The Fugitive (The Twilight Zone)

"The Fugitive"
The Twilight Zone episode
Scene from "The Fugitive" with Old Ben and Jenny.
Episode no.	Season 3 Episode 25
Directed by	Richard L. Bare
Written by	Charles Beaumont
Featured music	Stock
Production code	4816
Original air date	March 9, 1962
Guest actors
J. Pat O'Malley: Old Ben Susan Gordon: Jenny Nancy Kulp: Mrs. Gann Wesley Lau: First Pursuer Paul Tripp: Second Pursuer Russ Bender: Doctor Stephen Talbot: Howie Gutliff Johnny Eiman: Pitcher

"The Fugitive" is episode 90 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

Opening narration

“

It's been said that science fiction and fantasy are two different things: science fiction, the improbable made possible; fantasy, the impossible made probable. What would you have if you put these two different things together? Well, you'd have an old man named Ben who knows a lot of tricks most people don't know and a little girl named Jenny who loves him — and a journey into the heart of the Twilight Zone.

”

Plot

The story opens at a public park, where a group of children are playing softball. They are accompanied by Old Ben, a kindly, grandfatherly gentleman, whom the kids adore. When it is Old Ben's turn at bat, he hits the ball in close to his hands, but the ball carries over the fence and out of sight, ending the game. They then decide to play "Spaceman", one of their favorite games. Old Ben, who usually plays the spaceman, suggests that Jenny play the visitor from outer space this time. Jenny declines, saying she can't make herself into as convincing a spaceman as Old Ben, so Old Ben assumes his customary role. He runs behind a huge tree to prepare.

When Old Ben emerges (looking like a nightmarish, shelled monster), the children "zap" him with pretend guns, and Old Ben fakes his death and stumbles back behind the tree. Old Ben then reappears from behind the tree in human form and announces that the spaceman is gone, and the camera then pans to Rod Serling seated on a park bench as he introduces this episode, noting that it combines science fiction ("the improbable made possible") with fantasy ("the impossible made probable").

Old Ben carries Jenny home (she walks with a leg brace that restricts her movement), where she lives with her abrasively unsympathetic aunt, Agnes Gann. As they approach the rowhouse, Ben causes his roller skates to dematerialize. This phenomenon is observed by two well-dressed men who are watching the house from across the street.

The two men enter the apartment building and question Agnes about Ben. Agnes is not surprised, assuming the police are interested in Ben. She believes him to be of questionable character. Jenny, who has been sent to bed without supper for spending time with Old Ben, overhears the conversation and limps upstairs to Old Ben's apartment to warn him about the two men. Old Ben lets Jenny in on his secret that he is actually an alien from another planet, a planet Jenny has never heard of, and that his appearance is only a disguise. Old Ben decides it's time for him to "skedaddle" again, but before departing he uses a strange device to heal Jenny's leg. The two strangers meet Jenny walking down the stairs without her brace. The plot thickens as the men use a device identical to Old Ben's to make Jenny temporarily deathly ill, forcing Ben to return and save her.

Old Ben comes back to Jenny's room and makes her well again. As she thanks him, she sees the two men watching Old Ben. They begin addressing him as "Your majesty." Old Ben explains to Jenny that he is not a criminal but the king of his planet. He grew weary from the pressures of ruling his world, from having so much of his authority overridden by red tape...and by a Planetary Council which holds most of the decision-making power (thus literalizing the anonymous and cynical old saying, "People don't want leadership, they want convenience"). Accordingly, Ben came to Earth for a self-authorized vacation. The strangers tell Jenny that Old Ben's people love him as much as she does; they want him to return and continue the remainder of his 5,000-year reign. Old Ben knows he must go back to his planet, but regrets that it would be against the rules for Jenny to go with him. Old Ben is granted a moment alone with Jenny to say goodbye after he promises not to run away.

Jenny comes up with a plan that will keep them together. She has Ben change himself into her identical twin. Since Old Ben's subjects are unable to tell them apart, they are forced to return with both of them.

At the end of the episode, Rod Serling holds up an 8-by-10 black-and-white photograph of a handsome young man, noting that the photo shows Old Ben's true appearance and that when Jenny grows up, she will become his queen.

Closing narration

“

Mrs. Gann will be in for a big surprise when she finds this under Jenny's pillow, because Mrs. Gann has more temper than imagination. She'll never dream that this is a picture of Old Ben, as he really looks, and it will never occur to her that eventually her niece will grow up to be an honest-to-goodness queen — somewhere in The Twilight Zone.

”

References

DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1593931360
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0970331090

External links

"The Fugitive" at the Internet Movie Database
TV.com episode page

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" "The 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"

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