The Obsolete Man

"**The Obsolete Man**"
"The Obsolete Man"
The Twilight Zone episode
	Burgess Meredith as Romney Wordsworth in "The Obsolete Man"
Episode no.	Season 2; Episode 29
Directed by	Elliot Silverstein
Written by	Rod Serling
Featured music	Stock
Production code	173-3661
Original air date	June 2, 1961
Guest appearances
	Burgess Meredith as Romney Wordsworth; Fritz Weaver as the Chancellor; Josip Elic as the Subaltern;
Episode chronology
← Previous; "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?"	Next →; "Two"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series, season 2)
	List of episodes

"The Obsolete Man" is episode 65 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone, starring Burgess Meredith as Romney Wordsworth. It originally aired on June 2, 1961, on CBS. The story was later adapted for The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas starring Jason Alexander as Wordsworth.

Opening narration[]

You walk into this room at your own risk, because it leads to the future, not a future that will be but one that might be. This is not a new world, it is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advances, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like every one of the super-states that preceded it, it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace. This is Mr. Romney Wordsworth, in his last forty-eight hours on Earth. He's a citizen of the State but will soon have to be eliminated, because he's built out of flesh and because he has a mind. Mr. Romney Wordsworth, who will draw his last breaths in The Twilight Zone.

Plot[]

In a future totalitarian state, Romney Wordsworth is put on trial for being obsolete. His professed occupation as a librarian is punishable by death as the State has eliminated books. He believes in God, also proof of obsolescence, as the State claims to have proven God does not exist. Following a bitter exchange, the Chancellor finds Wordsworth guilty and sentences him to death, allowing him to choose his method of execution. He requests that he be granted a personal assassin, who will be the only one who knows the method of his death, and that his execution be televised nationwide. While televised executions are commonplace and the secretive method is highly unorthodox, the Chancellor grants both requests.

A television camera is installed in Wordsworth's study to broadcast his final hour live to the nation. He summons the Chancellor, who agrees to this unusual request out of curiosity, arriving early in Wordsworth's final hour. The librarian reveals that the execution method he chose is a bomb set to go off in the room at midnight. The Chancellor expresses approval until Wordsworth further explains that the door is locked, and the Chancellor will die with him, providing the viewers with a more interesting death than his own. He also points out that, as the events are being broadcast live, the State would risk losing its status in the people's eyes by rescuing the Chancellor. Wordsworth proceeds to read from his illegal, long-hidden copy of the Bible, expressing his trust in God. Wordsworth's calm acceptance of death stands in sharp contrast with the Chancellor's increasing panic as the bomb ticks.

At the last minute, the Chancellor breaks down and begs to be let go "in the name of God." Wordsworth agrees to do so on those terms and immediately unlocks the door for him. Wordsworth stays as the Chancellor flees from the room and the bomb explodes, killing him alone.

Due to his cowardly display in Wordsworth's room and invoking God, the Chancellor is replaced by his own subaltern and declared obsolete. He protests against this and tries to escape but is overwhelmed by the tribunal's attendants, who then beat him to death.

Closing narration[]

Unusually, Serling appears on camera to deliver the closing narration. While he had made a gag appearance towards the end of an earlier episode ("A World of His Own"), Serling still delivered the closing narration of that episode off-camera, as he would for all other Twilight Zone episodes save this one and season 3's "The Fugitive". As broadcast, Serling's narration reads:

The chancellor, the late chancellor, was only partly correct. He was obsolete. But so is the State, the entity he worshiped. Any state, any entity, any ideology which fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man...that state is obsolete. A case to be filed under "M" for "Mankind" - in The Twilight Zone.

Serling's original narration was longer, but the middle section was cut for broadcast. As scripted, the original narration reads as follows (with the cut section in italics):

The chancellor, the late chancellor, was only partly correct. He was obsolete. But so is the State, the entity he worshipped. Any state, entity, or ideology becomes obsolete when it stockpiles the wrong weapons: when it captures territories, but not minds; when it enslaves millions, but convinces nobody. When it is naked, yet puts on armor and calls it faith, while in the Eyes of God it has no faith at all. Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man...that state is obsolete. A case to be filed under "M" for "Mankind" - in The Twilight Zone.

Cast[]

Burgess Meredith as Romney Wordsworth
Fritz Weaver as the Chancellor
Josip Elic as the Subaltern
Harry Fleer as Guard
Harold Innocent as Man in Crowd

In popular culture[]

Serling's opening narration is sampled in the song "Thieves! (Screamed the Ghost)" by American hip-hop duo Run the Jewels on their 2016 album, Run the Jewels 3.

Sampled in the epic song "The State" by Subliminal Payback in the 2015 album, "REAP." [1]

References[]

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
Peak, Alexander S. (2006). "The Obsolete Man." LewRockwell.com.

External links[]

"The Obsolete Man" at IMDb

v t The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes
Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgment Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"
Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble with Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"
Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"
Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"
Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander with Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"