History Recap / TheTwilightZone1959S3E24ToServeMan

* FauxAffablyEvil: The Kanamits are stoic and claim to offer humanitarian aid to Earth. Once the world is at peace, they make humanity their dinner.

The episode opens with Michael Chambers lying uncomfortably on a cot in some type of futuristic room. A voice implores him to eat something, but he refuses to comply, which he refuses. After he asks what time it is on Earth and hears that it's 12:00 noon, he begins to tell the viewers that he's aboard a spaceship, as well as the story of how he came to be there.

* LieDetector: A Kanamit is put through a lie detector test to prove whether his kind have ulterior motives. The detector isn't able to sense falseness through his mental speech, solidifying that he didn't lie about their intentions at all. Of course, he didn't exactly give the whole picture.

* PragmaticVillainy: The Kanamits end world hunger, but only so they could fatten humanity up to be eaten. Additionally, they also bring about world peace and abolish the need for nuclear weapons… so humanity will be rendered totally efenseless against them.

* BenevolentAlienInvasion: Subverted. The Kanamits come to Earth with all sorts of miraculous gifts to end war and hunger... so that they can humankind as docile, happy, and constantly-feeding livestock.

In a flashback, Michael narrates that it all started sometime in April. The day progressed like any other, with the world's leaders busy working to solve Earth's ever-increasing number of domestic and international crises. It's then that a fleet of flying saucers soar over the skies and land in different cities throughout the world. As the United Nations announces the landing of the ships, the representatives of the world are visited by an ambassador their interstellar visitors: the Kanamits.

In a flashback, Michael narrates that it all started sometime in April. The day progressed like any other, with the world's leaders busy working to solve Earth's ever-increasing number of domestic and international crises. It's then that a fleet of flying saucers soar over the skies and land in different cities throughout the world. As the United Nations announces the landing of the ships, the representatives of the world are visited by a representative of their interstellar visitors: the Kanamits.

The episode opens with Michael Chambers lying uncomfortably on a cot in some type of futuristic room, a voice implores him to eat, which he refuses. After he asks what time it is on Earth, he begins to tell the viewers that he's aboard a spaceship, as well as the story of how he came to be there.

[[caption-width-right:350:It's a cookbook!]]

And, let's be real here, [[ItWasHisSled you know the punchline already]]. But, for the heck of it:

->'''Creator/RodSerling''': Respectfully submitted for your perusal: a Kanamit. Height: a little over nine feet. Weight: in the neighborhood of three hundred and fifty pounds. Origin : unknown. Motives? Therein hangs the tale, for in just a moment we're going to ask you to shake hands, figuratively, with a Christopher Columbus from another galaxy and another time. This is the Twilight Zone.

The episode opens with a man named Michael Chambers lying uncomfortably on a cot in a futuristic room. A voice implores him to eat. He refuses. He asks what time it is on Earth, and begins to tell the story of how he came to be aboard a spaceship in flashback.

A race of benevolent aliens called the Kanamits 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 war and 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 codebreaker for the United States government, attempts to decipher the Kanamits' 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.

With the Cold War ended, Chambers has no real work to do, but Patty is still trying to work out the meaning of the text of ''To Serve Man''.

Soon, humans are volunteering for trips to the Kanamits' home planet, which is portrayed as a paradise. Chambers, with nothing else to do, signs up for an excursion to the planet. As he is boarding the ship (amongst people who excitedly talk about their upcoming trip), Patty runs up to him, but is stopped by a Kanamit guard. She desperately calls out:

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

Before Chambers can escape, he is forced onto the ship. The episode ends with him on the Kanamit ship, breaking his hunger strike and giving in to the Kanamit's orders to eat.

* AdaptationalAttractiveness: The Kanamits are much less ugly than in the short story. The story describes them as looking "something like pigs and something like people." In the television adaptation, they are nine feet tall and have bulbous foreheads but resemble humans facially.

