While the episode itself is a tale of redemption on the inside, from the outside it is an exercise for the students of anthology story telling. The first half of the episode is heavy handed and strives to cram in as much backstory as possible. This isn't surprising as we have new people, places, themes, etc. every episode with every journey into the Twilight Zone, but some students of writing and directing do a better job than others. This is a prime example of students with more to learn (and as the episode was written by Serling himself, when compared to his later work, the viewer can see that he learned his lessons well over time). It wasn't bad, but the first half of the story felt too forced to really enjoy or to care too deeply for the characters. On the flip side of the episode, the characters had an opportunity to simply exist and carry the story to its ultimately satisfying ending.
Review of Mr. Denton on Doomsday
