They revived Rod Serling to introduce the weirdest episode of Medium

By: Start TV Staff     Posted: September 26, 2018, 3:17PM

Lately, all the world's abuzz about Jordan Peele's Twilight Zone reboot, especially after it was announced that the gifted writer of Get Out would be serving as host. In Peele's debut teaser video for this upcoming reboot, he makes no attempt to mimic the cadence of the original Twilight Zone host Rod Serling, who as TV icon, would be difficult to replace. Whether his reboot lives up to the chilling, nerve-wracking tension of the original series has yet to be seen, but if you dig the supernatural, it's bound to be a show to watch.

Rod Serling passed away in 1975, and on the 30th anniversary of his death, a different supernatural show decided to pay tribute to the icon. The year was 2005, and the show was Medium, then in its second season. At the time, Medium series creator Glenn Gordon Caron was looking for ways to attract more viewers to his show, and he was toying with the idea of a 3-D episode. When that idea actually became a reality, Caron knew there was only one way to introduce this special episode: by reviving Rod Serling to recite an eerie lead-in.

The episode was called "Still Life" and when it originally was broadcasted, the intro sequence Serling recorded for the classic Twilight Zone episode "The Midnight Sun" was repurposed to create an introduction for Medium. For the spoken part, Medium hired voice actor Mark Silverman, the only Rod Serling impressionist that the TV icon's estate recognizes. 3-D glasses were distributed to viewers through copies of TV Guide, which could be picked up at the grocery store and, according to Caron, helped the magazine sell "more TV Guides than they ever have before."

In the end, the 3-D effects were too costly to take over the entire episode, so out of 44 minutes, about seven minutes included the effect. The episode found Allison DuBois in an art gallery, where the images would come to life and in 3-D right before her eyes. It definitely added an extra surreal layer to an already surreal show.

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