Mousey misfit Charley Parkes finds the world unfolding before him in a museum doll house to be more real than his boring job and overbearing mother.Mousey misfit Charley Parkes finds the world unfolding before him in a museum doll house to be more real than his boring job and overbearing mother.Mousey misfit Charley Parkes finds the world unfolding before him in a museum doll house to be more real than his boring job and overbearing mother.
- Office Worker
- (uncredited)
- Office Worker
- (uncredited)
- Narrator
- (uncredited)
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Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaBecause of a lawsuit, this episode was not included in the syndication package for The Twilight Zone. It was finally re-aired in 1984 as "The Miniature" (see Alternate Versions).
- GoofsThe miniaturized piano would only be able to produce very high notes because of the short length of its strings. (The mass and tension of the string also affect the pitch produced, but the strings could not be made massive and loose enough to compensate for the short length.)
- Quotes
Narrator: [Opening Narration] To the average person, a museum is a place of knowledge, a place of beauty and truth and wonder. Some people come to study, others to contemplate, others to look for the sheer joy of looking. Charley Parkes has his own reasons. He comes to the museum to get away from the world. It isn't really the sixty-cent cafeteria meal that has drawn him here every day, it's the fact that here in these strange, cool halls, he can be alone for a little while, really and truly alone. Anyway, that's how it was before he got lost and wandered into - The Twilight Zone.
- Alternate versionsA syndicated version from 1984 has some of the doll scenes in color in one of the first public demonstrations of colorized black and white films. The Definitive Season Four DVD collection contains theses scenes as part of the "extras". Unfortunately, the scenes are extracted from the show and are put together, out of context, but at least you do get to see the portions of the doll house and the characters who were all colorized. Interestingly, the colorization actually gets better as the piece progresses, with the higher quality color segments nearer the end of the program.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Twilight-Tober-Zone: Miniature (2023)
It's of a quality one would expect in a feature film. His character is distant and unsympathetic, not the way one would expect the protagonist of such a story to be played. But it shows just how unable he is to get along in this world.
I've probably seen every episode of "The Twilight Zone", and I don't remember any performance remotely as good as this one. Indeed, it's one of the great performances in the history of series TV.
An addendum... I note that /my/ rating for this episode is only three "helpfuls" out of 31. (I see the same thing with my Amazon reviews.) It appears that readers are looking solely for confirmation of their opinions -- not any insight into the episode.
The fact is that "The Twilight Zone" /was/ a highly uneven series. Much of it is, indeed, trite garbage -- heavy-handed "message" stories, tales with trivially ironic or O Henry-ish twist endings. Is the fact that "Miniature" was written by Charles Beaumont supposed to add cachet to what is a shallow and worse-than-mediocre story?
- grizzledgeezer
- Sep 10, 2009
Details
- Runtime51 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1