It's The Limit
I've recently started to watch, in order, all 49 episodes of the original Outer Limits. It lasted a season and a half, and never had the critical approval of The Twilight Zone, but hey, an early 60s, black-and-white sci-fi hour? I'm there.
I'm only about ten episodes in, and it's fun to see all the famous (or soon-to-be-famous) actors, the early 60s attitudes and the "bear" in each episode--a recognizable (and usually misunderstood) monster. It's also fascinating how each episode tries to hold onto the story (with much padding--even Twilight Zone half hours tended to have padding) but generally falls apart at some point.
I don't want to be too harsh--it's not easy turning out a mind-bending, totally original hour of TV each week. But each episode has an intriguing idea that the writer and director tries to ride home before it bucks them off.
Most of the plot is about the trouble of surgically altering Culp, who, by the way, has a wife. They tell her he died in a mission, though she's suspicious. I guess all the scientists were married, since it seems easier to do this with a single guy. Anyway, I'm not sure why all the surgery and the spaceship and so on are necessary. Isn't there a less convoluted way of scaring everyone?
Eventually, Culp gets in the spaceship but, instead of landing at the UN, for some reason lands in a swamp where a bunch of hunters shoot at him. He gets back to the lab where he dies in front of his wife and his scientist "friends." And the narrator intones some important lesson the human race should learn (such as come up with a better plan if you want to scare everyone).
Miner David McCallum volunteers, and it's surprising how quickly the experiment works. He simply goes into a chamber and the scientist pushes a lever forward to evolve him 20,000 years in a few seconds. McCallum emerges able to read minds and is soon tossing people around telepathically. But just before he's about to clean house, he evolves past his anger. (He's got a huge frontal lobe and no hair, because that's how evolution works.)
He convinces his girlfriend to take over the controls and goes into the chamber again. (Considering he's got the power of telekinesis, I'm surprised he needs her help). Instead of evolving him forward, which he wants, she evolves him backwards (the scientist has helpfully installed a reverse gear on his machine). She goes too far, reverting him to an ape, but manages to get him back to normal. Whew, that was close.
So the astronaut decides he'll get back in his ship, fly through that time warp again and return to his era--because apparently time warps are reversible. He brings along Landau to prove to everyone what will happen. Yeah, that will work. On the way back, however, the astronaut dies going through the warp. Luckily, Landau knows how to land the ship. I guess that was also in the archives.
He seeks out the boarding house where the scientist who will destroy humanity lives. By the way, Landau's got hypnotic powers so that everyone who sees him doesn't see a monster, just regular Martin. Not sure how useful that was on the barren Earth, but what the heck.
Instead of finding the scientist, he discovers the woman (played by Shirley Knight--whom I'd seen the night before on The Fugitive) whose child will become this scientist. So he tries to prevent her upcoming nuptials. Then he gives up, sensing (at this late date) that he can't change destiny. But Shirley Knight, it turns out, has fallen in love with Landau. So she figures out the solution. She and Landau will return to the future (finding that time warp again on the spaceship that has unlimited fuel and which Landau knows how to pilot) where the baby wasn't born so things will be great. They go through the time warp but Landau doesn't survive because in the new future he was never born (so that's who the title was referring to).
We now return control of this blog to the reader.
posted by LAGuy @ 11:30 AM
7 Comments:
If you haven't read it, you should take a look at "Redshirts" by John Scaldi. It's a fairly humorous novel that in a meta sort of way points out the flaws in many (most?) Science Fiction stories (especially on TV). I'm working my way through Star Trek Deep Space 9, often considered one of the most compelling (intelligent?) Star Trek series. For the purpose of the story, several cast members are held in a cell on a distant planet by a high tech enemy. For no reason, there is no camera on the prisoners, and, well, in the nick of time they are able to escape. Is that bad writing? The story was good, though this flaw detracted from my enjoyment.
I watched episode one. Couldn't get through it (51 min) but had the point bashed into my head well enough by 40 minutes.
I agree that DS9 is the best of the Star Trek series (except the original, of course). But it still suffers from a lot of the Trek flaws.
When Babylon 5 came out, I lost interest in DS9, only watching it occasionally. I remember watching a two-part DS9 episode after that, which had some meaningful political angles, and I thought "Hey, they are imitating B5 now -- this is great!" Then everything got wrapped up nicely in a bow when the episode ended. Yeah, that's right, because huge political events can be "resolved" in a way that produces no effects afterward.
And the Ferengi are ridiculous. Not merely because they are a way for the writers to preach "money is bad," but because you can't have a capitalist species profitably trading with a Federation that has magic "replicators" that produce everything they want, in any quantity, like magic.
But years later, when my sister convinced me to give DS9 another try, I enjoyed it. TNG has the best actors of any of the shows, but the dialogue and characters are ridiculous. DS9 has a lot of good points.
I still would rank Babylon 5 and Firefly much higher.
I've only seen The Outer Limits a couple times. But from your review, it sounds as if OL would have been very good if they had settled for 30-minute episodes. Why didn't they?
Gene Roddenberry is often overrated, but he had two great insights: (1) A science fiction show should have a recurring cast, because the audience develops affection for regular characters in a way they never do with an anthology. (2) By flying to a new planet each week, you can have plots like an anthology, but recurring characters too.
I'm not sure whose choice it was to have an hour show versus a half hour. My guess is the creators would have happily done a half hour show, though you get paid more for an hour.
I don't think any anthology series has ever been a major hit. Makes you wonder why they keep doing them. (Though they don't do them that much any more.)
One thing anthology shows can do is get major up-and-coming names, since they're allowed to star in a show but are only needed for a week's work.
By the way, never watched DS9. I quit new Trek after a couple seasons of TNG.
I will have to try Babylon 5 (always heard good things about it). And Firefly is the best TV SciFi series that ever might have been (imho). LK might give DS9 another shot - it has some political issues that waver and re-emerge throughout the series. Political alliances flip, return, take on different forms, and even the Federation increasingly shows its cracks.
As for the Ferengi, they started out in TNG as a substitute evil race for the Klingons, who were rehabilitated in TNG. But they eventually become mostly a source for comic relief. And in fact, the Ferengi ability to negotiate in later series eventually comes to be respected. By the way, Andrea Martin from SCTV plays Quark's mother in an episode where she is a "suffragette" fighting for women's equality in Ferengi society.
Post a Comment
<< Home