Dead Run (''The Twilight Zone'')

"Dead Run"
The Twilight Zone episode
Scene from Dead Run
Episode no. Season 1
Episode 19b
Directed by Paul Tucker
Written by Greg Bear
Alan Brennert
Original air date February 21, 1986
Guest appearance(s)

Steve Railsback: Johnny Davis
Barry Corbin: Pete
John de Lancie: The Dispatcher
Brent Spiner: Draft Dodger
John D. LeMay: Gay Man
Paul Jenkins: Trucker

"Dead Run" is the second segment of the nineteenth episode from the first season (1985–86) of the television series The Twilight Zone.

Plot

Johnny Davis is a truck driver and is unemployed due to his many accidents. Johnny asks Pete, a friend of his father, for help getting a job. Pete is reluctant and warns Johnny that the jobs he takes require unusual resilience and fortitude. Johnny insists that he understands and Pete agrees to take him on his next run. Johnny quickly discovers that the run involves delivering souls to Hell via semi-trailer truck. He also finds out that the souls of the newly dead have been causing disturbances in Hell and it is making the truckers nervous.

Dropping their cargo in Hell, Pete and Johnny witness anarchy. Souls run around loose and some of the dead plead with Johnny to rescue them. Other souls attack the drivers, and one of the souls comes to Johnny's aid. He tells him that the cause of the commotion is that people are being sent to Hell who don't deserve it.

The soul explains that a new bureaucracy has taken over the job of deciding who goes to Heaven or Hell. Pete and one of the guards in Hell find Johnny and the guard informs Johnny he must speak with management. Johnny discusses what he heard with a manager and the manager explains how the process works. Johnny thinks the standards used to determine who is sent to Hell are excessive and biased and people are being damned for minor offenses. The executive reasons that they're simply using "time-honored Biblical standards".

Johnny decides to interview the dead that ride with him and then he can decide which of the dead should go to Hell and which he should release (in hopes that they can find a way to Heaven). When one of the souls asks why he is doing this, Johnny replies that he remembered a story from the Bible: between the Crucifixion and Resurrection, Jesus went down to Hell to give the souls there another chance. Johnny reasons that he is just using his own "time-honored Biblical standard."

Closing narration

Note

This episode is based on the short story "Dead Run" by Greg Bear, first published in Omni (April, 1985).

References

  • Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)
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