THE OUTER LIMITS |
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Control Voice - Kevin Conway Jerry Miller - Tom Arnold Brooke Miller - Catherine Mary Stewart Beckett - Michael Rooker Amy Barrett - Tanya Allen Mona Lisa 37X - Lisa Harris Teddi Madden - Rachel Ticotin Nora Griffiths - Sherilyn Fenn Morris Shotwell - Shawn Ashmore Rachel Harris - Dina Meyer David - Colin Ferguson Mike - Ty Olsson Joshua Finch - Dennis Haysbert Quince - Michael Ironside 
Other Seasons
Season 1 Season 2 Season 3 Season 4 Season 5 Season 6 Other Anthology Shows Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams Masters of Science Fiction Metal Hurlant Chronicles Stephen King's Nightmares & Dreamscapes Ray Bradbury Theater Twilight Zone(1985-1989) Twlight Zone (2019)
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FAMILY VALUESJerry Miller lives to work. As a result, his wife is drinking too much and his kids are getting a little out of control. Family mealtimes are more like a battleground than a family time. Then Jerry sees an advert for the Gideon series of household service robots. He takes one on free trial, against the initial resistance of his family. As Gideon starts to take on the challenges Jerry has neglected, the role of husband and father starts to become redundant. The moral of this story isn't very hard to see - value time with your family over your work or it may be too late. Instead of a new lover or divorce leading to potential estrangement, the introduction of the robot who can do everything so much better is hardly a new move and the eventual outcome is hardly unexpected, a riff that has been done to death in science fiction, not least by this show itself. The leap from one man struggling to reconnect with his family to the suppression of the human race is a bit of a leap. Tom Arnold and Catherine Mary Stewart are dependable presences as the parents, but the main weakness of the episode is the robot Gideon. It is never believable as anything other than a man is a very cheap-looking mask. TopPATIENT ZEROFrom a future where Humanity has been all but wiped out by a vicious plague, a warrior grieving his own losses is sent back through time to eliminate the woman from whom the plague originated. Welcome to LA JETEE or, if you prefer 12 MONKEYS, for this plot is clearly lifted from the story used in those films. A world-shattering plague, a time-travelling saviour who will provide the 'shock' ending and a man who falls for the woman from the past (we can throw in THE TERMINATOR at this point as another inspiration). Sadly, the episode is not the equal of any of the pieces it borrows from. The main problem is Michael Rooker. He's not bad, he's just such a convincing badass soldier that his transformation into a man willing to risk all Humanity for the sake of one woman isn't convincing at all. On the other hand, Tanya Allen gives a performance of such unassuming charm that the audience is immediately smitten. There are the usual time-travelling conundrums that the story completely ignores. Beckett makes multiple (well two) trips to the past and on the second alters what he did on the first. He never bumps into himself, even though he goes to the same clinic at more or less the same time. TopA NEW LIFEA group of burned out executives form a commune under the lead of a priest, where they go into the remote woods and fashion a life based on simpler times. Then, one of the most fervent followers learns something about their leader that makes him question their entire philosophy. In the space of little more than nine months, modern men revert to the witch-fearing superstitious folk of Salem. When someone exhibits signs of failing mental health, they immediately cry out for him to be burned. This is a supposedly Christian commune, after all. This descent is such a short time is completely unbelievable, although the central mystery surrounding the nature of the priest and his plans remains interesting enough. In the final analysis, though, the economics don't seem to add up. TopTHE SURROGATEA struggling artist signs on to a private clinic's surrogacy program to pay the bills whilst she works on her art. As time passes, she begins to suspect that all is not what it seems with the clinic, or with the baby growing inside her. Pregnancy is both the most natural and unnatural of human experiences. The concept of being host to another creature that might, or might not, be benign has fuelled many a horror film. It is therefore no surprise to find the subject coming up in THE OUTER LIMITS. Unfortunately, the subject doesn't seem to have enough meat to it to fill out an entire episode. For that reason, the audience is treated to two montages - one of an artist doing not very much to a painting that barely changes over the period of nine months and a another of pregnant woman bonding and drinking tea. Neither are exciting, inkeeping with the story into which they are wedged. There are precisely zero surprises. It's obvious there's something up with the clinic from the start and the few other feeble attempts to raise the interest or tension levels fail miserably. This would like to be a cut-price ROSEMARY'S BABY, but it fails on every level. TopTHE VESSELA deeply unlikeable writer is the only person to survive when his trip into space as part of a space shuttle mission ends in a fiery catastrophe that immolates everyone else. Suffering from headaches and visions, he is isolated by the space agency whilst they investigate how he survived. There is something refreshing about having a completely dislikeable main character, but it's a novelty that soon wears off and you soon start to root for everyone else in the cast because they are all so much nicer and better than he is. This makes the big twist at the end something of a damp squib because it's the only outcome that could make up for having to spend time with such an unlikeable person in the first place. The rest of the plot is barely ho-hum