%%* AliensAreBastards: That's what we learn at the end.
* 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 Gregori who makes the big discovery had been working in the Kanamits' embassy and learned their language in secret by stealing books.)
* AsideComment: At the very end, Mr. Chambers turns to look at the camera and asks the audience where they are: still on the Earth, or on the Kanamit ship with him. He says it doesn't make any difference, because sooner or later we'll all be on the menu.
* 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.
%%* BigEater: The Kanamits' favorite kind of human.
* BlatantLies: “There is nothing ulterior about our motives… nothing at all.”
* 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. This is noticeably the only time in the whole series when someone other than Rod Serling addresses the audience.
* DittoAliens: The Kanamits are all identical in appearance. The ambassador has a goatee and white robes to distinguish him from the others.
* DownerEnding: Obligatory. And a pretty depressing one at that, since humanity goes from the ruler of a planet to someone's dessert. Although there's also an obvious BlackComedy element to it all.
* EverythingInSpaceIsAGalaxy: In the opening narration, Rod Serling says that the Kanamits come from another galaxy. Since it's later stated in the episode that the Kanamit home planet is 100 billion miles away from Earth, it's clear that he should have said "solar system".
* 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...
* FantasticAesop: When you think about it, the moral is essentially "Take what people tell you with a grain of salt" [[RecycledInSpace in space]].
* FatteningTheVictim: The Kanamits' 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.
-->'''Kanamit''': "''Please'', Mr. Chambers. Enjoy, eat hearty! ... We wouldn't want you to lose weight."
* FauxAffablyEvil: The Kanamit. Dilly dilly, come and be killed!
* FlyingSaucer: The Kanamits' ships are classic flying saucers.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: The Kanamits weigh each passenger.
* GenderFlip: In the short story, the translator who discovered [[TheReveal the true meaning]] of ''To Serve Man'' was a man named Gregori. In the television adaptation, it was a woman named Patty.
* HollywoodEncryption: Played with: Chambers and his staff are trying to decrypt the Kanamit book as if it was intentionally encrypted. He mentions double substitution, backward writing and such. They fail to realize that the book would ''not'' be encrypted, but rather written in their language, with their "alphabet." This would be similar to trying to translate an ancient language that uses different letters, such as ancient Greek, from scratch.
* HowWeGotHere: The episode opens with Michael on a spaceship musing on humanity's former woes. Then it cuts to the day the aliens arrived.
* InnerMonologue: Chambers' inner monologue is heard at various points as he relates the story of the Kanamits' arrival on Earth and its aftermath.
* KillAllHumans: The Kanamits are essentially employing a long-game version of this trope.
* LieDetector: It worked. The Kanamit didn't lie about their intentions. However, he didn't give the whole picture.
* MeaningfulName: "Kanamit" evokes "cannibal" (which, technically, they're not...)
%%* OhCrap: Chambers, after Patty drops the WhamLine on him.
* OnlySaneWoman: Patty is the only one unsatisfied with just translating the title of "To Serve Man" and seeks to translate the rest. It's a good thing she did, but sadly she was too late to do anything about it.
* PigMan: In the short story, the Kanamits resemble pigs. They are short with snoutlike noses, small eyes and thick, bristly brown-grey hair all over their bodies and have three fingers on each hand.
* PragmaticAdaptation: Apart from adding more action to a story that had originally been mostly a talk-piece, the Kanamits' appearance is changed as well. Knight wrote them as looking like humanoid pigs, which was found to be too fairy tale in production.
* PragmaticVillainy: Yaay! The aliens are ending world hunger! Not yaay! They only did it to fatten humanity up so they can eat us! Additionally, they bring about world peace and abolish the need for nuclear weapons… so that humanity will be rendered defenseless against them.
* RubberForeheadAliens: Of the bald big-brained variety.
* 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.
*** Creator/RodSerling's narration says that the Kanamits come from another galaxy and the Kanamit ambassador says that they "come from a planet far beyond this galaxy" (i.e., outside the Milky Way galaxy). If these statements are true, the comments by characters that the Kanamits' planet is billions of miles away are even more untrue.
** Time: Both Chambers and his supposedly super-intelligent captors apparently forget that time zones are a thing when he demands to know ''"What time is it on Earth?"''
* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: The moment the WhamLine is said, you see the flight attendant, who was next to the Kanamit ship Chambers was boarding, make a quick exit. Chambers attempts to do the same, but isn’t as lucky.

