The Outer Limits (1963)

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Moonstone, directed Robert Florey.

Moonbase personnel dig up a mysterious orb. No idea what it is or how long it has been there. Turns out to contain five aliens fleeing the tyrants of their home world. They are carrying "all knowledge of the universe" and don't want to hand it over to the tyrants, but will give the humans a copy.

Our folks want to help but the aliens' rescue ship is not coming and the tyrants are.

It's not a bad concept but is pretty much straight SF, becoming more typical for the series as it approaches the second season. It lacks the Outer Limits horror tone that we love.

And as is too often the case we waste time in soap opera subplots. The drama of relationships is legitimate but omits the sense of wonder we want in this series. Actors seem to like the duller bits and it must be easy for writers to fall back into it.

Our big star this time is Ruth Roman: Strangers on a Train (1951), The Window (1949), Three Secrets (1950).

Notes:

• Another plot where the noble aliens sacrifice themselves for the greater good.
• They transfer "all knowledge of the universe" by reciting it into tape recorders.
• Our explorers initially think the mystery orb must be a Russian mystery orb.
• They walk in slow motion on the lunar surface but normally inside the lab.
• The men wear boots but the female scientist has heels and huge eyelashes.
• Director Robert Florey's final project.

Photographed by John M. Nickolaus.

The Blu-ray has no commentary track.

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The Mutant, directed by Alan Crosland Jr.

Planet Annex One seems like a perfect candidate for colonization, apart from the perpetual blinding sunlight and regular radioactive rain. Messages from the exploration team seem a bit "off" and Earth sends an investigator to check it out.

"Off" is right. One of the team has mutated and has huge "fried egg" eyes. He can read thoughts and kill with a touch. He controls the others who live in terror of him.

Warren Oates deserves great credit for a difficult, thankless role, having to act through that heavy makeup. He is really very good at it: always the weird one, the outsider, now in charge but never loved.

A somewhat klunky SF thriller, it has its good points. How do you defend yourself against a mind reader? What possible conspiracy can succeed?

Further, there are intimations of a deeper story. Sleep on Annex One is dreamless; when does the subconscious get to work out its issues? In constant daylight there are no shadows, and no secrets or privacy. The malicious telepath is like an all-seeing surveillance state.

In this case horror is in the daylight -- rationality? -- and escape is in the dark cave -- the unconscious?

Returning: Walter Burke from The Invisibles and director Crosland from The Mice. And: a slightly mutated Zanti from The Zanti Misfits! It has that same angry hornet sound.

Photographed by Kenneth Peach.

The Blu-ray commentary track is by David J Schow. He gives extensive readings from earlier treatments of the story, much more than anyone wants to know.

He points out three ways ABC interfered with the series, to its detriment:

• The time slot was moved to earlier in the evening; the network thought it was a show for children.
• They insisted on an introductory spoiler for the kids.
• They wanted certain episodes worked into pilots for new series. This took time away from the show and some episodes suffered: The Mutant and The Children of Spider County, for example.

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I definitely remember seeing that one. Warren Oates with those eyes is an image one doesn't forget.

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The Guests, directed by Paul Stanley.

The convertible driving hipster -- "Drifter", they call him -- turns out to be ok because he stops to help a very old man -- Burt Mustin -- who has collapsed on the road. We have seen the man desperately escaping from an old mansion which sometimes looks like a giant brain on the hillside.

When Drifter goes to the house for help the story becomes something like experimental theater. Four eccentric residents in antique clothes who can't leave, or don't want to. Upstairs is a blob monster scientist -- recycled from The Mice -- researching human beings, trying to balance an equation.

What is that human emotion that cannot be calculated, the one that orders all the others and harmonizes two people? What's that called again?

Doorways and windows come and go and the house has strange geometry. The eerie implication is that the mansion is inside the blob's brain and the residents are now just dream people who cannot exist outside -- for very long.

And how much of the story is inside Drifter's mind? We have much confusion of inside and outside.

Our star this time is Gloria Grahame, playing a silent film star from decades past.

Luana Anders is our love interest and wears 19th century clothes. I remember her from Pit and the Pendulum (1961) and she had a prominent role in Dementia 13 (1963).

