, Corry receives an unexpected present that brings a semblance of companionship during his isolation.
Director: Jack Smight
Writer: Rod Serling