The Best Episodes Written By Rod Serling
Every TV Episode Written by Rod Serling Ranked from Best to Worst by Thousands of Voters
Rod Serling Ratings Summary
The best episode written by Rod Serling is "Pamela's Voice / Lone Survivor / The Doll", rated 10/10 from 1 user votes. It was "directed by Richard Benedict". "Pamela's Voice / Lone Survivor / The Doll" aired on 1/13/1971 and is rated 1.0 point(s) higher than their second highest rated, "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar / The Last Laurel".
10.0/10 1 votes#1 - Pamela's Voice / Lone Survivor / The Doll
Season 1 Episode 5 - Aired 1/13/1971
A harried husband murders his magpie wife only to find the arrangement less permanent than he'd hoped. A passing ship rescues an unconscious man in a lifeboat labeled "Titanic", three years after the liner sank. A hideous doll becomes an agent of revenge against an officer in Queen Victoria's colonial forces.
Director: Richard Benedict
Writer: Rod Serling
9.0/10 2 votes#2 - They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar / The Last Laurel
Season 1 Episode 6 - Aired 1/20/1971
A has-been salesman is haunted by phantoms from a happier past. Astral projection is the key to a crippled athlete's bid for revenge.
Director: Don Taylor
Writer: Rod Serling
9.0/10 1 votes#3 - The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes / Miss Lovecraft Sent Me / The Hand of Borgus Weems / Phantom of What Opera?
Season 2 Episode 1 - Aired 9/15/1971
A phenomenally successful young seer suddenly refuses to make further predictions. A vignette about a babysitter and her latest client. A desperate man seeks a surgeon's help when he discovers a presence that controls his right hand. The Phantom of the Opera gets the shock of his life when he menaces a beautiful young singer.
Director: John Badham
Writer: Rod Serling
9.0/10 1 votes#4 - The Caterpillar / Little Girl Lost
Season 2 Episode 22 - Aired 3/1/1972
A bored colonial on a Malaysian plantation employs an exotic accomplice, an earwig, in his gruesome plot to assassinate a romantic rival. Military strategists unwittingly plant the seeds of the apocalypse when they humor a scientific genius unbalanced by his daughter's death.
Director: Jeannot Szwarc
Writer: Rod Serling
8.5/10 25 votes#5 - 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
8.4/10 37 votes#6 - 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
8.3/10 23 votes#7 - 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
8.2/10 14 votes#8 - 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
8.1/10 24 votes#9 - 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
8.0/10 51 votes#10 - 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
8.0/10 19 votes#11 - 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
8.0/10 22 votes#12 - 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
8.0/10 2 votes#13 - The House / Certain Shadows on the Wall
Season 1 Episode 3 - Aired 12/30/1970
A former sanitarium patient discovers a house she has known all her life, but never dared enter, in a recurring dream. An ailing woman dies under the care of her sinister brother, but her accusing shadow remains indelibly cast on the parlor wall.
Director: John Astin
Writer: Rod Serling
7.9/10 33 votes#14 - 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
7.8/10 35 votes#15 - 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
7.8/10 17 votes#16 - 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
7.8/10 11 votes#17 - He's Alive
Season 4 Episode 4 - Aired 1/24/1963
Peter Vollmer, a small-time neo-Nazi leader, yearns for more power. Advised by a shadowy benefactor, Vollmer's following grows, as does his ego...
Director: Stuart Rosenberg
Writer: Rod Serling
7.7/10 46 votes#18 - 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
7.7/10 26 votes#19 - 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
7.7/10 18 votes#20 - 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
7.7/10 3 votes#21 - The Time Element
Season 1 Episode 6 - Aired 11/10/1958
A patient visiting a psychiatrist complains of recurrent dreams in which he imagines he is living in Hawaii just before the attack on Pearl Harbor. A series of flashbacks shows him living with his knowledge of what has happened in the seventeen years since, betting on sure winners in sports events, but also seeking to warn a newly-married couple, newspaper editors, and anyone else who will listen that they will be attacked by the Japanese. Everyone is either too interested in a good time or too determinedly patriotic to give heed; the man only gets punched on the jaw. In the end the psychiatrist is left looking at a blank couch, and to steady his own nerves he goes to a bar to get a drink. There he learns his patient was killed at Pearl Harbor.
Director: Allen Reisner
Writer: Rod Serling
7.6/10 64 votes#22 - Where Is Everybody?
Season 1 Episode 1 - Aired 10/2/1959
Mike Ferris finds himself in a town strangely devoid of people. But despite the emptiness, he has the odd feeling that he's being watched...
Director: Robert Stevens
Writer: Rod Serling
7.6/10 29 votes#23 - What You Need
Season 1 Episode 12 - Aired 12/25/1959
A two-bit thug thinks he's found the key to a better life in an old sidewalk salesman who has the uncanny ability to tell people what they need the most.
Director: Alvin Ganzer
Writer: Rod Serling
7.6/10 25 votes#24 - 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
7.6/10 23 votes#25 - Mirror Image
Season 1 Episode 21 - Aired 2/26/1960
In a bus depot, Millicent Barnes experiences odd events, leading to concerns about her sanity.
Director: John Brahm
Writer: Rod Serling