Introduction

Welcome to the Key of Imagination: A Twilight Zone Analysis Show. This week we’re going to be looking at the Twilight Zone episode, “Mirror Image.” We’ll talk about our complex relationship with rationality; we’ll dive into our fascination with doppelgangers; and I'll reveal to you my moment of awe. So, grab your keys and let’s open up this door to the fifth dimension. 

Plot exposition

Millicent Barnes is a woman on the verge of great change. She quit her job, and is about to start a whole new life in Cortland, NY–roughly 2 and a ½ hours driving distance due west from where I am right now in Albany. And so, Millicent waits, patiently, at the bus station, but with a growing sense of frustration at the lateness of the Cortland bus. When she approaches the terminal employee for information about its whereabouts, you can imagine her surprise at being told that she had already approached  him multiple times with the same question, even though she swears that this was her first time interacting with the employee. Additionally, someone is playing games with her luggage. There is a checked bag behind the desk that looks just like hers–even with the same scuffs and bruises. Then, when her own bag starts to disappear and then reappear at odd times, it starts to prompt strange thoughts in Millicent’s head. But, these peculiar ideas become nightmares when she sees a reflection of herself sitting down on a bench; however, it’s not her–it’s someone else, someone who looks just like her. Then, a friendly stranger, a good samaritan, arrives to help ease her mind: Paul Grinstead. Only, the more Millicent tries to explain her situation, the more she sounds like she needs help from professionals. When the Cortland bus finally arrives, Millicent lines up to get on it, but she is horrified when she sees her other self already aboard. She faints, and Paul stays behind to see that she is okay. When Millicent starts telling Paul stories of duplicate figures and parallel universes, he decides that he can help her no more and calls the police. Not long after they take Millicent away, Paul realizes that his own bag has suddenly been swiped, and as he chases the man down the street, he soon realizes that maybe Millicent wasn’t so crazy after all. The man he’s chasing looks just like him. 

Episode Details 

“Mirror Image” is directed by John Brahm. The teleplay is by Rod Serling. The cast is made up of Martin Milner as Paul Grinstead, and our leading lady, Millicent Barnes, is played by the lovely and incredibly talented Vera Miles. The episode first aired on February 26, 1960. 

Episode Tidbits

In Martin Grams Jr.s Unlocking the Door, he quotes Serling regarding where the idea came from: “I got this idea during a publicity tour last fall….I was sitting in a Cleveland, Ohio, airport when I noticed a person walking past me carrying a bag very similar to my own. I looked up and saw the person from the back. The build, the back of the head, etc., were identical to my own, and while I never did see who the unlucky guy was, it provided a springboard to an idea whereby a woman keeps seeing evidence of a twin to herself and ultimately seeing herself” (253). 

My initial Thoughts

As for my initial thoughts, like many fans of the show, I’ve always enjoyed this one. However, I had forgotten how genuinely creepy it is. In fact, I watched this episode fully four times for this KOI episode, and each viewing felt more disturbing than the last one, so I enjoy it even more now than when I began. What stood out to me this time around that I didn’t recall was the malevolent looks on the faces of the doppelgangers. I didn’t recall that prior to rewatching this episode, which definitely added to the disturbing atmosphere. It’s one thing to think that something is fighting to be alive; it’s another thing to think that these duplicates are taking joy in replacing us. That was pretty awesome–you know in a terrifying way. 

Question 1: Does this episode highlight our complex relationship with rationality? 

Serling sets us up from the beginning that this is a story about psychology, particularly about the line between what we might call madness and sanity. In his opening narration he describes Millicent as, “not a very imaginative type…, not given to undue anxiety or fears, or even the most temporal flights of fancy, like most young career women, she has a classification as, quote, ‘a girl with a head on her shoulders’. So, Serling sets up our understanding of Millicent as a perfectly reasonable woman. But, what’s interesting about this episode is that she’s not simply fighting the doppelganger; she’s also fighting the others at the bus station. 

Both Serling and the director, John Brahm, go out of their way to make sure that everyone around Millicent has to give their opinion on the situation, and they feel the need to do so in the exact same way. You have multiple moments where others, the clerk, the cleaner, Paul, and even Millicent herself begin to pass judgment on her sanity in a rather dismissive manner. Now, on the surface, it seems certainly plausible that this is how most people would react to such a fantastic story, but the more I thought about the episode, the more I began to wonder, what is a person supposed to do in this situation? Millicent is trying to express a truth, but there is no way of doing so without coming across irrational to others. That led me back to my old philosophical roots of thinking about how we construct rationality.

