Line #32 Creator/RodSerling


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3	%%Per Administrivia/CreatorPageGuidelines, only tropes associated to a creator's works are allowed on this wiki's pages, and tropes that only apply to the creator's personal life as if the creator is a fictional character are not allowed. Please do not apply tropes about the creator's personal life as if they are a fictional character.
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6	[[quoteright:320:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rod_serling_photo.jpeg]]
7	[[caption-width-right:320:''"Some liars go to prison. Others write for\
8	television shows."'']]
9
10	->''"People talk about science fiction being very 'far out,' very wild. I don't think it's any of these things. Everything you see in the way of space travel, space concepts, scientific advancement, medical discoveries – it was already predicted by some good science fiction not 25 years ago."''
11	-->-- '''Rod Serling''', 1963 radio interview
12
13	[[SelfDemonstratingArticle Submitted for your approval]]: an ordinary man, just like any other gifted young American student prior to the outbreak of [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII the war]]. This man enlists to serve his country, but as a paratrooper, he [[WarIsHell sees things]] [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters no man was meant to see]].
14
15	This man is Rodman Edward Serling (December 25, 1924 – June 28, 1975).
16
17	Returning home after his service, he is put through college on the GI Bill and becomes a well-known TV scriptwriter. But late at night, in his dreams, the war revisits him. As his visions become ever stranger, ever more disturbing, they drive him to create, and thrust himself into... ''Franchise/TheTwilightZone''.
18
19	----
20	!!Created and [[{{Narrator}} narrated]]:
21	* ''Series/{{The Twilight Zone\|1959}}'' (original 1959–64 version)
22	* ''Series/NightGallery'' (1970–73)
23
24	!!Also created:
25	* ''Series/TheLoner'' (short-lived Western series, 1965–66)
26
27	!!Also narrated:
28	* The documentary series ''The Undersea World of Creator/JacquesCousteau''
29	* The introduction of ''Film/PhantomOfTheParadise''.
30
31	!!Also hosted:
32	* The 1969 version of the GameShow ''Liars Club''
33
34	!!Writing credits include:
35	* ''Patterns'' (a 1955 episode of ''Kraft Television Theater'', then a 1956 film)
36	* ''Film/RequiemForAHeavyweight'' (a 1956 episode of ''Series/Playhouse90'', then a 1962 film)
37	* ''Literature/SevenDaysInMay'' (wrote the script for the 1964 [[TheFilmOfTheBook Film of the Book]])
38	* ''Film/AssaultOnAQueen'' (1966)
39	* ''Literature/TheSeasonToBeWary'' (1967)
40	* The original draft of ''Film/{{Planet of the Apes\|1968}}'' (1968)
41	* Many, many early anthology series
42
43	!!Supplied the page quote on:
44	* Analysis.SpeculativeFiction
45
46	!!Tropes associated with Rod Serling's works include:
47
48	* AlanSmithee: Serling wrote the pilot for ''The New People'' (which he did not create) under the name "John Phillips" because he objected to how the finished product turned out.
49	* AntiHero: His heroes tended to have personal flaws.
50	* AuthorTract: His anti-war and liberal political views often influenced his work.
51	* DownerEnding: His protagonists survive less often than they die in many of his stories.
52	* NightmareFuelStationAttendant: Practically embodies this trope, since he introduces and closes on every episode of ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' and ''Series/NightGallery''.
53	* PosthumousCharacter: Gold Key Comics began publishing a comic book based upon ''The Twilight Zone'' in the early 1960s. Not only did the comic book outlive the original TV series by many years, it outlived Serling himself, too, continuing to publish into the early 1980s - with the comic book version of Serling continuing to introduce each story.
54	* SeventiesHair: The transition from the 1960s ''Twilight Zone'' into the 1970s ''Night Gallery'' saw Serling grow his hair out and adopt sideburns.
55	* TwistEnding: A master of this trope as seen with almost every episode of the ''The Twilight Zone'' have one, be it a conventional one, [[CruelTwistEnding a harsh one]] or [[KarmicTwistEnding one designed to deliver a moral.]]
56	* VillainProtagonist: Often used when he needed unsympathetic characters. Two episodes of ''The Twilight Zone'' even had a [[NaziProtagonist Nazi for a protagonist]].
57	* WriteWhatYouKnow: His script ''The Velvet Alley'' is considered to essentially be Serling writing about how his life had changed after going to Hollywood.
58	----
59	->They say life is but a whisper, leaving just as quickly as it arrives. This man was killed not by machines of humanity, nor by acts of nature, nor by seeking seclusion within the recesses and infinities of his mind...but by a faulty heart, which removed him from the coil of mortality while men of medicine tried valiantly to keep him from that fate.
60
61	->Since the twenty-eighth day of June in the year nineteen hundred and seventy-five, this man has led a new life inside the world he created. He takes pride in those who [[FanFic tell new tales]], and by request will walk into the spotlight to give an appropriate spiel at each beginning and end.
62
63	->Rodman Edward Serling, a man who cannot leave his own little world yet takes this fact as comfort, living out a pleasant eternity...in ''The Twilight Zone''.

Context Creator / RodSerling