Returning: director Paul Stanley from Second Chance.

Ominous pounding score, like a headache or being stalked by a large invisible being.

Photographed by Kenneth Peach.

On the Blu-ray Craig Beam and David J Schow provide a chatty commentary track about the production and cast and crew.

We have no Control Voice opening or closing narration; they suggest this is because the blob scientist explains everything.

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Fun and Games, directed by Gerd Oswald.

On the run after witnessing a gambling murder, a boxer is picked up by an alien puppet-master and given a proposition: he and an Earth woman will be sent to the Arena planet in a fight to the death against another alien couple, all for the amusement of unseen spectators.

Whichever side loses: their planet is also destroyed.

That may seem excessive but the boxer understands: people watch violence "for kicks". Gambling murders both on Earth and beyond.

The actual combat is a relatively minimal part of the story; we don't even get to the planet until the second half of the program. The alien opposition have rudimentary rubber masks and costuming.

Minor SF action with a lot of conversation, not really Outer Limits material.

Nick Adams is the star, an actor who always confused me. Not really leading man material, but he had his own TV shows. One of Hemingway's continuing characters was "Nick Adams" and I was unclear if there was supposed to be a connection.

The story prefigures Star Trek Arena, where Kirk fights the reptilian Gorn. With maybe a little The Gamesters of Triskelion thrown in.

It's not clear if the writers of either series read it, but Fredric Brown's 1944 short story Arena has a similar concept.

Photographed by Kenneth Peach.

The Blu-ray commentary track is by David J Schow. He is adamant this is not derived from Fredric Brown's short story. How he is so certain I do not know.

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Nick Adams is the star, an actor who always confused me. Not really leading man material, but he had his own TV shows.

Truly. It's like taking Barry Gordon and making him a "leading man". Except for his accidental death, Adams was pretty lucky - considering how high up the celebrity ladder he got.

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The Special One, directed by Gerd Oswald.

A secret alien visitor claiming to be from a government office is tutoring a young boy because he is a "favorable mutation", mom and dad having worked in an atomic lab. The boy develops strange knowledge and stranger powers. The parents find this unnerving and eventually intolerable.

A slow moving SF thriller, this doesn't have much going for it. A cheap alien technology effect is actually pretty good: it looks like an overlay of swirling soap flakes, very 3D.

Macdonald Carey is a famous face, last seen in Shadow of a Doubt (1943). Marion Ross would become well known as Mrs Cunningham in Happy Days. Edward Platt returns from The Man with the Power. Also with familiar hard case Bert Freed.

Photographed by Kenneth Peach.

The Blu-ray commentary track is by Gary Gerani and Michael Hyatt. They point out that this is the only episode to bring the uncanny into the viewer's living room, a normal domestic setting when Dad wore a suit and tie at home.

They also say that Hyatt has been working on a restoration of Day of the Triffids (1962) which is at the top of my want list. I've been hearing about restorations for literally decades and no longer believe it will happen. Hoping I'm wrong.

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A Feasibility Study, directed by Byron Haskin.

A whole neighborhood is uprooted overnight and transported to planet Luminos. Despite the weird atmospherics, strange noises, and intermittent tech breakdowns, the residents carry on for a little while, trying not to notice. This is like a Twilight Zone setup and we have the usual soap opera mini-dramas between married couples, sounding almost like Rod Serling's speechifying at times.

The inexplicable creepiness and horror of the situation moves us more into Outer Limits territory. Some of the alien terrain is stagey but that contributes to a nightmare quality.

On the downside the Luminoid costumes are rudimentary, as always constrained by time and budget. Their infection is supposed to be silvery metallic scabs which I'm not sure comes across on the dark film.

When the humans understand they are part of an experiment which will determine if all of Earth can be enslaved on Luminos they choose to ruin the study by becoming infected, in effect committing mass suicide. They join hands in a church, underlining the act as holy martyrdom. Even the woman with a baby.

The cast: Sam Wanamaker is a familiar face. I know David Opatoshu best from Star Trek, A Taste of Armageddon. The director couldn't get the reactions he wanted from Joyce Van Patten -- Monkey Shines (1988) -- and the editor showed him that running her film backwards a few seconds at a time worked better.

