Once upon a time, long ago, was an age in television that most of us are not even aware of, one that no doubt has lots of cult fans in something similar to film-school circles or literary circles.
And that was the original Golden Age of Television, the age of the great, often live anthology shows of the 1950's.
These were anthology shows that broadcast, live to millions, scripts from the high literary scriptwriters of the day, a television equivalent of people like Tennessee Williams.
Literary art broadcast live on television as live high art cinema.
Some of the scripts that they broadcast were legendary.
This was a time when television was an exciting new medium, when there were a great many talented people that were excited about television, and when fans of high culture made up a significant part of the television audience.
Since that age came to an end, there have been a few television serieses that have kept up a remarkable level of quality.
The television series as American television knows it is an incredibly demanding medium.
The form that Korean television takes today is something else altogether.
A whole different genre.
Kdramas are miniserieses, basically long movies.
Kdramas really belong to the genre of movies, long movies, not television serieses as America traditionally knows them.
That's because what is so demanding is pumping out 20 stories a year, year after year.
A modern Kdrama does not do this.
A modern Kdrama is a single long story, basically a really long episodic movie.
This is far, far less demanding.
Churning out 20 stories a year, year after year, for 5 years or more, on the other hand, that is incredibly demanding.
Which makes the creative achievements of shows like classic Star Trek and The Outer Limits simply astounding!
The anthology series of the Golden Age of television back in the 1950's is no different.
Sure, on occasion something on the level of great high literature would emerge.
But not every week.
The fact that they kept up a high level of quality overall, and regularly produced masterpieces (if hardly every week), comes down to the fact that this was a time when television was exciting and new, and its possibilities had excited a lot of talented writers, directors, producers, and actors.
That and the fact that these anthology shows were the 1950's equivalent of PBS. But it was not possible on that level save for the fact that this exciting new medium had excited a lot of talented people.
As this unique age came to an end, it gave us two last gifts.
The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.
There are a handful of creative teams who have given us television shows since the end of the 1950's Golden Age that have kept up an incredible level of quality, both writing and cinematically, for episode after episode.
The first of these were The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, and they were the last gifts of that original Golden Age anthology show scene of the 1950's.
One of the main writers of that scene was Rod Serling.
And Rod Serling gave us The Twilight Zone.
The most obvious way to keep up a true high-art level of quality in a television series is to find some incredible, staggering, blindingly brilliant genius who is actually capable of writing 20 great high art scripts a year, and then heading the production team to turn them into television.
Two people have been able to do this.
Rod Serling is one of them.
When The Twilight Zone came out, it did not take long for someone to figure out that there were probably other Rod Serlings out there, left over from the recently departed Golden Age of anthology television dramas.
And directors, and actors.
And that many of them would be just as excited about the creative possibilities of science fiction as Rod Serling was.
And so a second show like The Twilight Zone was created.
One that would be hour-long, to tell longer stories with a different kind of pacing, to cover creative possibilities that were not being covered by Rod Serling in his half-hour long Twilight Zone.
It was called The Outer Limits, and it is legendary.
It is one of the few television serieses that has been successful in syndication with only two seasons, because it can be packaged together with The Twilight Zone, filling an hour-long time slot with either a single episode of The Outer Limits or two of The Twilight Zone, which ran for five seasons.
And these two shows have an important role in the development of cinema.
In early cinema, before the experimental filmmakers of Stanley Kubrick's era, all movies save for those of a single lone figure were made in the same style.
The serious parts were done like Verdi's Aida.
The comedy was like Charlie Chaplin.
Within that narrow scope, they did great things.
There were experimental filmmakers like Sergei Eisenstein, who experimented with filmmaking techniques.
But in terms of storytelling, they used these experimental techniques to tell stories like they are told in Verdi's Aida.
There was only a single long figure who did storytelling differently- Walt Disney.
All that changed with Stanley Kubrick's generation.
With Stanley Kubrick's generation- and with The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.
Alfred Hitchcock has already emerged, but overall it was pretty early in the Stanley Kubrick generation when The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits came out.
And the daring experiments in storytelling in those shows expanded cinematic storytelling greatly- and hinted at more still to come, to be fully realized by people like Stanley Kubrick in films like 2001: a Space Odyssey.
It all began, in part, with The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.
It all led in time to what for me is the true Golden Age of Hollywood, when people like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg poured the different, unique storytelling of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Stanley Kubrick generation into the grand cinematic form perfected by Old-School masters like David Lean and things like Lawrence of Arabia, and experimented with it farther, to create the masterpieces that shaped my creative career, things like E.T., Star Wars, and the great early Star Trek movies.
Meanwhile, that original, unique moment of 1950's Golden Age of Television passed away, never to return until another completely new medium could excite people in the same way that television did back in the 1950's- which I'm sure has happened more than once since then on the Internet.
But a few remarkable individuals were responsible for assembling and leading creative teams that would work miracles.
Their names are Gene Roddenberry and Jim Henson, and Joan Ganz Gooney, the other creative leader behind creating Sesame Street.
Jim Henson was the artist. Joan was the brains behind Sesame Street, the pioneering educator behind Sesame Street's curriculum, the woman who set out to change the world by creating a television show to educate children.
There are a handful of people who just have an incredible talent for assembling, guiding and leading a creative team.
Duke Ellington is one.
Jim Henson is another.
Gene Roddenberry is another.
And the television serieses that Jim Henson and Gene Roddenberry and their teams created are something else.
Incredible, staggering, legendary creativity and quality, at 20 episodes a year year after year.
The first four Star Trek television shows, through Voyager.
Farscape, developed by Jim Henson's people after Jim's death.
And the greatest television serieses of all time.
Fraggle Rock and the first 20 seasons of Sesame Street.
This is, along with E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the original Muppet Movie, the primary inspiration and guiding light behind my own creative career.
I am descended creatively from Steven Spielberg and Jim Henson.
And while my own work is more like E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind than like classic Sesame Street and The Muppet Movie, Jim Henson's work is a defining, formative influence upon my life that is exceeded only by that of my parents and God.
And that is a highlight of the greatest television shows of all time.
There are a few more. Babylon 5, for one. A science fiction television equivalent of something like War and Peace, on a similarly high level. With virtually every single episode written by series creator J Michael Straczynski.
But I think that the main story that I set out to tell has been told.
God loves you!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson