A Limited Field of ‘Night Visions’

Some of us will go just about anywhere for a good scare. All right, even a mild one.

That modest agenda appears beyond Fox’s summery “Night Visions,� yet another TV attempt to reinvent “The Twilight Zone,� the original black-and-white sci-fi anthology from the 1960s hosted and partially written by Rod Serling.

Instead, “Night Visions� is tedium (apologies to Serling’s original intro) “as vast as space and as timeless as infinity,� its only cadaver of note being host Henry Rollins.

By far the best of the double-length two-hour premiere is the opening story with Aidan Quinn as a National Transportation Safety Board investigator swiftly on the scene of a plane crash that killed everyone aboard. Who is the mysterious woman he keeps seeing, who is the woman (Kelly Rutherford) claiming her family died in the crash, and why is the passenger list so . . . weird?

The twisty plot is diverting if only because just about everyone can relate on some level to flying with fear.

The next three stories are thumb-twiddlers. In No. 2, Samantha Mathis and Jason London are medical students with an unusual interest in the dissected remains of “an evil voodoo priest.� The motive never fits the crime, and there’s no heartbeat of suspense.

Laborious No. 3 has Lou Diamond Phillips as a mouthy all-night deejay who is never nasty enough to justify the shadowy aggression--none of it the least bit scary--aimed at him. And the stunningly mundane finale has Gil Bellows as a recovering alcoholic tormented by a 30-year-old murder.

If you’re going to watch this series, bring a good book.

* “Night Visions� premieres tonight at 8 on Fox. The network has rated it TV-14-V (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14, with special advisories for violence).