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Out of curiosity, do you ever actually watch them? I found back when I got my first video player, that when I got a favorite movie or TV show on tape, I rarely or never watched it again.

Some movies like King Kong, Laura, most versions of A Christmas Carol, and The Adventures of Robin Hood, I would watch every time they were on TV -- that was usually only once a year each. It was a special event when Casablanca was on. Once I saw it listed in the TV Guide, I waited expectantly all week for it to run. Since getting it on tape, I've only watched it once, and that was when I upgraded to DVD and I wanted to check its quality.

The Sci-Fi channel has had so many TZ marathons, that I've burnt out on even my favorite episodes, so I don't have recordings of them. However, my favorite '60s TV show is the first season of The Man From UNCLE. I wanted SO badly to see it again! I finally got the DVDs at Christmas, but here it is, six months later, and I've only watched three episodes. I'm sure if it were rerun on TV five nights a week, I would have seen them all multiple times by now.

Wow! I kept track of how many episodes I'd classify as "favorites." I was running about 60% of the episodes as favorites until it season of hour-long shows, then it dropped back down, because there were so few of them I cared for.

Ultimately, I ended up with 86 out of 156 episodes that I would stop to watch again if I came across them in a SyFy marathon.

Maybe it's a residual feeling from late-childhood when the TZ was first broadcast, but I still don't care for the more "mature" episodes -- the ones with greasy little people leading their tawdry little lives in tiny little rooms -- Last Night of a Jockey, The Four of Us Are Dying, Nervous Man in a Four-Dollar Room, Dead Man's Shoes, etc. Maybe that's because I never grew up completely.

On the other end of the spectrum, I didn't care much for the "immature" episodes with wacky characters in silly situations -- the ones where they went for a laugh -- Escape Clause, Mr. Bevis, The Whole Truth, etc. Maybe that's because I was never a child completely.

I liked best the episodes that were squarely in the middle -- serious in tone, spooky, mysterious with strong sci-fi or fantasy elements -- the ones that gave the show its reputation as the representative of all things weird -- Time Enough At Last, After Hours, Long Live Walter Jameson, To Serve Man, etc.

There are seven episodes that always resonated with me. These were The 16-Millimeter Shrine, Walking Distance, A Stop at Willoughby, The Trouble With Templeton, Static, Kick the Can, and Young Man's Fancy. The common theme in them is a yearning to return to the past. Even as a child, I was nostalgic for a life during the 1940s -- a life I never lived save vicariously through old movies -- a life of old-time radio, pulp magazines, and Saturday afternoon cliff-hangers. So I was able to understand the feelings presented in these episodes.

The Incredible World or Horace Ford is actually the eighth nostalgia-themed episode. I don't include it, because I can't remember ever sitting all the way through it. The hour-long show went on interminably, and Horace was such a disgusting person, I don't stick with it. So I couldn't tell you if it ended with Horace escaping to the past, or if he finally realizes his present-day life isn't so bad after all (these were the two ways they all ended).

I doubt any series will ever topple TZ from its place in TV history.