and feels very familiar ground from previous episodes. This season is starting to feel a bit stale. TopMONA LISAA prototype android assassin on the run falls in with a tough repo woman whose daughter was kidnapped by her ex-husband. Together, they avoid the forces of the shadowy agency chasing them and form a bond. Killing machines learning it's wrong to kill are ten a penny in science fiction and androids on the run are ten a penny in THE OUTER LIMITS. Shadowy agencies in pursuit are practically free. What makes this story work where others using similar ingredients have been less successful is the central relationship between between the two women. Rachel Ticotin is a schmaltz-free tough cookie whose vulnerability when speaking about her daughter is kept real and hard-edged, as a woman fighting her pain would be. Laura Harris manages to breathe life into Mona, the android who the script turns into an innocent abroad when she is clearly designed to seduce and murder sophisticated and intelligent people. The dichotomy of that programming and new personality should be a problem, but the pleasures the emerging relationship deflect from that. Neither character acts exactly as they should, which makes them all the more real. The ending does descend a little bit into the schmaltz the episode so adroitly sidestepped up to that the point and we don't really need the double repetition of the 'killing is bad' moral at the end for the hard of thinking, but there is much more to enjoy here than to complain about. TopREPLICAA scientist who is distraught at the loss of his wife to an apparently permanent coma uses his skills to create a clone, complete with all her memories. Complications arise when the coma suddenly ends A soapy story of jealousy and infidelity might have been given a bit of spice by cloning making the other woman the same as the wife, but sadly there is nothing clever or original or surprising in the whole running time of this episode, to the point that this vies to be one of the worst episodes the show has yet produced. TopTHINK LIKE A DINOSAUREarth has been polluted into a living hell. Some very dinosaur-looking aliens have a technology that can send willing volunteers across space to their home planet to spend two years. The process creates a person at the other end of the 'jump' and so the shell has to be destroyed at the sending end. What though, if that shell is something more? There is much debate about how matter transporters, like the ones in STAR TREK function. Do they trasmit the actual molecules through space or do they create a new body at the far end whilst destroying the one at this end? This story explores that question by imagining that a new identical body is created with all the original's memories and so the old one must be destroyed to 'balance the equation' even though it is a living, breathing viable human being. An accident releases the original and so what was considered to just be part of the process suddenly becomes a matter of murder. The aliens are implacable in their belief that the equation must be balanced to the point that if the woman doesn't die, they will take their technology home and nobody will ever get to escape planet Earth again. Can you balance one life, especially a life that has been copied in every detail elsewhere, against the good of the whole human race? Sadly, the moral dilemma is more interesting than the story it is framed in. It's also the second inconvenient duplicate story in a row, which is just bad planning. The dialogue isn't great and the acting matches. As for the aliens, there is no reason given as to why they should be dinosaurs at all and the technology isn't really up to making them convincing. A more humanoid alien would probably have been a better bet. TopALIEN SHOPA down on his luck ex-con finds a shop run by an alien. He is given a wallet that can transfer money from anyone he touches to him. His wife is alarmed by the sudden wealth and his marriage starts to crumble. Then his bar friends win the lottery. It's a chance too good to pass up. A thoroughly tedious morality tale that is barely spruced up by a GREMLINS-a-like curio shop at the start. Worse than that (spoiler alert) the story pulls the most heinous sin of narration to get the antihero out of the consequences of every bad deed he's just done, even though those consequences are well-earned. After making us suffer through the rest of the lecturing, the episode might have at least given us the unhappy ending. TopWORLDS WITHINA young physicist is introduced to a mutated pile of flesh that was created by the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown. Alive, but without a mind, it is a potential source of tachyons. As her investigations of the phenomenon continue, she starts to wonder if the creature is quite as unaware as she has been told. The most curious and thoughtful of this season's stories to date, the episode benefits from having a disabled, and dying, main character who is not defined by her physical state. It also benefits from having the unprepossessing fleshy body at the centre of the laboratory, a blank slate on which to play out the ethics of experimentation and where the limits of such experiments lie. Sadly, this all devolves into a bland race against time to save a boy from another dimension storyline, which lets down the good work that has gone before in creating a realistic and somewhat amoral central situation. If only the story had kept to its guns and been far less black and white in the decisions the central scientist was making, the effect would have been that much greater. By making it absolutely clear that a child's life is on the line, the shades of grey are wiped out to simple black and white and interest drains away. Also, the playing with tachyons means that time is fluid and consequences are avoided for a second episode running. TopIN THE BLOODA childless couple are given the opportunity to join the first manned exploration through a tear in normal space to explore a newly discovered region called Trans-space, which might revolutionise space travel and the whole future of human exploration. Since it is the first expedition, why does this new region seem so familiar? The true nature of Trans-space is the big reveal of this episode, so not that much can be said about it, other than it is a nice concept that is revealed throughout the episode. