The Jeopardy Room

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The Twilight Zone original series Season five (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5) Fall 1963 – Summer 1964 List of The Twilight Zone episodes
Episodes: 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

“The Jeopardy Room” is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

[edit] Details

Episode number: 149
Season: 5
Production code: 2639
Original air date: April 17, 1964
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: Richard Donner

[edit] Cast

Major Ivan Kuchenko: Martin Landau
Commissar Vassiloff: John van Dreelen
Boris: Robert Kelljan

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Trying to defect, former KGB Major Ivan Kuchenko is trapped inside a hotel room. Commissar Vassiloff, a hitman, and Boris, his assistant, are watching him from a room across the street. Vassiloff has planted a bomb in the room: Ivan must find it within three hours, or he will be shot by Vassiloff and Boris, who have a gun trained on him at all times. Vassiloff has hidden the bomb in the room’s telephone, where it will be triggered by an incoming call. Ivan manages to escape and avoid being shot. Later, Vassiloff and Boris enter the room and try to figure out what went wrong. The phone rings, and Boris - without thinking - picks it up, causing an explosion which kills him and Vassiloff. On the other end of the phone line is Ivan Kuchenko, who makes it to freedom.

[edit] Trivia

This was the last episode written by Rod Serling to be produced.

This was an unusual entry in the series as it contains no supernatural or science-fiction elements. Other such episodes include “Where Is Everybody?”, “The Silence” and “The Shelter," this one being the only one to not even include "strange" elements, dealing only with a complex assassinaton plot.

On September 18, 1964 this became the final Twilight Zone to be broadcast (as a rerun) in its original Friday night timeslot on CBS. The following week saw the debut of Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. in Twilight Zone’s place.