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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

"Pamela's Voice / Lone Survivor / The Doll" is the best rated episode written by Rod Serling. It scored 10/10 based on 1 votes. It was directed by Richard Benedict. It aired on 1/13/1971 and is rated 1.0 points higher than their second-best episode, "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar / The Last Laurel".

  • Pamela's Voice / Lone Survivor / The Doll
    10.0/101 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

  • They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar / The Last Laurel
    9.0/102 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

  • The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes / Miss Lovecraft Sent Me / The Hand of Borgus Weems / Phantom of What Opera?
    9.0/101 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

  • The Caterpillar / Little Girl Lost
    9.0/101 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

  • To Serve Man
    8.5/1025 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

  • Eye of the Beholder
    8.4/1037 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

  • The Masks
    8.3/1015 votes

    #7 - 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

  • The Shelter
    8.3/1023 votes

    #8 - 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

  • Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?
    8.1/1024 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

  • Time Enough at Last
    8.0/1053 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

  • The Silence
    8.0/1019 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

  • It's a Good Life
    8.0/1022 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

  • The House / Certain Shadows on the Wall
    8.0/102 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

  • The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street
    7.9/1033 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

  • Five Characters in Search of an Exit
    7.8/1018 votes

    #15 - 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

  • He's Alive
    7.8/1011 votes

    #16 - 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

  • And When the Sky Was Opened
    7.7/1036 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

  • A Stop at Willoughby
    7.7/1026 votes

    #18 - 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

  • The Midnight Sun
    7.7/1018 votes

    #19 - 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

  • The Time Element
    7.7/103 votes

    #20 - 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

  • The Long Morrow
    7.6/108 votes

    #21 - The Long Morrow

    Season 5 Episode 15 - Aired 1/10/1964

    Before leaving on a decades long mission, astronaut Douglas Stansfield meets a woman and falls in love.

    Director: Robert Florey

    Writer: Rod Serling

  • Where Is Everybody?
    7.6/1067 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

  • Walking Distance
    7.6/1049 votes

    #23 - 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

  • What You Need
    7.6/1030 votes

    #24 - 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

  • The Hitch-Hiker
    7.6/1025 votes

    #25 - 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