The Twilight Zone's First Pilot Was Actually Filmed For Another CBS Series

"The Twilight Zone" premiered in 1959 with "Where Is Everybody?," but this wasn't the first episode creator Rod Serling wrote for the series. Serling penned a pilot that was taken for granted by CBS executives.

Serling's script was called "The Time Element," and it centered on a man from the present day who goes back in time and tries to warn people of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The eventual "Twilight Zone" creator sent the script to CBS in 1957, only for them to let it sit in the archives for nearly a year. When the network did finally decide to make use of it, they used the script not as a pilot for "The Twilight Zone," but as an episode of a separate anthology series at the time, "Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse."

This anthology show, produced by Desi Arnaz of "I Love Lucy" fame, aired self-contained hour-long dramas for each episode. As detailed in the behind-the-scenes book "The Twilight Zone Companion," CBS edited Serling's script to fit the tone of the show, and aired the episode in November 1958. "The Time Element" was supposed to kick off "The Twilight Zone," but instead was tossed into the middle of some other series' lineup. 

Although "The Time Element" didn't get the treatment from CBS that Rod Serling wanted, it was exceptionally well-received by viewers and critics. "It told an engrossing story and it all tied together in a believable framework," wrote the Buffalo Evening News, calling it a "refreshing" and "absorbing" episode. 

As "Twilight Zone" expert Jordan Prejean wrote in his retrospective on the episode, the positive audience response "proved not only was the public ready for quality fantasy and science fiction on television, but that they hungered for it." Soon after the episode aired, CBS greenlit the show Rod Serling had been asking them to make, paving the way for "The Twilight Zone" to become a long-running pop culture phenomenon.

Since "The Time Element" includes a lot of what would soon become "Twilight Zone" staples — from the inclusion of a closing/opening narrator and a darkly ironic conclusion — it's often considered by fans to be the show's true spiritual pilot. It may not have been the scariest episode of "The Twilight Zone," but it whet the audience's appetite for darker material. "Where Is Everybody?" was the public's official introduction to the series, but "The Time Element" was the moment Serling proved that his idea could be a success.