Odd score with intimations of the unseen.

This episode was produced early on but delayed for many months because of network censorship concerns: the "mass suicide" angle.

Photographed by John M. Nickolaus.

The Blu-ray commentary track by David J Schow has little about this episode, much about the production history of the series with emphasis on Joseph Stefano and Leslie Stevens.

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Production and Decay of Strange Particles, written and directed by Leslie Stevens.

A tale ripped from recent scientific literature: experimenting with subatomic particles collected from distant mysterious quasars, the scientist at the atomic lab has opened a breach to another dimension and these energetic particles are taking over the staff and melting anything that gets in their way. They always form a chain of beings: chain reaction!

Our scientist has called up what he cannot put down again, which Lovecraft would have warned him against. He falters badly until his brave and loyal wife stiffens him up and he cobbles together the necessary bomb.

Awkward and padded, but consistently menacing. No one likes trouble at the atomic lab. We spend a lot of time messing with radiation suits and hauling around lead shielding. The explosion at the end involves a time-reversal effect, so the explosion didn't really happen but solved the problem anyway.

Filling in some time there is a remarkably eerie sequence: for some reason the particle-beings are hauling the bomb back into their works and as it passes all face and sort of salute it, as if it were a holy relic.

Tales of mystery and imagination are always going to the boundaries: first unexplored continents, then the ocean floor and outer space, and finally other dimensions and the "quantum realm" of the Marvel universe. What is happening in the depths beneath matter: that is always going to be strange.

Returning: George Macready from The Invisibles, Robert Fortier from Controlled Experiment, and Allyson Ames from The Galaxy Being.

Leonard Nimoy is one of the lab technicians: don't get attached to him.

Photographed by Kenneth Peach. Dominic Frontiere really kicks up the tension and climax music (which has to go on a long time to cover the padded action).

The Blu-ray commentary track by Tim Lucas offers an intriguing speculation: that this episode was written so quickly and under such stress by Leslie Stevens that it is almost automatic writing, revealing much autobiographical detail.

Like our scientist the author doubts his own powers and his ability to wrestle these strange elements into a coherent story.

This episode was his last contribution to the series he created.

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The Chameleon, directed by Gerd Oswald.

When the alien crew of a spacecraft prove both dangerous and uncommunicative, Top Men develop an exceedingly cunning plan to get inside information. A human agent will be genetically modified to become one of the aliens and join them. His cover story: he is the survivor from an earlier mission, has amnesia and can't remember his own language.

Does that sound like it has a million to one chance of success? Watch and see.

This has parallels to the plot of The Architects of Fear and Douglas Henderson is in both episodes as one of the docs performing the transformation. In both cases we have to wonder if it is wise to transform a human being into an actual alien. Won't he be... alien thereafter?

His first response after the procedure is to titter mysteriously. That's a red flag.

Robert Duvall plays the perfect Secret Agent: no life of his own, total commitment to the mission. Are his links to the normal human condition perhaps a bit tenuous? It is a nice meditation on finding your humanity in unexpected ways.

Early in his career Duvall got a lot of these misfit, alien, deviant, handicapped roles, for example as Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). That's actually him at least part of the time in that alien makeup: you can recognize his teeth.

Henry Brandon as the General -- Chief "Scar" in The Searchers (1956) -- is an exceedingly familiar face with 179 acting credits in the IMDB. For some reason I always remember him as a minion in Buck Rogers (1939).

Early screenplay by Robert Towne. Photographed by Kenneth Peach.

The Blu-ray has no commentary track for this episode.

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The Forms of Things Unknown, directed by Gerd Oswald.

One man and two women in a wild drive across the countryside, a non-stop party with cruel games. He is masculine, dominating and sadistic. The women seem submissive but this doesn't stop them from poisoning him. What to do with the body?

On a dark and stormy night they enter the old house and meet its blind owner who still sees more than most. His tenant is the fey inventor of a "time tilting" device that can bring back the dead. He claims to have used it on himself...

The first season ends with an enigmatic art film episode, striking in its sound and visual design. It was intended as the pilot for a new series, and a different edit was broadcast as The Unknown (1964).

