Another user compared "Stopover in a Quiet Town" to "It's A Good Life", but I don't think the comparison is really that valid. The real similarity is to another classic TZ episode, "Five Characters in Search of an Exit".
Both stories are perfect examples of what Turkey City Lexicon calls the "jar of Tang" story, in which the only twist -- and arguably the only attempt at a plot -- is the sudden revelation, at the end, of the story's bizarre setting. The characters are in an unfamiliar place, hiking across a featureless desert of coarse orange sand, which ends at an impenetrable wall. There's no story as such, only the characters' increasing confusion and bafflement, until their sudden realization: "For you see, we are all living inside a jar of Tang!" Fade to black. End credits.
I sometimes suspect that the writers for "Stopover" intended to add another layer of meaning, a suggestion that the Fraziers' marriage was as superficial and false as the fake drawer-fronts and prop trees and papier-mache grass of "Centreville". But if that ever was the intent, it didn't make it into the final version, so we're left with a slightly empty feeling: there's nothing more to the story than the realization that Centreville is nothing more than a child's play-town, a jar of Tang.
But still I give "Stopover" seven out of ten. The acting is excellent, showing the characters' growing weariness and frustration. And frankly, the jar-of-Tang was never done better than on "Twilight Zone".
Both stories are perfect examples of what Turkey City Lexicon calls the "jar of Tang" story, in which the only twist -- and arguably the only attempt at a plot -- is the sudden revelation, at the end, of the story's bizarre setting. The characters are in an unfamiliar place, hiking across a featureless desert of coarse orange sand, which ends at an impenetrable wall. There's no story as such, only the characters' increasing confusion and bafflement, until their sudden realization: "For you see, we are all living inside a jar of Tang!" Fade to black. End credits.
I sometimes suspect that the writers for "Stopover" intended to add another layer of meaning, a suggestion that the Fraziers' marriage was as superficial and false as the fake drawer-fronts and prop trees and papier-mache grass of "Centreville". But if that ever was the intent, it didn't make it into the final version, so we're left with a slightly empty feeling: there's nothing more to the story than the realization that Centreville is nothing more than a child's play-town, a jar of Tang.
But still I give "Stopover" seven out of ten. The acting is excellent, showing the characters' growing weariness and frustration. And frankly, the jar-of-Tang was never done better than on "Twilight Zone".