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the episode fails to live up to that concept, except the ending which manages to be both upbeat and downbeat at the same time, which is quite some trick. The linking of Trans-space into native American folklore is clunky, as is much of the dialogue and the reproductive changes of the main character's body. The effects that render the different region that is Trans-space also don't work, coming off as cheap. Still, it is better to be ambitious and fail than to play is safe and fail. TopFLOWER CHILDA young and upwardly mobile couple move into a new building, not knowing that their attractive neighbour is not of this Earth and has some very big plans. The opening section of this episode, which sees a plant attack an old woman and use her as fertiliser to generate a younger, prettier model is genuinely creepy, something the show hasn't managed to be in a while. Unfortunately, once that opening sequence is over and the new couple are introduced, things go downhill very quickly. Riffing on the plot of the SPECIES series of films (alien needs to mate to create new race to take over the world), this vegetable invasion is set aside for a particularly tedious love triangle/quadrangle subplot and a snarky friend who is in his mate's face about giving up his single status when he is, in fact, jealous. Even with all that unnecessary padding, the pace of the episode seems slow and rather dull. The characters are flat and uninteresting and the aggressive nature of the neighbour's amorous approaches is just silly. The use of plant perfumes in making the male succumb to her charms should have been built up more, since otherwise it just seems all men are slaves to any attractive woman. TopFREE SPIRITIn the middle of a hellish snowstorm, the staff of a mental institute become targeted by an entity that can possess anyone it chooses and seems intent of wreaking bloody revenge for an act carried out years before. Well now, here's something that isn't often seen in THE OUTER LIMITS - an out and out horror episode. Yes, there's a scientific explanation for what's going on, and it's given in the show's first scene, but the entire rest of the story plays out like a a straight horror story. The setting of a mental institution is a cliche, but things only become cliched by being so effective they are overused. The snowstorm cuts the players off from the outside world and the lights go out so everything has to managed by candlelight. It would be a laughably stock set up if it didn't work so well. Yes, the voodoo worshipping intern is a step too far into stock territory (we'll take it as an homage to THE SHINING rather than just lazy racial stereotyping), the rest of the characters are nicely drawn and the actors have fun playing the increasing confusion and terror. And the increasing sense of isolation, foreboding and fear are all achieved without too much in the way of graphic violence. Topped off by a conclusion as dark and bleak as what has gone before, this is a welcome breath of fresh air to the show. TopMIND REACHERScientists discover a way to link minds in order to tackle mental health issues at their source. When they discover that injuries suffered in the fugue state are manifested in their physical bodies, however, drastic measures are required to save one of their number. This is a much less interesting version of the film DREAMSCAPE. Machines allowing scientists to link into patients' minds has even been done before n this show. There is almost nothing here that brings anything new or interesting to the story. The solution to the little girl's problem could be solved by any reasonably observant person without the need to enter anybody's mind and the comatose colleague's rescue just seems somewhat absurd. TopTIME TO TIMEA young woman whose father was killed planting a bomb on campus in the 60s is pulled out of a car just before a fatal accident and is given the chance to become a time agent. Whilst being shown around, she takes the opportunity to interfere with her own history. The classic paradox of going back in time and killing your grandfather so you're never born and can't go back and kill your own grandfather, is given a slight twist here as the heroine of the piece attempts to save her father from his fatal mistake. It can certainly be argued that the agent who is supposed to be recruiting her is incredibly incompetent in taking her back to a time and place where she could interact with her own past, but without that mistake there isn't a story. That, though, wouldn't be that big a problem as the story here is not only predictable, but also rather dull. The rules and trappings of time travel and quite nicely shown, but they are only an interesting backdrop. The sense of time and place is not particularly well established and every cliche about going back in time is trotted out until the unimpressive ending. TopABDUCTIONA group of high school seniors find themselves trapped in an empty version of their school with no way out and the instruction that they must choose one of their number to die if they are to return. This is a not very subtle cry to America's youth to stop shooting each other. The cast of characters is like a sort of THE BREAKFAST CLUB with a collection of stereotypes (the jock, the nerd, the popular girl, the religious type and a misfit) all forced to learn from each other that they are not alone in the pain they feel, that everyone's suffering in their own unique way, so there's no need to go