This Classic Twilight Zone Episode Almost Featured a Bizarre Canine-Centric Twist

Even the best ideas can sometimes start out a little wonky.

Take, for instance, the season two episode of The Twilight Zone, "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?".

Series creator and host Rod Serling first pitched the story in 1958, a year prior to the show's CBS debut, to the network's head of West Coast programming, William Dozier. Tentatively titled "The Night of the Big Rain," the two-paragraph proposal carried the general structure of what would become the finished product: Inclement weather (a heavy rainstorm) traps a group of people inside a local diner, where a suspicious police officer attempts to weed out an alien imposter.

It was basically John Carpenter's The Thing and Among Us before either existed.

Per Martin Grams Jr.'s The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic, Serling told Dozier the episode "would make a corker of a show—solid, suspenseful and yet strangely believe stuff." 

The biggest difference between the initial idea and the final script was the twist ending.

The Twilight Zone "Martian" episode almost featured canine-centric twist

After scrutinizing everyone's alibis, the patrolman is forced to conclude that everyone is human and that the strange tracks he saw leading from a nearby bog to the diner simply belonged to a wild animal.

"The story closes with the audience observing a small, stray dog that was previously established as a new pet of the diner operator," wrote Grams Jr. "The dog walks outside, freezes in his tracks and takes on a strange light, signaling a group of 'other' dogs as the first beachhead of the alien race rises out of the swamp."

Serling also played around with alternate titles, including "The Missing Martian" and "Nobody Here But Us Martians," until settling on "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" (a nod to the popular game show To Tell the Truth). The bad weather aspect went from heavy rainfall to a snowstorm, the police officer evolved into a pair of state troopers and the dog was completely dropped.

The episode does, however, double down on the alien-in-disguise concept. In the final moments, we learn that there were actually two extra-terrestrials in the dinner—one Martian (John Hoyt) and one Venusian (Barney Phillips).

Classic episodes of The Twilight Zone air regularly on SYFY. Click here for complete scheduling info!