A Matter of Minutes is the third segment of the 15th episode from the first season (1985–86) of the television series The New Twilight Zone.
Plot[]
A young married couple, Michael and June Wright, wake up one day to the sounds of construction. When they get a good look at the world around them, they find everything has stopped. A crew of blue-clad construction workers is busy removing their furniture and replacing it with new. The Wrights run outside to find things being rebuilt that have already existed. The workers set up a crash and distribute litter in the streets. The Wrights start to go in the direction of the voice barking out orders to the workers until the voice tells them to chase the Wrights.
Confused and frightened, the couple runs into a back alley and enters a void of white space. They discover a man in yellow, who helps them out of the void and explains to them he is the supervisor of the maintenance of time. They have somehow slipped into a loophole of time. While they should be in an earlier time, 9:33, for some reason they have hopped over into 11:37. Showing them exactly how time is maintained, he reveals to them a new understanding of how the universe works: every minute in history is essentially a separate world, which must be built, maintained, and torn down once the world finishes with it. The supervisor informs them that they cannot return to their own time frame, for two reasons: one, the true nature of time must always be a secret; and two, the supervisor isn't certain they could return even if they wanted to. The Wrights flee from the foreman and his crew and try to find a way to slip back to their own time. They hide inside a theatre ticket booth waiting until their time, 11:37, rolls around and catches up with them. The foreman finds them but too late. A sudden loud noise and whoosh of wind and the Wrights suddenly come into their world again. Back in their own time, they find a "blue" wrench sitting on a public telephone, a souvenir as proof of their experience.
Closing narration[]
"Time, a handy fiction to explain why everything doesn't happen all at once. Or maybe we're the fiction, moving minute by minute...through the Twilight Zone. "
Trivia[]
- This episode is based on the short story "Yesterday Was Monday," by Theodore Sturgeon first published in June 1941. It is also similar in concept to the Stephen King novella The Langoliers.
| v • e The Twilight Zone (1985) episodes | |
|---|---|
| Season 1 | "Shatterday" • "A Little Peace and Quiet" • "Wordplay" • "Dreams For Sale" • "Chameleon" • "Healer" • "Children's Zoo" • "Kentucky Rye" • "Little Boy Lost" • "Wish Bank" • "Nightcrawlers" • "If She Dies" • "Ye Gods" • "Examination Day" • "A Message From Charity" • "Teacher's Aide" • "Paladin of the Lost Hour" • "Act Break" • "The Burning Man" • "Dealer's Choice" • "Dead Woman's Shoes" • "Wong's Lost and Found Emporium" • "The Shadow Man" • "The Uncle Devil Show" • "Opening Day" • "The Beacon" • "One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty" • "Her Pilgrim Soul" • "I of Newton" • "Night of the Meek" • "But Can She Type?" • "The Star" • "Still Life" • "The Little People of Killany Woods" • "The Misfortune Cookie" • "Monsters!" • "A Small Talent for War" • "A Matter of Minutes" • "The Elevator" • "To See the Invisible Man" • "Tooth and Consequences" • "Welcome to Winfield" • "Quarantine" • "Gramma" • "Personal Demons" • "Cold Reading" • "The Leprechaun Artist" • "Dead Run" • "Profile in Silver" • "Button, Button" • "Need to Know" • "Red Snow" • "Take My Life...Please!" • "Devil's Alphabet" • "The Library" • "Shadow Play" • "Grace Note" • "A Day in Beaumont" • "The Last Defender of Camelot" |
| Season 2 | "The Once and Future King" • "A Saucer of Loneliness" • "What Are Friends For?" • "Aqua Vita" • "The Storyteller" • "Nightsong" • "The After Hours" • "Lost and Found" • "The World Next Door" • "The Toys of Caliban" • "The Convict's Piano" • "The Road Less Traveled" • "The Card" • "The Junction" • "Joy Ride" • "Shelter Skelter" • "Private Channel" • "Time and Teresa Golowitz" • "Voices in the Earth" • "Song of the Younger World" • "The Girl I Married" |
| Season 3 | "The Curious Case of Edgar Witherspoon" • "Extra Innings" • "The Crossing" • "The Hunters" • "Dream Me a Life" • "Memories" • "The Hellgramite Method" • "Our Selena is Dying" • "The Call" • "The Trance" • "Acts of Terror" • "20/20 Vision" • "There Was an Old Woman" • "The Trunk" • "Appointment on Route 17" • "The Cold Equations" • "Stranger in Possum Meadows" • "Street of Shadows" • "Something in the Walls" • "A Game of Pool" • "The Wall" • "Room 2426" • "The Mind of Simon Foster" • "Cat and Mouse" • "Many, Many Monkeys" • "Rendezvous in a Dark Place" • "Special Service" • "Love is Blind" • "Crazy as a Soup Sandwich" • "Father and Son Game"
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