Why Rod Serling Only Adapted One Ray Bradbury Story For The Twilight Zone

Rod Serling was responsible for writing most episodes of "The Twilight Zone," but he relied on other writers, too – including sci-fi legend Ray Bradbury. However, only one episode Bradbury wrote ever made it to air. The reason, according to Serling? Bradbury's writing didn't lend itself to TV. The book "The Twilight Zone Companion" details how Serling came to Bradbury when they were first looking for writers ahead of the sci-fi anthology show's premiere on CBS in October 1959. While other writers in Bradbury's circle, like Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont, would author some of the scariest episodes of "The Twilight Zone," Serling passed on Bradbury's first script, "Here There Be Tygers." His second, an adaptation of his short story "A Miracle of Rare Device," made it far enough along to have a director attached, but that didn't pan out, either. It wasn't until the third season of "The Twilight Zone" that Bradbury had a script make it to the screen: "I Sing The Body Electric," about a robot grandmother and the three kids of a widower she cares for. "Ray Bradbury is a very difficult guy to dramatize, because that which reacts so beautifully on the printed pages doesn't fit in the mouth — it fits in the head," Serling said, according to the book. "And you find characters saying the things that Bradbury's saying and you say, 'Wait a minute, people don't say that.'" Additionally, Bradbury's earlier scripts featured sequences that would have required prohibitively expensive special effects. Although Rod Serling had originally intended for Ray Bradbury to be a big part of "The Twilight Zone," that's not how it worked out. However, Bradbury's influence can still be seen in the show — to the point where Bradbury felt as though Serling was plagiarizing him. In an interview with LA Weekly (via Literary Hub), Bradbury said Serling was "unconsciously aggressive" and "plagiarized unknowingly." He spoke of an incident when Serling even called him to apologize upon realizing that the first episode of "The Twilight Zone" was very much inspired by a story from Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles." Bradbury let the incident go, however, and his own "Twilight Zone" episode aired a few years later. Yet the author wasn't thrilled with how the episode turned out, and he believed that there were additional instances of Serling writing episodes that were similar to stories he or others had published. In that LA Weekly piece, Bradbury gave a "generous" read of Serling's actions, saying it wasn't intentional plagiarism. "He wrote too much too soon, you see, and forgot what he was digesting." Perhaps the bigger reason their relationship soured, though, was that Bradbury didn't think Serling was doing the sci-fi genre justice. According to the biography "Ray Bradbury Unbound," Bradbury wrote: "Rod is a Johnny-Come-Lately, who will come and go and be forgotten in the field."