The Midnight Sun

"The Midnight Sun" is episode 75 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

Opening narration

Plot

The Earth's orbit has been perturbed, causing Earth to slowly fall into the sun.

A prolific artist, Norma, and her landlady, Mrs. Bronson, are the last people in their New York apartment building. All their neighbors have either moved North, where it is cooler, or perished from the extremely high temperatures. At twenty minutes to midnight, it is 110 °F (43 °C) and sunny as high noon. Norma and Mrs. Bronson try to support each other as they watch life as they know it erode around them. The streets are deserted, water usage is limited to an hour a day, and their electricity is gradually being turned off. Food and water are scarce. A radio reporter announces that the police have been moved out of the city, and that citizens must defend themselves against looters, then angrily goes off script, joking that you can "fry eggs on your sidewalk and heat up soup in the oceans". The reporter is forcibly taken off air.

As the temperature rises to 120 °F (49 °C), the two women grow weaker and weaker. Norma burns her hand on a windowsill. Mrs. Bronson becomes psychologically unstable, beseeching Norma to paint a picture of a cool subject, rather than Norma's usual paintings of the sun and burning cities, screaming, "Don't paint the sun anymore!". Suddenly, they hear footsteps on the roof. Norma asks Mrs. Bronson if she locked the roof access door, but she can't remember. The roof door begins to open, and they lock themselves in Norma's apartment. A man's voice calls from outside, demanding entry. Norma threatens him with a cocked revolver, and they hear him walk away. Against Norma's pleas, Mrs. Bronson unlocks the door, and the stranger, still present, forces his way into the apartment, pulls the revolver from Norma and drinks all of their water. He calms down after he has quenched his thirst and begs for their forgiveness, claiming that he is an honest man driven insane by the heat. He throws away the revolver and describes the recent death of his wife and newborn child from overheating and complications during labor. He insistently begs for forgiveness until Norma acknowledges him with a nod, then leaves the apartment building.

In an attempt to console Mrs. Bronson after the man leaves, Norma shows her an oil painting of a waterfall cascading into a lush pond, implied to be that of Taughannock Falls near Ithaca, New York (specifically in Ulysses). Mrs. Bronson, unable to cope with the heat, deliriously claims that she can feel the coolness and delightfully splashes in the imaginary waters before collapsing to the floor and dying. Norma sits in shock as the thermometer surges past 120 °F (49 °C) and shatters. The paint on Norma's oil paintings begin to melt before her eyes, and she screams and collapses to the ground.

The scene cuts to the apartment at night with heavy snow outside the windows. The same thermometer reads −10 °F (−23 °C). Norma is bedridden with a high fever and is tended to by Mrs. Bronson and a doctor. The plot about the Earth moving closer to the sun is revealed to be only a fever dream. In reality, the Earth is moving away from the sun, and the world is freezing to death. Norma tells Mrs. Bronson about her nightmare, adding, "Isn't it wonderful to have darkness, and coolness?" Mrs. Bronson face stiffens in dread, and she replies, "Yes, my dear, it's... wonderful."

Closing narration

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.^[1]

Deleted characters

Serling's original script featured two characters who did not appear in the completed episode: a police officer and a refrigerator repairman.^[1]

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

Critical response

J. Hoberman, 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 from an underground silo. The episode substitutes a kink in the Earth's orbit—an analogue to what we currently call "the greenhouse effect"—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.

Other media

• The radio version of The Twilight Zone featured a modernized version of this episode starring Kim Fields.

Notes

References

• Sander, Gordon F.:Serling: The Rise And Twilight of Television's Last Angry Man. New York: Penguin Books, 1992.
• Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)
• DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
• Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0

External links

• "The Midnight Sun" at the Internet Movie Database
• "The Midnight Sun" at TV.com