Now, a discussion of rationality can go sour faster than milk in the hot sun. Therefore, I’m going to limit the discussion a bit to two approaches of developing rationality, and then we’ll apply them to our episode: backward checking and forward checking. Let’s get our definitions in line. 

The backward checking strategy of developing rationality 

steps back to former situations and tries to relate them to our present situation. The motivation is clear: faced with an unusual thing, we look for more familiar, more basic and clearer situations where we can place our feet on firm ground; and from there, we observe what the unusual thing is like and consider how we can return to our current position while remaining oriented (Wagner 54). 

Okay, the important aspect of this model of checking back to establish what is rational is that you move through real situations from the past to build up a kind of model of how other things have happened in order to create a vision of how things should happen. For example, if I were to ask, how do you know someone is angry? You might not consciously do so, but in your mind, you have past experiences of seeing pursed lips, furrowed eyebrows, and clenched jaws. All of those happened in the past, and you can use those past experiences to model a present moment where someone in front of you has pursed lips, furrowed eyebrows, and a clenched jaw. It then becomes a rational decision to assume that the person in front of you is likely angry. So, you need real, experienced events in order to check back effectively.

With checking forward “the aim is to create something new, to produce a new perspective that will allow us to observe ourselves and our present circumstances from a certain distance” (Wagner 53). With this approach, the person “creates a completely novel kind of discourse and even a new kind of thinking (with its own concepts and rules)” (Wagner 53). What the heck does that mean? Let’s parse it out. The important parts of future checking is that you have to create objective distance between yourself and the present seemingly irrational situation. The reason for this is that we subjectively bring a lot of baggage to situations, and the goal is to develop a framework of rationality that can transcend our own specific situation and be applied universally to others. So, if you simply create a forward checking framework based upon your own subjective quirks and fancies, it’s virtually unscalable and can’t really be used by anyone but you. In a nutshell, you need distance between the irrational moment and you want to try and remove your own personal baggage so that you can create a framework of thinking about the irrational moment that others can use as well. 

All right, we’ve got two approaches now for developing rationality. Now, can you figure out which one plays a key role in our episode? If you said, checking forward, you’re correct. Well, if you said checking backward, you’re also somewhat correct here in the longer conversation. But, let’s stick to checking forward for a moment. After Millicent passes out from seeing herself on the bus, she starts to try and unravel what she suspects is going on. She talks about parallel universes and the possibility that a duplicate of her is trapped in her reality and trying to take over. This is an attempt at checking forward, at developing a new way of thinking about a potentially irrational present moment. Now, before you start screaming at me through the comment section, yes, she is pulling from a report that she heard or read in the past, but she still needs to create the framework essentially herself here. She can’t really construct it based upon past doppelganger moments. However, she has some problems here as well. First and foremost, she is unable to decouple her subjective self from what is happening–and, let’s be honest, who can blame her, right? But, that’s actually important to successfully checking forward. Additionally, Paul, like everyone else in this episode, is likely using checking backward  in order to establish Milicent’s sanity. Has anything like what she said ever happened before? No. So, if it hasn’t been experienced before by the human species, it doesn’t pass that initial test of rationality. And here is where we make our descent toward our question. 

To answer our question, yes, this episode absolutely highlights our complex relationship with rationality. What happens when we can neither check forward or backwards effectively? We end up in a lost space, a place where nothing seems to make sense, but what is worse, we lose our sense of being able to interact effectively with our fellow man, and when that happens, we lose our very identity as a human being. And if we are not human, what are we? This is what happens to Millicent. She can no longer place herself firmly on a rational ground of being. Eventually, her thoughts would probably wander toward whether or not SHE is the duplicate. I mean, just because Rod Serling points us toward her, doesn’t mean that she was the one who was there first, right? I’m going to stop there before some of you start checking me.

Question 2: Why are doppelgangers so fascinating? 

