The Twilight Zone

Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart is a big fan of The Twilight Zone TV series, and he based this song on 2 separate episodes of the show. The first is "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" (episode 28 from Season 2, first aired: May 26, 1961) which is set in a diner and Barney Phillips is the easygoing counterman with the three eyes. The second is episode 30 from Season 5, "Stopover In a Quiet Town" (first aired: April 24, 1964) about a couple who get drunk at a party and wake up in an empty house in an empty town with no other residents and everything is fake or like a stage prop and at the end they look up and see a giant child. It turns out they are now a play-toy. Serling's closing narration is among the series funniest: "The moral of what you've just seen is clear. If you drink, don't drive. And if your wife has had a couple, she shouldn't drive either. You both might just wind up with a whale of a headache in a deserted village in The Twilight Zone." Peart changed the giant girl to a boy in the lyrics.