The official pilot episode of The Twilight Zone was 1959�s Where Is Everybody?. However, in 1957 Rod Serling pitched a pilot for a SF anthology series to CBS, which was made, then shelved. Directed by Allen Reisner, the resulting project - The Time Element - was finally released to great critical appeal on November 24th, 1958. The success of the broadcast led to CBS finally taking up Serling�s proposal for a full series, and a pilot for The Twilight Zone was commissioned. With these events in mind, then The Time Element must be regarded as an �unofficial� pilot, an extremely rare episode that has, to date, yet to be released on DVD. There�s nothing especially original or groundbreaking about Serling�s play (or at least, it seems that way sixty years later) and it poses questions that many time travel stories have posed before and since: if you could go back in time and divert a disaster (in this case, Pearl Harbor) would you do it? Would you place bets on sporting events of which you knew the outcome? If you were killed in the past, would you vanish from the present? However, all of these questions are answered with charm and panache, an engaging, delightful television play that stands up there with the very best of the series proper. Playing the role of a patient believing he�s travelling back in time during his dreams was William Bendix, a man best known for playing the titular character in 217 episodes of the sitcom The Life of Riley. Martin Balsam played his psychiatrist (an actor who would ironically later appear in Tora! Tora! Tora!) and was reused for the first season in The Sixteen Millimetre Shrine as well as two of the 1980s Twilight Zone episodes. However, his most famous contribution to the Zone has to be his part as the lead in The New Exhibit. Overall, the play works so well within its 52 minute timeslot that it�s curious they never attempted such a runtime again until season four. * * * *