DVD review: 'The Twilight Zone' Season 5: Blu-ray Edition

At the end of the 1963-’64 network television season, they locked the door to another dimension and threw away the key of imagination for good, shutting adventurous viewers off from that middle

“The Twilight Zone” was canceled after a five-year run. Creator/host Rod Serling stubbed out his ever-present cigarette and went away to host game shows for the rest of the ’60s. But that last season of the Zone didn’t fade with a fizzle. Far from it. Some of the most iconic episodes of the entire original series aired in the fall of ’63 and spring of ’64, not the least of which was frequent contributing writer Richard Matheson’s fingernail-ripping “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” with William Shatner giving one of his career-best performances as a man recovering from a nervous breakdown who spots a gremlin on the wing of his airliner and can’t convince the other passengers that they’re all in eminent danger. Matheson also penned the heartbreaking “Steel,” starring Lee Marvin as the struggling manager of an obsolete robot boxer in the future year 1974, six years after the government has abolished the human version of the sport, leaving ex-heavyweight contender Marvin permanently on the skids.

Also in the lineup is Charles Beaumont’s “Living Doll,” wherein a cute toy stalks an embittered stepfather (Telly Savalas) with the warning, “My name is Talky Tina, and I’m going to kill you!”