April 28th, 2021
By William Kozy
Everybody loves a good existential mystery puzzle to try and solve, or at least take pleasure in watching being solved by the characters in the work of fiction. It’s fun to let one’s imagination run loose, but it does put the pressure on the creator of the fiction to come up with a resolution that is sufficiently mind-blowing, and just as importantly, doesn’t violate the rules that were set up in such a way that the audience feels cheated. “The Arrival” is an episode that while providing a fairly logical explanation of the puzzle, doesn’t shock us all that much. It does however, to its credit, provide a decently unpredictable outcome. The episode received 6 votes in my survey of fans and writers asking, ‘What is your favorite episode of the original Twilight Zone series?’ tying it with 11 other episodes for 106th thru 116th place of the 156 episodes.”