But Bradbury had less success adapting his work for The Twilight Zone. His first script, “Here There Be Tygers,” was accepted but never filmed. (The party line was that his scripts were “too expensive to shoot,” but it sounds a little more complicated than that.) In the end only one Bradbury original made it to the series: the 100th episode, “I Sing the Body Electric!,” is an adaptation of an unpublished Bradbury story. Undoubtedly the disconnect between his writing and what worked for the show irritated Bradbury, but he was also irritated by another fact: he felt Serling wasn’t original enough. In fact, Bradbury thought Serling was plagiarizing him and all of his friends—though perhaps not on purpose. “He was unconsciously aggressive,” Bradbury told Weller. “He plagiarized unknowingly.” For instance, he said:
The first program of The Twilight Zone is based on a story from The Martian Chronicles [“The Silent Towns”]. He invited me to a screening with my friend Bill Nolan and the other boys in the gang, you know, and when we came out we all looked at each other and said, “God, that looks a little bit like a story from The Martian Chronicles.” I didn’t say anything because I was embarrassed and a month or so later, Rod called me on the phone and said, “Why didn’t you tell me?” I said, “Tell you what?” He said, “Well, my pilot script is based partially on a story of yours from The Martian Chronicles?” He said, “I was in bed reading with my wife and Carol turned over, she was reading The Martian Chronicles and she said, ‘Rod, read this, it’s like your pilot.’” And he said, “My God, I realized that inadvertently I’d stolen part of your idea.” He said, “I’ve gotta buy your story and make amends.” I said, “No you don’t, the very fact that you called me and recognized that happened, that’s it. There are no problems.” Then he hung up and he calls back two weeks later and he said, “I can’t stand it, you know. I can’t stand it. I’ve gotta buy your story. My lawyers will call you.” He hung up and the lawyers never called. He shouldn’t have made the second call. He was off the hook. I let him off the hook. And then he called and talked about his lawyers and they never called. Well, after that, he stole from Henry Kuttner, he stole from John Collier.