Meet Tracy Stratford, the Only Person Who’s Not Afraid of Talky Tina

Remember Talky Tina? If you’re a Twilight Zone fan, you do. The sweet-talking doll with the homicidal tendencies made quite an impression when she appeared early in Season 5.

Part of what makes Tina scary is that she’s nothing like Chucky or the other murderous playthings you may have seen on the big screen. She doesn’t run. You don’t see her waving a weapon around. She doesn’t even raise her voice. Heck, you can take a table saw to her neck, and she’ll act like you’re tickling her.

Erich Streator (Telly Savalas) learned too late how dangerous Tina could be. As the episode ends, even his gentle wife, Annabelle (that’s right, the name of the haunted doll in the Conjuring movies!) is being put on notice by her daughter Christie’s terrifying toy.

There’s really just one person with no reason to fear Tina: Christie. Indeed, Tina is her champion — to a fault.

So let’s get to know a little bit about Tracy Stratford, the girl who played Christie. This wasn’t her first appearance on The Twilight Zone. She’d already starred in another fan favorite: Season 3’s “Little Girl Lost.” Yep, she was the girl who fell out of bed and rolled into another dimension.

And interestingly enough, her character’s name in that episode … was Tina.

Here are some excerpts from an interview Tracy gave in 2018 about her unforgettable journey to that land between shadow and substance:

Twilight Zone is Set To Leave Netflix June 30

I knew it was only a matter of when. But I was hoping that the legendary TV show that made time travel look possible would be streaming on Netflix for a lot longer.

Alas, The Twilight Zone is set to leave the streaming giant on June 30.

I wrote about this possibility in a blog post last year and also mentioned it in a recent post about how Netflix doesn’t carry the hour-long episodes of Season 4.

Check them out if you want to understand why the show is leaving Netflix. The fact is, this is most likely the decision of CBS, which owns Twilight Zone.

Sure, Netflix could be dropping TZ to save on licensing fees. But more likely, it’s a matter of CBS making it so that people have to subscribe to Paramount+ (formerly CBS All-Access) to get their fifth-dimensional fix.

I’m sure some fans will point out that TZ is still widely available — not only on Hulu, but on high-def DVD and Blu-ray. Plus you can catch reruns (albeit with cut scenes and ad breaks) on MeTV and Syfy.

That’s great — don’t get me wrong. But I want TZ to be as available as possible. As I’ve said before, convenience is king. And if any show, even TZ, isn’t readily available, then many viewers won’t make any extra effort to find it.