around shooting each other when it gets to much. It's a bizarre way of looking at the USA's problem of school massacres, tackling the kids' issues rather than their ability to get guns, but that's what you expect from a country as gun obsessed as America. The mystery works better than the message, though. This is one of those episodes that might have worked better without showing the alien presence in full. Keeping the influence that is putting the kids through the experience unseen would have allowed it to have more power. Once you've seen it's a tall alien, its motivations for imprisoning the youths become less convincing. The script is as blunt as the message it is trying to deliver and the young actors don't manage to escape the two dimensions of the characters they are given. At least its heart's in the right place, even if it is so terribly over-earnest. TopRULE OF LAWIn a frontier mining colony, the killing of three humans by the indigenous life forms brings an unconventional judge to town to finally bring the rule of law. Ranged against him is a personally involved governor and a cynical military commander. On his side, he has only his wits, a six shooter and a simulated human. Everybody likes a good space western and RULE OF LAW qualifies as a pretty good space western. It's too uneven to be a great one, but it is entertaining all the way through. Dennis Haysbert has an innate goodness that doesn't sit well with the image of the rough and ready for violence frontiersman. Much better is the always reliable Michael Ironside as the crotchety general with a heart of, well bronze if not gold. The plot is bitty, involving distractions such as the judge's failing love life and his entertaining but eventually pointless artificial assistant. The core is the trail proceedings, but then there a conspiracy to frame the general and a sojourn into enemy territory to contend with. On the plus side, the frontier setting is neatly created with its aliens and outdoor market and dusty, disused courtroom. To be honest, this is the sort of location a full series could be set in. The script has a sense of humour that is welcome, but undermines the more serious point the episode is trying to make. Uneven, but entertaining. TopLION'S DENA high school wrestling coach living on the past glory of a single championship win is given the chance to lead his currently underperforming team to victory through a secret formula that can boost performance. It also comes with some unexpected side effects. It is better to lose clean than to win on drugs. That's a simple principle, but the history of sports drug cheats suggests it's a principle that has yet to be learned. The idea of a sporting supplement that enhances performance, but turns the team into something other than human is hardly a new one, and there is very little here to add to the idea. In fact, there's nothing new at all and the performances are not special enough to make up for that. TIPPING POINTA writer of software new to the company learns of the missing person he has replaced and a program called Prometheus. He is then contacted by a hacker know as Merlin who comes with dire warnings and glasses that can reveal murderous energy beings. Are all villains bad? Are they doing bad things for the right reasons? Are the reasons they have right and inevitable, or just the ramblings of their deranged mind. Is the development of AI a sign of the end of human dominance and is the combining of human and technology the next step of human evolution? These are some questions that are posited by this episode of THE OUTER LIMITS, but only when the shadowy enemy is revealed. Questions about AI are becoming increasingly relevant, but when they are couched in a rather dull industrial espionage tale they lose a lot of their impact. The energy killers are quite well realised, but nothing else about this episode stands out. TopDARK CHILDA high school student struggles to relate to her mother, a woman who suffers nightmare memories of being abducted by aliens. Fortunately, a new teacher is helping to turn her life around. A realistic portrayal of the tensions between parent and child is the centrepiece of this episode. Both mother and daughter are well-drawn and neither is wholly in the right or the wrong. The alien abduction memories add the necessary sci-fi frisson to this, but the story becomes increasingly unlikely and finally descends into a denouement that can be seen coming a mile away. TopTHE HUMAN FACTORThe terraforming base on Ganymede finds itself facing annihilation when the AI system determines that humanity should not be allowed to spread beyond its home planet. Whilst the captan argues with computer, the rest of the crew try to find a way to deactivate it. And so the dreaded clips show returns. As is traditional with the show, the framing set up if far too good to be wasted as an excuse to stitch together a bunch of excerpts from previous episodes and the conclusion proves to be more satisfying than deserved. It is, however, a clips show and that detracts hugely from the effort put into the set up. It's as big a shame as ever. TopHUMAN TRIALSA group of high-grade soldiers undertake a series of simulated tests in which their stamina, cunning and loyalty are tested to the limits. The final one standing will be chosen to undertake a critical mission. And so this iteration of THE OUTER LIMITS comes to a close with its second clips show in a row. This is the very definition of going out with a whimper rather than a bang. The framing device is by far the weakest used to date, but at least the final twist is a nasty one. During its seven year run, the show didn't provide many truly classic episodes, but there were very few really bad ones either. On the whole, unoriginal ideas were given outings that were at least moderately entertaining and usually competently mounted. That's probably the most you can possibly expect from a mainstream anthology show. Top |
