The Midnight Sun
Encyclopedia
"The Midnight Sun" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone
The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)
The Twilight Zone is an American anthology television series created by Rod Serling, which ran for five seasons on CBS from 1959 to 1964. The series consisted of unrelated episodes depicting paranormal, futuristic, dystopian, or simply disturbing events; each show typically featured a surprising...

.

Synopsis

The Earth has begun moving away from its usual orbit and is gradually falling in its rotation towards the sun. A prolific artist, Norma, and her landlady, Mrs. Bronson, are the last people in their apartment building. The rest of the people in the apartment complex either moved north where it is much cooler or perished from the extremely high temperatures. Norma and Mrs. Bronson try to keep each other company as they see life as they know it slowly drain away. They watch in terror as their water supply is turned on for merely an hour a day, and their electricity is being greatly conserved. Food and water are growing to be extremely scarce. As mentioned by a radio reporter, all citizens are to remain indoors and to remain prepared for a looter rampage. The radio reporter also states that you can "cook eggs on your sidewalk and cook soup in the oceans".

As time progresses, and as the temperature grows hotter and hotter, it is visibly noticed how much the two women perspire. Mrs. Bronson's mind cannot handle the psychological pressures of the conditions any longer, and wishes that Norma paints a picture of a topic other than that of a burning city. Footsteps are heard from outside the apartment door. Norma asks her landlady if she locked the doors of the apartment complex. Mrs. Bronson thinks for a moment, and is uncertain if she did. They hear a knock on the door and Mrs. Bronson starts to answer it as Norma screams for her to not open the door under any circumstances. Norma threatens the mysterious man with a gun. But he breaks his way into the apartment and drinks their supply of water, nonetheless. After several moments, he begs for their forgiveness and claims that he is an honest man and would never hurt them, and that he was driven to looting due to the heat.

Feeling that her latest painting might cheer her friend, Norma displays a beautiful oil of a waterfall cascading over a lush pond. Mrs. Bronson, unable to cope with the literally unbearable conditions of the raging sun, claims deliriously that she can feel the coolness and delightfully splashes the imaginary water before she collapses to the floor and perishes. The thermometer
Thermometer
Developed during the 16th and 17th centuries, a thermometer is a device that measures temperature or temperature gradient using a variety of different principles. A thermometer has two important elements: the temperature sensor Developed during the 16th and 17th centuries, a thermometer (from the...

 surges past 120°F, and eventually shatters. As her oil painting
Oil painting
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil—especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their body...

s melt Norma screams and also collapses.

The scene cuts to the apartment at night. In the inconceivably frigid darkness outside, the weather is anything but hot. The same thermometer reads -10°F and there is a blizzard outside. Norma is bedridden with a high fever, and is accompanied by Mrs. Bronson and a doctor. She was only dreaming that the Earth was moving closer to the sun. In reality, the Earth is ironically moving away from the Sun, which will eventually lead to the earth freezing over. Norma tells Mrs. Bronson about her nightmare, adding, "Isn't it wonderful to have darkness, and coolness?"

Mrs. Bronson replies with a sense of dread in her voice, "Yes, my dear, it's....wonderful."

Production notes

The effect of the oil paintings melting was accomplished by painting the pictures in wax on the surface of a hotplate. Moreover, the episode was shot in the summer, on a set without air-conditioning, with the director actually turning up the heat on certain key scenes to create the necessary mood and appearance for the story.

Missing scenes

Serling's original script featured two characters who did not appear in the finished episode, a police officer and a refrigerator repairman. These roles are significant not only because Serling wrote them, but because he went so far as to cast them before he cut them from the script (Ned Glass
Ned Glass
Ned Glass was an American character actor who appeared in more than eighty films and on television more than one hundred times, frequently playing nervous, cowardly or weasely characters...

 was slated to be the repairman and John McLiam the police officer). Why they were cut probably traces back to Twilight Zone's budget problems, which had been growing significantly since James T. Aubrey, Jr. became chief executive of CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 in the show's second season.

"I spent a lot of time with Buck [Houghton, Twilight Zone's producer] trying to reduce scripts, some by Rod, by one speaking part or two speaking parts because we were just about to start shooting the show and we were over budget. And Aubrey was really tough on this subject even if it were a small number of dollars." —Del Reisman
Del Reisman
Del Reisman was an American television producer, story editor and screenwriter whose lengthy credits included The Twilight Zone and The Untouchables....

 quoted in Serling: The Rise And Twilight of Television's Last Angry Man

Similar problems occurred during the shooting of "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross
The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross
"The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.-Synopsis:Salvadore Ross is a brash, insensitive, ambitious young man who craves a lovely young social worker named Leah Maitland. Leah is attracted to Ross, but could never marry a...

".

Critical response

J. Hoberman
J. Hoberman
James Lewis Hoberman , also known as J. Hoberman, is an American film critic. He is currently the senior film critic for The Village Voice, a post he has held since 1988.-Education:...

, excerpt from "America's Twilight Zone", published in Visions From the Twilight Zone by Arlen Schumer:
Whether explicitly nuclear or otherwise, the apocalypse was never far away [in the Twilight Zone]. "The Midnight Sun" was telecast on the day the U.S. consolidated its drive for "push-button warfare" with the first successful launching of a Minuteman missile
LGM-30 Minuteman
The LGM-30 Minuteman is a U.S. nuclear missile, a land-based intercontinental ballistic missile . As of 2010, the version LGM-30G Minuteman-III is the only land-based ICBM in service in the United States...

 from an underground silo. The episode substitutes a kink in the Earth's orbit—an analogue to what we currently call "the greenhouse effect
Greenhouse effect
The greenhouse effect is a process by which thermal radiation from a planetary surface is absorbed by atmospheric greenhouse gases, and is re-radiated in all directions. Since part of this re-radiation is back towards the surface, energy is transferred to the surface and the lower atmosphere...

"—for an atomic holocaust. Instead of blowing up, the planet is falling into the sun. Rape and pillage seem imminent, and even the pigment is boiling on the heroine-artist's canvases as the radio weatherman goes nuts on the air.

External links

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