History Recap / TheTwilightZone1959S3E24ToServeMan

*** At the beginning of the episode, Red Serling says that the Kanamits come from another galaxy. If that's true, the comments by characters that the Kanamits' planet is billions of miles away is even more untrue. It's most likely that Serling made a mistake and should have said "another solar system".

*** At the beginning of the episode, Red Serling says that the Kanamits come from another galaxy. If that's true, the comments by characters that the Kanamit's planet is billions of miles away is even more untrue. It's most likely that Serling made a mistake and should have said "another solar system".

* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale:
** Distance: Prior to boarding the Kanamit spaceship, a woman says that their planet is "billions" of miles from Earth, and Mr. Chambers later says that it's 100 billion miles out in space. The nearest it could possibly be is in the Alpha Centauri system, around 4.3 light years (more than 25 '''trillion''' miles) away. By comparison, Pluto is on average 3.67 billion miles from the Sun.

!!Tropes:

* WhamLine: Possibly the most famous one in the history of American television, when Patty reveals the truth behind the aliens' book "To Serve Man".

* WhamLine: "It's a ''cookbook''!".

* TechnologyUplift: The Kanamits arrive on Earth and provide technology that ends war by nullifying all weaponry, cures to all known diseases and provides other remarkable benefits.

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: The moment the WhamLine is said, you see the flight attendant next to the Kanamit ship Chambers was boarding make a quick exit. Chambers attempts to do the same, but isn’t as lucky.

--> "Mr. Chambers! Don't get on that ship! The rest of the book To Serve Man, it's... it's ''a cookbook''!"

--> "Mr. Chambers! Don't get on that ship! The rest of the book To Serve Man, it's... it's a cookbook!"

* WhamLine: "It's a cookbook!".

* AdaptationalNameChange: In the short story, the protagonist is named Peter. In the television adaptation, his name is Michael Chambers.

** The arrival of the Kanamit ambassador's ship is taken from ''Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill1951''.

* DittoAliens: The Kanamits are all identical in appearance. The ambassador has a goatee and a white gown to distinguish him from the others.

* BenevolentAlienInvasion: {{Subverted|Trope}} The Kanamits come with all sorts of new and miraculous gifts to end war and want... so that they can keep us as docile, happy feeding stock.

* FatteningTheVictim: The Kanamit's intentions from the start, what with their providing means of ending world hunger. Before boarding the Kanamit ships, humans are weighed: when a heavier person steps off of the scale, the Kanamit smiles gleefully after checking the person's weight.

** The shot of the arrival of the Kanamit ambassador's ship is taken from ''Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill1951''.

* TechnologyUplift: The Kanamits arrive on Earth and provide technology that ends war by nullifying all weaponry, cures to all known diseases and provides other remarkable.

* PigMan: The Kanamit in the original story.

* BigEater: The Kanamit's favorite kind of human.

* DittoAlien: The Kanamits are all identical in appearance.

Based off of the original short story by Creator/DamonKnight.

A race of benevolent aliens called the 'Kanamit' arrive on Earth, offering to help humanity. After initial resistance, humanity accepts. The Kanamit set about putting an end to many of Earth's greatest woes, including hunger. Energy becomes very cheap; nuclear weapons are rendered harmless. The aliens even morph deserts into big, blooming fields.

Michael Chambers, revealed to be a United Nations codebreaker, attempts to decipher the Kanamit's language from a book the Kanamit left behind. A woman named Patty, one of his employees, manages to decipher the title, which reads 'To Serve Man'. Chambers' team seems to be satisfied with this.

* AdaptationalAttractiveness: The Kanamit are much less ugly than in the short story.

* ArtisticLicenseLinguistics: The Kanamit language is essentially treated like English run through a cipher, to the point of being translated by codebreakers instead of linguists. (This was averted in the original short story, where the dignitary who makes the big discovery had been working in the aliens' embassy and learned their language in secret by stealing books.)

* BenevolentAlienInvasion: Subverted. The aliens come with all sorts of new and miraculous gifts to end war and want... so that they can keep us as docile, happy feeding stock.

* BreakingTheFourthWall: At the end, Chambers faces the camera, and asks the audience if they're still on earth or on the ship with him, but says it doesn't matter because sooner or later we'll all be on the menu.

* ExactWords: The entire reveal hinges on this: the title of the book, "To Serve Man," is correctly translated. It's just that "serve" can mean a lot of things...

* GenderFlip: The translator who gave TheReveal was male in the short story.

* PragmaticAdaptation: Apart from adding more action to a story that had originally been mostly a talk-piece, the Kanamit's appearance is changed as well. Knight wrote them as looking like humanoid pigs, which was found to be too fairy tale in production.

* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale

* StockFootage: The opening scene of the Kanamit ship is taken from ''Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill1951''.
* StoppedReadingTooSoon: The translator stops translating the titular book after figuring out the title. Then she does the rest. Cue the WhamLine: "It's a cookbook!"
* SuperiorSpecies: The Kanamit are far more advanced than humans.
* TechnologyUplift: Alien benefactors arrive on Earth and provide technology that ends war by nullifying all weaponry, cures to all known diseases, and other remarkable benefits of their advanced technology.
* {{Telepathy}}: The Kanamits use mental means of communication to talk to humans.

* VichyEarth: In the end, humanity is okay with being very friendly with the Kanamit... considering the reveal probably won't stop mankind from becoming a feast whether it's believed or not.

* VichyEarth: In the end, humanity is okay with being very friendly with the Kanamit... considering the reveal probably won't stop mankind from becoming a feast whether it's believed or not,

* VillainBall: The Kanamit ambassador leaves behind the cookbook for no apparent reason other than to make the twist at the end work.

* ArtisticLicenseLinguistics: The Kanamit language is essentially treated like English run through a cipher, to the point of being translated by codebreakers instead of linguists.

* ScullyBox: Used to make the already huge Richard Kiel seem inhumanly tall.

%%* VichyEarth

** Distance: Prior to boarding the Kanamit spaceship, a woman says that the their planet is "billions" of miles from Earth, and Mr. Chambers later says that it's 100 billion miles out in space. The nearest it could possibly be is in the Alpha Centauri system, around 4.3 light years (more than 25 '''trillion''' miles) away. By comparison, Pluto is on average 3.67 billion miles from the Sun.