Part 1: First and foremost, the doppelganger is essentially a double of the self, but that can mean multiple things. It can refer to a physical doubling, as in two humans occupying the same space and time, and it can also be a kind of psychological doubling: one tangible figure, with the other being a psychological projection. Now, my understanding of the historical origins of the idea is that it comes out of German Romanticism, going back to the 18th century Gothic movement. The term Doppelganger is Germanic in origin, often translated as ghostly double–or something closely resembling that translation. Gothic literature comes right out of the Romantic movement; it’s in many respects a challenge to the rationale that emerges out of the Enlightenment and it gives rise to Romantic literature, something that I’ve mentioned at least a few times on this show. My PhD is in early American literature, with a concentration on what F.O. Matheson coined as the American Renaissance, Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, etc. But, these figures within that American Renaissance were Gothic, Romantic authors. The most familiar probably to all of you is Edgar Allan Poe, whose stories often included fantastic–and I’m using fantastic here in the gothic sense, not in the it’s awesome sense–elements that challenged our concepts of reality. And, in fact, Poe has one of the most famous stories of doppelgangery–yes, I made that word up. That’s the only reason you get a PhD is to make up words. Poe’s short story is entitled, “William Wilson,” and it’s one of my favorites. If you like the Mirror Image episode of the Twilight Zone, “William WIlson” is a good one to jump into as well. It isn’t particularly long. I won’t spoil the ending of Poe’s story, but I will say that it involves the protagonist, whose name is not really William Wilson, that’s just the name he’s using, attempting to thwart this other version of himself. What’s interesting about William WIlison compared to Mirror Image is that Serling goes out of his way to paint Millicent as a completely rational person. However, William Wilson flat out tells you at the beginning that  he is a highly intelligent young man who often experiences fits of flight into the fantastic. Again, I’m not going to spoil it. It’s a great story with a Twilight Zone-like ending. 

Part 2: As you can imagine, psychology is very much interested in this concept of the doppelganger, and because of time constraints, I can’t give an entire overview of the field. However, I can pinpoint one of the primary focal points of how psychology thinks about the concept, that being, how it relates the self to the self. One of the more interesting concepts I found in my research comes from a fascinating book on doppelgangers and psychoanalysis by Otto Rank and Harry Tucker. In the introduction, they talk about a possible conceptualization of the doppelganger as a kind of creation of an immortal self. As the authors sum it up: “‘the struggle between his need for likeness and his desire for difference’, a conflict which leads to the creation of a spiritual double in favor of self-perpetuation and in abnegation of the physical double which signifies mortality (xvii). Okay, you’re probably thinking: Joe, what the heck does that have to do with this episode. Okay, hear me out: I’m going to go on a bit of a flight of fancy myself here and have some fun connecting this to our episode. 

Millicent is leaving one part of her life and starting a new one. In order to do so, she had to make a decision. Now, as you get older, your decisions start to carry a bit more weight because your available time starts to compress. One decision that you make closes the door on another. It’s possible that Millicent’s double is a kind of representation of the ability to send one part of herself forward, to move toward that new life, while leaving a copy of her former self to pay the consequences of the decision to stay, to not get on the bus. Thus, the part of her that desperately needs to move forward and exist in a new state gets to remain alive and reap the benefits, which is why the double is smiling on the bus. It also connects with Millicent’s own theory that only one can really survive in the world, only one gets to live. To extend this a bit more, Paul also has a double, and he’s also attempting to go somewhere new. Finally, this is what makes the bus station the perfect place; it’s a spot of travel and transition, a nexus point between where you were and where you’re going. To sum it up, we leave a physical form of ourselves in place to die for us, while we project a reborn version to move forward. Yeah. After saying that out loud, I kinda’ want to create a version of myself that can just stay here and project a version of myself that is having pizza somewhere else. 

Part 3: Okay, I appreciate you letting me have some fun there proposing a potential reading. Let’s pull this all together and answer our question. Why do we find doppelgangers so interesting? Well, I think part of it is because, in life, we’re always faced with decisions. Multiverses and parallel universes are even more popular today than they were when this Twilight Zone episode came out. I think doppelgangers offer us a kind of “what-if” scenario. What if I could see how a decision I didn’t make had worked out? Also, our identity as a unique being provides us with a tremendous amount of meaning and pride. If someone else is stealing that identity, they also take away the hard work that we’ve put into becoming that person, the hard times, the bruises and scars that we accumulated to be where we are today. And that’s not going to sit well with most people. I think doppelgangers and parallel versions of ourselves will only become more fascinating in the next few decades, as we really begin to struggle with the problem of the digital doppelganger. 

Question 3 What are your moments of awe?