It is like a dream set in a movie universe. The murderous love triangle is from Diabolique (1955), the house from The Old Dark House (1932), and the nightmare secrets from Psycho (1960).

The cast:

• Vera Miles -- The Searchers (1956), The Wrong Man (1956), Psycho (1960), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) -- is the more dominant and hard-headed of the two women.
• Barbara Rush -- It Came From Outer Space (1953), Bigger Than Life (1956), Hombre (1967) -- is fragile, barely coping. This may all be her dream.
• Scott Marlowe returns from It Crawled Out of the Woodwork.
• David McCallum returns from The Sixth Finger.
• Cedric Hardwicke in his final performance; he died shortly after. This and The Pumpkin Eater (1964) are his last credits.

Photographed by Conrad Hall, the last of his 15 episodes. The series was good for his career: at the end of his contract he had many job offers.

Last series credit for:

• Joseph Stefano, who wrote and produced this episode.
• Dominic Frontiere, production executive and composer of all of the season one episodes. His final score is unexpectedly romantic and majestic.
• Lou Morheim, associate producer.
• William A. Fraker, camera operator who often worked with Conrad Hall.

The title is from A Midsummer Night's Dream:

And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

The Blu-ray commentary track is by Tim Lucas.

The Blu-ray set also contains The Unknown (1964) alternate cut which was broadcast as a TV movie. Reba Wissner provides a music-oriented commentary track. Dominic Frontiere did different cues for this version, later used in The Invaders (1967).

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Soldier, directed by Gerd Oswald.

In a bleak post-apocalyptic future two rigidly trained soldiers are struck by lightning and inexplicably cast back to our time. Their only purpose: seek each other and kill.

Linguist Lloyd Nolan wants to deprogram killing machine Michael Ansara and introduce him to a more humane existence. Foolishly -- I say -- he takes him home to stay with the family. But that enemy soldier is coming...

It is a good concept but the execution is slack. Give him credit: Ansara is absolutely believable.

With the start of season two we continue the movement away from gothic horror-tinged SF and toward more standard, lower budgeted SF action plots. The theme music has changed but we still have the Control Voice. Director Gerd Oswald and cinematographer Kenneth Peach return but most everyone else "above the line" from season one is gone.

Evaluating season two episodes presents dilemmas. They do have severely reduced budgets and we have to adjust expectations, but I don't think we need excuse other factors: ABC Network seemed determined to destroy program quality, and the new producer, although experienced, knew nothing about SF in general or The Outer Limits specifically. Unlike Stevens and Stephano he was not willing to fight the network.

Tim O'Connor returns from Moonstone. The house cat is played by Orangey -- This Island Earth (1955), The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961).

Kenneth Peach is director of photography for all of season two.

Harry Lubin gets music credit for the entire season. This episode has a standard TV score, as least as compared to Dominic Frontiere's brilliant work on season one.

Written by Harlan Ellison, the first of his two episodes. Famously he sued the producers of Terminator (1984) for stealing his idea and got a settlement and credit. James Cameron says he can't speak directly to the charges because of a settlement gag order, but has made clear that he does not agree. More at a Cameron fan site: The Ellison Dispute.

If it had gone to a jury I would have voted against Ellison here. The whole episode is not much like Terminator (1984) and the few similarities are the sort of thing you expect when working in a genre. And the gate swings both ways: Ellison's future soldier expects telepathic communication with a cat as a battle partner. This was used in Cordwainer Smith's The Game of Rat and Dragon published a few years earlier.

The Blu-ray commentary track is by David J. Schow. He was friends with Ellison and gives extended excerpts from his original short story, and also details on the changing of the guard between seasons.

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Cold Hands, Warm Heart, directed by Charles Haas.

Astronaut William Shatner is a hero after returning from the first mission to Venus, but he was out of contact for eight minutes and now is in trouble. He can't get warm, has nightmares of a floating voodoo-doll creature, and finally develops scaly, webbed mutations of his hands.

Like Altered States (1980) it is one of those stories of a soul cast into a far-flung orbit before being pulled back by Love.

I think this one gave my eight-year-old self nightmares: a creature looking in the window, a military officer in a light-colored uniform transformed in some monstrous way. Only years later, after Star Trek, did I realize this was Shatner in my dreams.

