Image Entertainment's invaluable release of Rod Serling's landmark TV show continues with this volume, featuring all thirty-seven episodes of the series. In its first two seasons, the show rarely, if ever, faltered; delivering consistently high-quality, Emmy award-winning tales from Serling and his celebrated staff of writers, chief among them horror legends Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont. In its third season, the show may have begun to get a tad uneven in terms of storytelling, but there were still plenty of gems, certainly enough to recommend this set without hesitation.

As with the first two seasons on Blu-ray, Image delivers a smooth, high-def image, largely free of grain, and with DNR (digital noise reduction) more or less absent. Best of all, unlike the second season of the Zone, in which a handful of episodes were recorded on videotape (the result of a money crunch at the network) season 3's episodes were shot entirely on film.

And what episodes they are! Here's the complete list to be found on the five-disc set; chock full of titles sure to be familiar to longtime fans: Two, The Arrival , The Shelter, The Passerby, A Game of Pool, The Mirror, The Grave, It's a Good Life, Death's Head Revisited, The Midnight Sun, Still Valley, The Jungle, Once Upon a Time, Five Characters in Search of an Exit, A Quality of Mercy, Nothing in the Dark, One More Pallbearer, Dead Man's Shoes, The Hunt, Showdown with Rance McGrew, Kick the Can, A Piano in the House, The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank, To Serve Man, The Fugitive, Little Girl Lost, Person or Persons Unknown, The Little People, Four O'Clock , Hocus-Pocus and Frisby, The Trade-ins, The Gift, The Dummy, Young Man's Fancy, I Sing the Body Electric, Cavender is Coming, The Changing of the Guard.   

Bonus features are as abundant as those found on the season 1 and 2 Blu-ray sets. These include 19 new audio commentaries: with The Twilight Zone Companion author Marc Scott Zicree, author/film historian Gary Gerani (Fantastic Television), authors/historians Scott Skelton and Jim Benson (Rod Serling's Night Gallery: An After Hours Tour), Twilight Zone writers Earl Hamner, George Clayton Johnson and John Tomerlin, writer William F. Nolan (Logan's Run), author/historian Martin Grams, Jr. (The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic), writer Marv Wolfman (creator of Blade and New Teen Titans), writer Neil Gaiman (yes, that Neil Gaiman), writer/producer Jeff Vlaming (NCIS, Fringe, Battlestar Galactica), writer Mark Fergus (Children of Men, Iron Man) and writer Len Wein (co-creator of Swamp Thing, Wolverine and the new X-Men).

The set also features 19 radio dramas featuring Miami Vice's Don Johnson, Blair Underwood, Ghostbuster Ernie Hudson, Morgan Brittany, former Batman Adam West, Ed Begley, Jr., Seinfeld alum Jason Alexander, Shelley Berman, Michael York, Bruno Kirby and more. And there are isolated scores for all 37 episodes, by the immortal Bernard Herrmann and other composers.

And all that's in addition to the goodies found on the previous DVD release, which includes audio commentaries by Bill Mumy, Lois Nettleton, William Windom, genre icon Leonard Nimoy, Robert Cornthwaite, Oscar winner Cliff Robertson, and funnyman Jonathan Winters, who also reads the alternate ending from the original script clip from the 1989 remake of "A Game of Pool", featuring writer George Clayton Johnson's original ending. There's also a clip from the 1985 remake of "Dead Man's Shoes", featuring Oscar winner Helen Mirren in "Dead Woman's Shoes". And there are vintage audio recollections from Buzz Kulik, Buck Houghton, Richard L. Bare, Lamont Johnson and Earl Hamner; along with rare Rod Serling appearances as a guest on The Garry Moore Show and Tell It to Groucho, and as host of the game show Liar's Club.

So what are my five favorite episodes from Season 3? Glad you asked...

1.) "To Serve Man" – Writer Damon Knight's seminal sci-fi short story (enshrined in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame) is a clever, creepy tale of an alien emissary (played by future James Bond baddie Richard Kiel) who comes to earth on a seemingly peaceful, diplomatic mission, the horrifying true intent of which is learned a little too late.

2.) "A Game of Pool" – George Clayton Johnson didn't write many scripts for the Zone, but after Serling himself and writers Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont, he was the show's most prolific writer. This story, starring Jonathan Winters and Jack Klugman, is one of his finest. According to Serling, it's "the story of the best pool player living and the best pool player dead." Johnson was unhappy with the ending used in the original episode (the alternate ending, used for the 1989 remake, is also featured on this set), but it's a classic nonetheless.

3.) "It's a Good Life" – Jerome Bixby's tale of a little boy who's much more than he seems, and seems capable of just about anything, is another story in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame (uncanny, isn't it – how good TV shows and films often evolve from good short stories and novels?) was one of a handful of tales remade for the Twilight Zone: The Movie. And its adaptation in that feature, directed by Joe Dante, is probably the best segment of the largely disappointing big-screen Zone. But I still prefer the original take on the tale, starring Lost in Space's Bill Mumy. Fun fact: a sequel, called "It's Still a Good Life" was featured in the 2002-2003 Twilight Zone, again starring Mumy , this time as the same character grown to adulthood, who has a daughter, played by Mumy's daughter, Liliana Mumy, with the same powers as her father.

4.) "The Dummy" – Dummies and dolls have freaked me out since I was a little kid, when I first saw this episode, starring Clint Robertson as a ventriloquist engaged in a battle of wits and will with an evil hunk of wood named Willie. It's still one of the show's creepiest episodes.

5.) "I Sing the Body Electric" – The only script living literary legend Ray Bradbury
(and may he live forever) ever penned for Serling; whom he suspected of taking his ideas for the show, and whom he felt rarely gave the show's other writers the credit they deserved. It concerns a widower who purchases an electronic grandmother for his children. Yes, it's heartfelt and sentimental to the point of being sappy, but, like much of Bradbury's work and much of the show it inspired, it served as inspiration for Stephen King, Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams and countless other genre creators who seek to fuse genuine human emotion to stories set in lands "whose boundaries are that of imagination."