As for my moment of awe, I got another crack at trying to understand how parallel planes and multiverses work. I did my best to explain it in my “And When the Sky was Opened” episode video, but even then, I was still a little bit confused as to how to apply the information and make sense of it. But, when I did a little more research into it for this episode, I think I understand how adding the observer part to the superposition problem of something like an electron can give a false sense of the reality of the situation, as in, it’s only real for that particular reality in which the observer is counted as a part of the equation. If that makes sense to you, congratulations, you too can be a quantum mechanics physicist, and if it didn’t, well, you’re not alone: trust me. There are more episodes in the Twilight Zone that explore this theme, so I’m going to save some of the ideas that I’ve learned from researching this episode for those, but I am absolutely in awe of the concept.

My Rating

As for my rating, this is top middle-tier for me, only a hair out of top top-tier because I think you could have cut some dialogues down a bit, especially with the terminal clerk, and use that time to explore Millicent’s descent a bit more. Nitpicky stuff, but enough to move it out of top top-tier for me. Nonetheless, this is certainly one of the creepiest episodes of the series, and it might even hold up better today than when it came out in 1960. 

Next Episode

Next time, we’ll be taking a look at “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street.” Never heard of it. I bet it’s a terrible episode. Of course, I’m joking. Here are your questions to consider as you watch:

Question 1: Is Steve a failed Just Man?

Question 2: Is there one person who bears more blame for this descent into chaos 

than the others? If so, who is it?

Question 3: What are your moments of awe?

Closing

Well, that was a fun one to write, although it took me quite a long time to put this episode together. I wish I had a doppelganger that I could have sent out to do my other tasks that I needed to accomplish. But, it’s probably for the best that I don’t have one. I enjoy doing this show and sharing my ideas with all of you. 

Announcements and Shout-outs

I’ve got a couple of comments to highlight from the YouTube channel. On my “The Last Flight” episode, Old woman With a casket commented: "That was indeed quite moving Mr. Meyer...quite moving indeed." If I’ve moved anyone in a meaningful way, you need to give most if not all of the credit to the great works of literature and art that have inspired me. This is a wonderful reminder that the real point of the show is the awe–it is the moving effect that Rod Serling has on us even to this day, and that we should all be moved by the works of humanity. It’s so important for our mental well-being. Thank you for taking the time to remind us. 

On my “The Fever” episode, Kurt Vonfricken commented: "The voice of the slot machine is the best special effect in the entire series." It’s such a jarring audio effect. I would love to ask the sound designer if that was on purpose or by accident. It just doesn’t fit in with the rest of the audio mix. It’s loud, scruffy–and yes, that’s the professional term, scruffy, and it has almost no sound before or after it–it just gets thrown into the sound track of the episode. I actually find it kind of amusing myself in an odd way. Thanks for taking the time, my Vonfricken friend.

How to Support the Show

Head over to thekeyofimagination.com to continue our conversation. You can rate this episode, learn more about me, watch previous episodes of the show, and check out my curios page where I showcase some of the Twilight Zone trinkets I’ve bought over the years. I encourage people to email me thoughts and comments, whether it’s about a particular Twilight Zone episode, your rating for an episode, or about the Key of Imagination Show. You can get those to me as a text email, an audio clip, or even a video clip of roughly no more than 5 minutes to keyofimaginationshow@gmail.com. Keep in mind, even though we talk about some serious topics, we’re trying to maintain as family-friendly of an atmosphere as we can. If you would rather I not use your comments on the show, please indicate that so I can respect your decision. 

If you enjoyed the show, I ask that you please take a moment and do one of the following to help build our community. Rate the show, review the podcast, leave comments, thumbs up, all of the usual algorithmic gymnastics. That will help get the show in front of more people and help us build our community of Twilight Zone fans. However, even if you do none of that and absolutely hated every minute of this, I would still like to thank you for spending some time with me. Until next time, remember, all doors are open to those who possess the key of imagination. 

Works Cited

Kleinlogel, Emmanuelle P., et al. “Doppelganger-Based Training: Imitating Our Virtual Self to 

Accelerate Interpersonal Skills Learning.” PloS One, vol. 16, no. 2, 2021, pp. 

e0245960–e0245960, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245960.

Rank, Otto, and Harry Tucker. The Double : A Psychoanalytic Study. University of North Carolina 

Press, 1971.

Wagner, Astrid, and José María Ariso, editors. Rationality Reconsidered Ortega y Gasset and 

Wittgenstein on Knowledge, Belief, and Practice. De Gruyter, 2016, 

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110454413.