The Old Man in the Cave

"**The Old Man in the Cave**"
"The Old Man in the Cave"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 5; Episode 7
Directed by	Alan Crosland, Jr.
Teleplay by	Rod Serling
Based on	a short story "The Old Man"; by Henry Slesar
Featured music	Stock; most cues from; "And When the Sky Was Opened"; by Leonard Rosenman
Production code	2603
Original air date	November 8, 1963
Guest appearances
	James Coburn: French ; John Anderson: Goldsmith ; Josie Lloyd ; John Craven ; John Marley: Jason
Episode chronology
← Previous; "Living Doll"	Next →; "Uncle Simon"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 5)
	List of episodes

Last updated May 13, 2024

"The Old Man in the Cave" is a half-hour episode of the original version of The Twilight Zone . It is set in a post-apocalyptic 1974, ten years after a nuclear holocaust in the United States. The episode is a cautionary tale about humanity's greed and the danger of questioning one's faith in forces greater than oneself.

Opening narration

What you're looking at is a legacy that man left to himself. A decade previous he pushed his buttons and a nightmarish moment later woke up to find that he had set the clock back a thousand years. His engines, his medicines, his science were buried in a mass tomb, covered over by the biggest gravedigger of them all—a bomb. And this is the earth 10 years later, a fragment of what was once a whole, a remnant of what was once a race. The year is 1974 and this is The Twilight Zone.

Plot

In a sparsely populated town in 1974, ten years after a nuclear war has devastated the US, the townspeople have discovered a supply of canned food. However, they are waiting for Mr. Goldsmith, the town's leader, to return with a message from the mysterious and unseen "old man in the cave" who will tell them whether the food is contaminated with radiation. Some of the townsfolk want to take their chances and eat the food, but they refrain from doing so after seeing the disastrous harvest yielded when they failed to take the old man's advice about which farming areas were contaminated. When Mr. Goldsmith returns, he informs them that the old man has declared the food is contaminated and that it should be destroyed.

Shortly thereafter, three soldiers led by Major French enter the town and clash with Goldsmith as they try to establish their authority. The soldiers may or may not be representatives of the US government; Goldsmith claims that wandering packs of self-styled military men have previously intruded on the town and tried to establish authority—all unsuccessfully. French, meanwhile, reveals that there are maybe 500 people left alive between Buffalo, New York and Atlanta, Georgia, and also talks of small, isolated primitive societies on the shores of Lake Erie and in "what used to be" Chicago. He claims his job is to organize the region so that society can be re-built. However, Goldsmith believes that French and his men simply want to strip the town of its food.

A clash of wills ensues and, frustrated by Goldsmith's quiet and steadfast refusal to bend, French tries to dispel the townspeople's strange beliefs about the seemingly infallible old man in the cave and take control of the area. French tempts the townspeople with some of the food Goldsmith claimed was contaminated and many throw caution to the wind and partake. Everyone except Goldsmith eventually consumes the food and drink and Goldsmith falls into disfavor among the townspeople. After being bullied and threatened with his life, Goldsmith finally opens the cave door and it is ultimately revealed that in reality, the townsfolk have been using information from a computer the whole time. French rallies the townspeople into a frothing frenzy into destroying the machine, after which French leads the people into celebrating their newfound freedom from this "tyranny." However, as Goldsmith had insisted, the "old man" was correct; without an authority figure to tell them which foods are safe, the entire human population of the town (including French and the soldiers) die—except for the lone survivor, Goldsmith, who somberly walks out of the now dead town.

Closing narration

Mr. Goldsmith, survivor. An eyewitness to man's imperfection. An observer of the very human trait of greed. And a chronicler of the last chapter—the one reading "suicide". Not a prediction of what is to be, just a projection of what could be. This has been The Twilight Zone.

Cast

James Coburn as French
John Anderson as Goldsmith
Josie Lloyd as Evie, townswoman who says, "We already took chances. The old man told us not to plant on the north acreage."
John Craven as townsman who asks, "Been to the cave, Jason?"
John Marley as Jason

Uncredited (in order of appearance):

Natalie Masters as townswoman who asks,"Did you see Goldsmith? Did he talk to the old man?"
Don Wilbanks as Furman, one of the three soldiers with Major French, "That last part, put it on top... No trouble."

This was the last of John Anderson's four appearances on the original series. The first was as Angel Gabriel in "A Passage for Trumpet" (May 1960), the second was as the airplane captain in "The Odyssey of Flight 33" (February 1961) and the third was as Deitrich, the businessman with a conscience, who is bankrupted by the ruthless tycoon Feathersmith in "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" (April 1963). The other cast member who appeared in more than one episode was John Marley who played the superintendent of the old-age home in "Kick the Can" (February 1962).

Episode notes

In the post-apocalyptic world presented in the episode, humanity has destroyed itself, but does so through "greed, desire and faithlessness".^[1] It is thus a warning not to ignore faith, which often serves an important purpose in society. The events in the episode show that myths and beliefs are often based on fact or necessity, as is the case with the "old man" who, despite being a computer, was ultimately keeping his "followers" alive. According to Valerie Barr of Hofstra University, it also "turns the usual notion of overreliance on technology on its head" by suggesting an interdependence with machines when it is revealed that a man-made computer has been keeping the townspeople alive.^[2] A suggested learning plan accompanying this episode for the SyFy Channel's participation in Cable in the Classroom provides a platform for exploring ideas about war, faith, and the question of whether humans control computers or vice versa.^[3]

Film critic Andrew Sarris noted in his review of "Time Enough at Last" that, at the time The Twilight Zone was produced, depicting an atom bomb explosion or its aftermath on network television would likely have been prohibited if it had been "couched in a more realistic format".^[4] Hence, in both this episode and "The Shelter", Serling makes a point of noting that the story is intended to be fictional, particularly given both are set in the United States.

Related Research Articles

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Rodman Edward Serling was an American screenwriter and television producer best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his anthology television series The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen, and helped form television industry standards. He was known as the "angry young man" of Hollywood, clashing with television executives and sponsors over a wide range of issues, including censorship, racism, and war.

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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

Notes

↑ Warren, Jason. "Twilight Zone: 'Time Enough at Last'". Scifilm — TV Files. Retrieved 20 July 2006.
↑ Barr, Valerie (8 January 1999). "Movies Involving Computers (or raising interesting issues for a computer ethics course)" . Retrieved 30 July 2006.
↑ Blass, Laurie & Elder, Pam. "LESSON PLAN". Twilight Zone: Cable in the Classroom. Archived from the original on 26 March 2007. Retrieved 30 July 2006.
↑ Sarris, Andrew. Rod Serling: Viewed From Beyond the Twilight Zone. Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine, March–April 1985, p. 45

External links

"The Old Man in the Cave" at IMDb

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[scifilm-1] Warren, Jason. "Twilight Zone: 'Time Enough at Last'". Scifilm — TV Files. Retrieved 20 July 2006.

[barr-2] Barr, Valerie (8 January 1999). "Movies Involving Computers (or raising interesting issues for a computer ethics course)" . Retrieved 30 July 2006.

[cable-3] Blass, Laurie & Elder, Pam. "LESSON PLAN". Twilight Zone: Cable in the Classroom. Archived from the original on 26 March 2007. Retrieved 30 July 2006.

[sarris-4] Sarris, Andrew. Rod Serling: Viewed From Beyond the Twilight Zone. Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine, March–April 1985, p. 45

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v t e 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"