Valley of the Shadow

"**Valley of the Shadow**"
"Valley of the Shadow"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 4; Episode 3
Directed by	Perry Lafferty
Written by	Charles Beaumont
Featured music	Stock from A Hundred Yards Over the Rim
Production code	4861
Original air date	January 17, 1963
Guest appearances
	Ed Nelson ; Natalie Trundy ; David Opatoshu ; Dabbs Greer ; Jacques Aubuchon ; James Doohan ; Morgan Brittany (as "Suzanne Cupito"); Sandy Kenyon ; Henry Beckman ; Bart Burns ; King Calder; Pat O'Hara;
Episode chronology
← Previous; "The Thirty Fathom Grave"	Next →; "He's Alive"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 4)
	List of episodes

Last updated April 06, 2024

"Valley of the Shadow" is a 51-minute episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone . In this episode, a reporter is held captive in a small town after he discovers its incredible secret.

Opening narration

You've seen them. Little towns, tucked away far from the main roads. You've seen them, but have you thought about them? What do the people in these places do? Why do they stay? Philip Redfield never thought about them. If his dog hadn't gone after that cat, he would have driven through Peaceful Valley and put it out of his mind forever. But he can't do that now, because whether he knows it or not his friend's shortcut has led him right into the capital of the Twilight Zone.

Plot

Reporter Philip Redfield gets lost while driving with his dog, Rollie, on unfamiliar back roads, and stops in Peaceful Valley, New Mexico, seeking food, directions, and gasoline. The gas station attendant fills his tank but is curt and claims the only restaurant in town is closed. Rollie leaps out of the car to chase a little girl's cat up a tree. The girl uses a strange device to make the dog disappear. When Philip confronts the girl's father, he pretends to go looking for Rollie, then secretly uses the device to make the dog re-materialize.

Philip and his dog seek food at the town's hotel. Ellen, the proprietor, is as curt as the gas station attendant and insists they have no rooms available even though the keys to all the rooms are still on display at the check-in desk. Philip's suspicions are fully aroused by this time, but questioning Ellen about the residents' strange behavior gets him nowhere. He drives out of town only to run into an invisible wall which totals his car and kills Rollie. A band of Peaceful Valley residents are waiting at the scene and take him to the town elders while another resident brings Rollie back to life.

The town elders question Philip on why he came to Peaceful Valley and whether anyone knows where he is. They show him some of the technology they have, including a replicator which can produce any object given its molecular formula and a ray which can reverse any injury, including death. The elders refuse to share this technology, given to the town 104 years earlier by a scientist from an unknown planet, until "men learn the ways of peace." Philip rebukes them for decreeing themselves the sole people capable of using these extraterrestrial gifts responsibly, and for squandering technology that could be used to cure all illness and end hunger. The town elders insist that if they shared the technology it would be used for weapons, and tell Philip that due to his chance witnessing of the device used to make his dog disappear, he must either stay forever in Peaceful Valley or be executed to preserve the town's secrets.

Philip is now a prisoner in his new home, with an invisible wall placed to keep him from venturing beyond the yard. He becomes romantically involved with Ellen, and tries to make her realize her own lack of freedom, knowing that the town elders will not let any of Peaceful Valley's residents leave for fear they would reveal the town's secrets. Seemingly persuaded that he cannot reciprocate her love unless she sets him free, Ellen disables the invisible wall and offers to drive Phillip out of town. He arms himself by replicating a revolver and steals a book containing the equations that explain the town's technology, but sets off an alarm in the process. When the three town elders attempt to prevent his escape, he shoots them.

Once Philip and Ellen are outside the town limits, she shows him that the book is blank, then uses a device to de-materialize him. Ellen was a plant, Philip's entire escape a test. The elders, revived by the technology, claim his decision to create and use a gun confirms their belief that the people of Peaceful Valley are the only ones fit to use the alien technology. Ellen confesses her involvement was not entirely a deception, implying that her feelings for him were real. The elders "execute" Philip by rendering him unconscious, erasing his memories of Peaceful Valley, and returning him and his car to the gas station. When he wakes up, the attendant has just finished filling his tank. He asks for directions and drives out of town, experiencing a moment of déjà vu when he sees Ellen, who has tears in her eyes.

Closing narration

You've seen them. Little towns, tucked away far from the main roads. You've seen them, but have you thought about them? Have you wondered what the people do in such places, why they stay? Philip Redfield thinks about them now and he wonders, but only very late at night, when he's between wakefulness and sleep in the Twilight Zone.

Production

This is one of many Twilight Zone episodes that re-used props from MGM's 1956 film Forbidden Planet. In this case the matter-transporting "dissemblers" used by the Peaceful Valley inhabitants originated as the C57-D crew communicators in Forbidden Planet.

As were several Twilight Zone episodes of the time, this episode is an allegory of the freedom/communism dichotomy, portraying Peaceful Valley as a utopian but inescapable paradise, pitted against the protagonist who wanted the freedom he could not have there.

Philip Redfield drives a 1959 Chevrolet Impala convertible in the episode.

Precursors

The episode includes what are effectively mini-transporters (disassembling people's atoms and reassembling them elsewhere), replicators (creating a meal, for instance, out of a printed pattern) and a force field. Several characters use a device which could equally well be a communicator or a cell phone — all three years before the original Star Trek . James Doohan plays a minor role in the episode.

The overall premise of a hidden civilization hiding futuristic technology until the world becomes peaceful also foreshadows Marvel's Black Panther comic book series (1966) by three years.

The premise of a man held captive in a small town and expected to assimilate was expanded on in The Prisoner .

Cast

Ed Nelson as Philip Redfield
Natalie Trundy as Ellen Marshall
David Opatoshu as Dorn
Dabbs Greer as Evans
Jacques Aubuchon as Connelly
James Doohan as Johnson (role listed as "Father" in credits)
Morgan Brittany (as Suzanne Cupito) as Cissie Johnson (role listed as "Girl" in credits)
Sandy Kenyon as Fredericks (role listed as "The Attendant" in credits)
Henry Beckman as Townsperson
Bart Burns as Townsperson
King Calder as Townsperson
Pat O'Hara as Townsperson

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References

DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media.
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing.

External links

"Valley of the Shadow" at IMDb

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v t e The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes
Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgment Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"
Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble with Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"
Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"
Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"
Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander with Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"