Miniature

Episode aired Feb 21, 1963
TV-PG
51m

IMDb RATING

7.6/10

2.2K

YOUR RATING

Robert Duvall in The Twilight Zone (1959)

Drama Fantasy Horror Mystery Sci-Fi Thriller

Mousey misfit Charley Parkes finds the world unfolding before him in a museum doll house to be more real than his boring job and overbearing mother.Mousey misfit Charley Parkes finds the world unfolding before him in a museum doll house to be more real than his boring job and overbearing mother.Mousey misfit Charley Parkes finds the world unfolding before him in a museum doll house to be more real than his boring job and overbearing mother.

Director
- Walter Grauman
Writers
- Charles Beaumont
- Rod Serling
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.6/10

2.2K

YOUR RATING

Director
- Walter Grauman
Writers
- Charles Beaumont
- Rod Serling
Stars

22User reviews

See production info at IMDbPro

Trivia
Because of a lawsuit, this episode was not included in the syndication package for The Twilight Zone. It was finally re-aired in 1984 as "The Miniature" (see Alternate Versions).

Goofs
The girl is playing the piano but harpsichord music comes out.

Quotes
Narrator: [Opening Narration] To the average person, a museum is a place of knowledge, a place of beauty and truth and wonder. Some people come to study, others to contemplate, others to look for the sheer joy of looking. Charley Parkes has his own reasons. He comes to the museum to get away from the world. It isn't really the sixty-cent cafeteria meal that has drawn him here every day, it's the fact that here in these strange, cool halls, he can be alone for a little while, really and truly alone. Anyway, that's how it was before he got lost and wandered into - The Twilight Zone.

Alternate versions
A syndicated version from 1984 has some of the doll scenes in color in one of the first public demonstrations of colorized black and white films. The Definitive Season Four DVD collection contains theses scenes as part of the "extras". Unfortunately, the scenes are extracted from the show and are put together, out of context, but at least you do get to see the portions of the doll house and the characters who were all colorized. Interestingly, the colorization actually gets better as the piece progresses, with the higher quality color segments nearer the end of the program.

Connections
Featured in Twilight-Tober-Zone: Miniature (2023)

Soundtracks
Twilight Zone Theme
(theme song)
Composed by Marius Constant
(seasons 2-5)

User reviews22

Featured review

9/10

Small world

Robert Duvall delivers a subtly affecting performance as a man who seems utterly bewildered by how to react to the world around him. Minutes into the episode, you feel really bad for this guy. He has no friends, his boss fires him because he doesn't fit in at the office, and he's under the constant, unrelenting thumb of his smothering mother. There are social rules, but no one ever gave Charley Parkes the rule book. Rather than be angry at his situation, he's passive to the point where, were he a real person, he'd probably snap someday and end up a serial killer.

Instead, Charley "meets" a beautiful young woman who plays the pianoforte - she's a doll in a dollhouse in a museum, and he swears she moves around the dollhouse and is threatened by another doll. It's sad because we see how Charley could be a gentle and caring boyfriend, if only he could figure out how to find and get to know a real woman like this. He's trapped in the "smallness" of his world, its limited options as he sees them. Terrific acting.