The episode has a good premise but the plot is thin and handicapped by ordinary locations and lack of action. Much of the weirdness is never explained: did the Venusians have a plan? Our tension is supposed to be supplied by a race to get our hero ready for congressional testimony; that's weak.

Geraldine Brooks returns from The Architects of Fear and James Sikking from The Human Factor.

Two more cast members will later appear on Star Trek: Malachi Throne -- The Menagerie -- and Lawrence Montaigne -- Balance of Terror (Romulan) and Amok Time (Vulcan).

First of four episodes for TV director Charles F. Haas; that's a big chunk of the second season.

The Blu-ray commentary by Craig Beam is much like his contribution to Specimen: Unknown: sarcastic and belittling. That's irritating.

He points out the many connections between The Outer Limits and Star Trek, and also spends some time on Incubus (1965), Shatner's esperanto demonology thriller made by the Outer Limits crew: Leslie Stevens, Dominic Frontiere, Conrad Hall, William Fraker.

He points out that pre-Star Trek Shatner gave non-cheezy performances, which is true.

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Behold, Eck!, directed by Byron Haskin.

What strange force is trashing all the optical labs in the city, stealing experimental eyeglass lenses made from meteoric quartz? It is Eck! -- a two-dimensional being accidentally trapped on Earth and trying to find his way out of 3-space back to his home. He needs corrected vision to do that...

It is an intriguing notion, dating back to the philosophically stimulating Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions from the previous century. From the adventures of a two-dimensional being investigating both 1- and 3-dimensional spaces we try to get a grasp of dimensions beyond our own.

Controlled Experiment is supposed to be the only comedy episode in the series, but this could easily have been another such. Our problems with the plot absurdities would have vanished if they were treated humorously.

As it is the micro-budget interiors and simple effects remind me of something William Castle would have done -- more vividly -- in something like his 13 Ghosts (1960) or Zotz! (1962).

Such are budget cutbacks that the alien menace has to handled by a local police detective. He does have access to a departmental flame thrower -- talk about militarization of the police!

A good moment: Eck! sees a television screen and mistakes the news announcer for 2-dimensional being like himself. Which is reasonable: our 3-space is filled with real 2-dimensional images.

The cast:

• Peter Lind Hayes as the bland, mild mannered optician. I don't remember seeing him in anything before and he leaves no impression.
• Lovely Joan Freeman -- Panic in Year Zero! (1962) -- is his devoted secretary.
• Familiar face Parley Baer is his irritating scientist brother, with 285 acting credits in the IMDB. Remember, each TV series is counted only once in those tallies.
• Douglas Henderson returns for the third and last time, previously seen in The Architects of Fear and The Chameleon.

Director Byron Haskin found the story to be stupid. This is the fourth of his six episodes.

A lot of theremin this time, and another instrument that sounds like it but isn't.

Although he doesn't mention Flatland, the story concept suggests C.S. Lewis's essay "Transposition", collected in his volume The Weight of Glory. Just as Mr Square can only see slices of a 3-dimension realm in his reality, so we see reduced projections of higher reality in our own space.

The Blu-ray has a commentary track by Reba Wissner.

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Expanding Human, directed by Gerd Oswald.

A Jekyll & Hyde story is mashed up with a very popular 1960s TV topic: the use and dangers of "consciousness expanding" drugs. This is wrapped in a standard police procedural package, the kind of format second season producer Ben Brady was comfortable with from his Perry Mason days.

Is is slow and terribly dull. The plot barely hangs together, as if scattered script pages were lost in the breeze one day.

We have an unusual number of future original Star Trek actors here:

• James Doohan: Lt. Commander Montgomery Scott.
• Skip Homeier: Patterns of Force (nazis in space) and The Way to Eden (hippies in space).
• Peter Duryea: The Cage, reworked as The Menagerie.
• Jason Wingreen: The Empath, and three previous Outer Limits episodes.

On the Blu-ray commentary track Reba Wissner gives a shout-out to even minor supporting actors. She says no one was happy with this episode.

She also notes that in this story expanded consciousness produces more selfishness and brutality. Isn't that backwards from what we expect?