LOS ANGELES – OCTOBER 11: From left Christine White (as Julia Wilson), William Shatner as airline passenger Bob Wilson, reacts to a gremlin on the plane’s wing, played by Nick Cravat. ‘Nightmare At 20,000 Feet,’ episode of The Twilight Zone. Initial television broadcast on October 11, 1963. Image is a frame grab. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images)
CBS via Getty Images
Long before the term “gaslighting” entered the mainstream lexicon, a shaggy gremlin made an entire airplane full of people believe William Shatner was crazy.
That, of course, is the plot of classic Twilight Zone episode, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” which remains one of the most—if not the most—iconic installment from the show’s original five-season run on CBS. Along with “Time Enough at Last,” “Eye of the Beholder” and “To Serve Man,” it remains deeply embedded in the public consciousness following more than half a century of homage and parody.
At its best, Rod Serling’s TV-defining anthology series used genre storytelling like a flashlight to explore the dark caves of human fear, weakness, and pride. The Twilight Zone constantly, uncomfortably, brilliantly exposed what we are and have always been: cowering, timid beings, who, for all their scientific and cultural advancement, still run on outdated primordial flight-or-fight software.
“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” flawlessly taps into that ubiquitous primal instinct to survive, serving as a literal flight and fight scenario, in which poor Robert Wilson (Shatner in his second Twilight Zone appearance) helplessly watches some sadistic creature of unknown origin (Nick Cravat) tear apart the wing of his plane in the middle of a severe thunderstorm.
The gremlin couldn’t have asked for a better witness. Wilson, who recently suffered a nervous breakdown, comes off as a lunatic to his wife and the flight crew. Time and again, he feverishly tries to get them to look out the window, but they’re always just a second too late, allowing the monster to strategically duck out of sight.
It’s basically Merry Melodies’ Michigan J. Frog shtick with much higher stakes.
Wilson ultimately takes matters into his own hands, purloining a gun from a fellow passenger and filling the mechanical miscreant with lead. His behavior was nothing short of reckless, but the final shot of a blackened, damaged wing panel vindicates our protagonist.
Richard Matheson’s tightly-wound script, the assured direction of a young Richard Donner, and a desperately convincing performance from its leading man come together in alchemical fashion. The end result: television gold.
William Shatner Explains Why The Twilight Zone’s Famous Gremlin Episode Remains So Iconic 63 Years Later
While he’s never faced off against a real-life gremlin, Shatner does have firsthand experience with high-altitude anxiety as a former flyer himself. Indeed, the Star Trek actor once held a private pilot license and decided to take the cross-country requirement literally, taking his instructor along for the ride in a Cessna 140.
“I said, ‘Well, if it says ‘cross-country,’ let’s go cross country!’” Shatner recalled to me over Zoom while promoting his new book, William Shatner… And You. “We went from Santa Monica to Miami. I learned the terror of flying in a 40-mile-an-hour crosswind. You’re banked like this and you’re trying to find the horsepower to fight the wind and stay in a straight line and land on the runway.”
That airplane-based angst easily translates to the safest of commercial flights, even for someone who has flown in a craft as rudimentary as a Cessna 140 (which Shatner described as “a glider with an engine). Why? Because stepping into a pressurized metal tube and battling frigid winds tens of thousands of feet above solid ground is, in essence, a brazenly Promethean act of hubris.
“There have been times flying in the big airplanes where it’s going like this,” Shatner said, mimicking turbulence. “It’s like, ‘Holy sh**! If we were meant to fly, we’d have wings!’” That act of flying is contrary to all our intuition. We all identify with [the idea of], ‘We should be on the ground!’ I’ve been there many times, ‘Holy cats, we should be there on the ground!’ And that’s why it’s so popular.”
William Shatner… And You is now available on Amazon
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