** The arrival of the Kanamit ambassador's ship is taken from ''Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill1951''. Later, a clip from ''Film/EarthVsTheFlyingSaucers'' is used to represent a departing Kanamit ship.
** Footage of a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly is used when the Kanamit ambassador's polygraph test is shown to that body.
* StoppedReadingTooSoon: The translator Patty stops translating the titular book after figuring out the title. Then she does the rest. Cue the WhamLine: "It's a cookbook!"
* SuperiorSpecies: The Kanamits are far more advanced than humans. Chambers estimates that they are 500 times more intelligent than humans and 1,000 times more complex.
* TechnologyUplift: The Kanamits arrive on Earth and provide technology that ends war by nullifying all weaponry, cures to all known diseases and other remarkable benefits.
* {{Telepathy}}: The Kanamits' means of communication is mental rather than verbal. As such, the voice that humans hear when speaking with Kanamits is "totally mechanical." The script reveals that the Kanamits' listen to the thoughts of humans, and in turn, their voice is generated by a device on their person.
%%* ToServeMan: The TropeNamer.
* VichyEarth: In the end, humanity is okay with being very friendly with the Kanamits... 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. (Again, this was [[AdaptationInducedPlotHole averted]] in the original short story, where one of the protagonist's friends stole the book from the Kanamit embassy.)
* TheWallAroundTheWorld: The Kanamits provide every country on Earth with the technology to project a forcefield around their borders, ending the possibility of any nation attacking another.
* WeHaveBecomeComplacent: Part of what the Kanamits intend by creating peace and plenty on Earth.
* WhamLine: Possibly the most famous one in the history of American television, when Patty reveals the truth behind the aliens' book ''To Serve Man''.

-->'''Creator/RodSerling''': The recollections of one Michael Chambers, with appropriate flashbacks and soliloquy. Or more simply stated, the evolution of man, the cycle of going from dust to dessert, the metamorphosis from being the ruler of a planet to an ingredient in someone's soup. It's tonight's bill of fare on the Twilight Zone.

* AliensAreBastards: That's what we learn at the end.

* BigEater: The Kanamits' favorite kind of human.

* OhCrap: Chambers, after Patty drops the WhamLine on him.

* ToServeMan: The TropeNamer.

* PragmaticVillainy: Yaay! The aliens are ending world hunger! Not yaay! They only did it to fatten humanity up so they can eat us!

* 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.

* {{Telepathy}}: The Kanamits' means of communication is mental rather than verbal. As such, the voice that humans hear when speaking with Kanamits is "totally mechanical."

* BlackComedy: TheReveal is one of the all-time great examples.

* DownerEnding: Obligatory. And a pretty depressing one at that, since humanity goes from the ruler of a planet to someone's dessert.

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tumblr_lm77uuW5G71qb98uxo1_500-2_dragged_6225.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300:It's a cookbook!]]

The TropeNamer for ToServeMan

* OhCrap: Chambers, after being told ''To Serve Man'' is a cookbook.

-->'''Creator/RodSerling''': Respectfully submitted for your perusal: a Kanamit. Height: a little over nine feet. Weight: in the neighborhood of three hundred and fifty pounds. Origin : unknown. Motives? Therein hangs the tale, for in just a moment we're going to ask you to shake hands, figuratively, with a Christopher Columbus from another galaxy and another time. This is the Twilight Zone.

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

-->'''Creator/RodSerling''': The recollections of one Michael Chambers, with appropriate flashbacks and soliloquy. Or more simply stated, the evolution of man, the cycle of going from dust to dessert, the metamorphosis from being the ruler of a planet to an ingredient in someone's soup. It's tonight's bill of fare on the Twilight Zone.
----

-->'''Creator/RodSerling''': The recollections of one Michael Chambers, with appropriate flashbacks and soliloquy. Or more simply stated, the evolution of man, the cycle of going from dust to dessert, the metamorphosis from being the ruler of a planet to an ingredient in someone's soup. It's tonight's bill of fare on the Twilight Zone.

--> "It's a ''cookbook''!".

*** Creator/RodSerling's narration says that the Kanamits come from another galaxy and the Kanamit ambassador says that they "come from a planet far beyond this galaxy" (i.e., outside the Milky Way galaxy). If these statements are true, the comments by characters that the Kanamits' planet is billions of miles away are even more untrue. The original short story by Damon Knight did not have either of these statements, so it's possible that the person who adapted the short story (Creator/RodSerling) didn't realize that they were inconsistent with the characters' comments.

*** 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 are even more untrue. It's most likely that Serling made a mistake and should have said "another solar system".