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It was not originally, but the SCI-FI channel airs it with the season 1 episodes.While the book "The Twilight Zone Companion" by Zicree does not list it as a season 1 episode the author states it was aired on Oct 2, 1959 as the premier episode of the 1st season. Further, the Definitive DVD collection lists it as Episode 1. Of course this applies to the episode as aired and as shown all these years since, edited from the pilot. The original version of the pilot, used to sell the series to sponsors, had a different opening & closing, a different narator, and had slight differences in the first few minutes. It was never shown until showing up on DVD.
The Twilight Zone was apparently canceled after the third season, when Rod Serling took up teaching. However, at the half of the next season (1962-1963) another CBS show was cancelled and TZ was put in it's place as a replacement. Because this show was an hour long, new TZ episodes had to be produced in this format. The resulting hour long episodes are generally considered weaker, save for a few exceptions. This was due mostly to episodes becoming overly padded in their hour long running time. This was considered a failure and for the fifth and final season, the show returned to its original format.
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