Classic 1960s Outer Limits - Your Favourite Episodes?

[JaseSF]

"There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat, there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to... The Outer Limits." — Opening narration – The Control Voice – 1960s

Created by Leslie Stevens and largely produced by Joseph Stefano and Stevens in its generally considered superior first season, some call "The Outer Limits" the best horror/sci-fi genre series of them all. It certainly was original in its heyday...full of moody foreboding imagery (with cinematography by master Conrad Hall) and featuring dark tales of science fiction. Practically every episode had its "bear" which was basically the name given to each episode's monster and the classic Outer Limits sure knew how to deliver strange and bizarre looking alien beasties, that's for certain. The first season also featured the distinctive music of Dominic Frontiere which many will also link to the series in their memories of it. Any child who grew up watching these nightmares brought to life likely did not soon forgot the impact and horror delights of the Outer Limits.

5 of my favourite episodes include:

1) The Sixth Finger: my all-time favourite episode of any TV series is a story of advanced evolution. David McCallum here is at his finest as Gwyllim Griffiths - a young man who wants to better himself but perhaps takes things a bit too far. Terrific writing, dialogue and atmosphere makes this a winner all around. "Your ignorance makes me ill...and angry. Your savageness... must end."

2) The Man Who Was Never Born: this one has moved further and further up my list the more I revisit it. Superb writing, dialogue and a moving performance by Martin Landau despite being buried under lots of make-up. An Outer Limits style tragic romance story. "Beauty is always on the edge of being lost."...."Together we can save Eternity."

3) Demon With A Glass Hand: futurisitic sci-fi done right. A terrific character study. Culp was well-cast here. James Cameron would later "borrow" some ideas from here for THE TERMINATOR.  "I was born 10 days ago. A full grown man...born 10 days ago. I woke on the streets of this city. I don't know who I am, where I've been, or where I'm going. Someone wiped my memories clean. And they tracked me down and they tried to kill me. Why? Who are you? I ran. I managed to escape them the first time. The hand...my hand...told me what to do...."

4) The Forms of Things Unknown: another McCallum appearance puts this near the top for me but it's a moody piece of work that more resembles a good short film, one with elements like other films (particularly gothic thrillers and in particular brings to mind LES DIABOLIQUES) yet remains quite original in its own way. "The past slid into the present and I tumbled back to life."

5) Don't Open Till Doomsday: perhaps the most disturbing of all the episodes as it exploits feelings every human at some point must suffer: loneliness, lost of love and rejection... Not to mention the Lovecraftian overtones of its 'bear' from 'the void'. "The greatness of evil lies in its awful accuracy...without that deadly talent for being in the right place at the right time, evil must suffer defeat. For unlike its opposite: good...evil is allowed no failings...no miscalculations...evil must be perfect or depend upon the imperfections of others."

[RCMerchant]

the MUTANT...Warren Oates with his bugged out eyes! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7Ak2DdRCto...

The OUTER LIMITS always freaked me out as a kid ....the opening was enuff to spook a five year old! And almost every episode had a crazy alien or monster! 

[The Burgomaster]

THE SIXTH FINGER was always my favorite.  I loved it as a kid and saw it many times.  I bought the OUTER LIMITS boxed set a few years ago, but I've only watched a few episodes.

[Allhallowsday]

Jase, what's the episode with the blob like creature that eats glop from a pond... has like a bird beak...??

[Raffine]

Jase, what's the episode with the blob like creature that eats glop from a pond... has like a bird beak...??

That sounds like The Mice. Henry Silva is a convict who agrees to be exchanged via a transporter-like device with a gloopy, twitchy alien known as a Chromoite. The Chromoite wears out his welcome very quickly by tossing some alien gloop in a lake and slurping it up. He also eats up several of the scentists.

The episode is unusual for the time in that the female lead is a doctor and an African American.

I couldn't find a good photo of the Chromoite, but a model box featuring the beastie.

[JaseSF]

Yep..."The Mice" featuring the Chromoite. Kinda surprised no one's mentioned the Zanti Misfits or The Invisibles? Anyways lotsa quality Monster TV came from the classic Outer Limits. Any fan of classic monster baddies needs to check this out.

[sandbagger]

Soldier one of Ellison's better stories.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRFcr4BKLAU

[StatCat]

like the twilight zone, a show I always liked but never got to see much of (much less of than the twilight zone even) I'm going to pick a well known one, the zanti misfits as one of my favorites. I just recently got the boxset but haven't even watched anything yet.

[JaseSF]

The Zanti Misfits is an awesome, visually creepy episode. It's one of those few TV horrors that truly gave viewers nightmares in its heyday. It even features a young Bruce Dern as the first human to encounter a Zanti misfit in an unforgettable  spine-crawling scene.

"Do not betray us...our privacy must be maintained. Total destruction to anyone who invades it!"

A couple of others I personally really enjoy include The Man With the Power (Donald Pleasance stars as an ordinary everyman with big dreams of achieving something great in his life suddenly being given extraordinary power), The Hundred Days of the Dragon (An Asian agent has been made to look and act exactly like a potential United States presidential candidate...stars Sidney Blackmer), The Architects of Fear (an experimental attempt to unite mankind with a common "enemy" starring Robert Culp), A Feasibility Study (DARK CITY and possibly THE MIST too borrowed quite a bit from this story of a group of citizens from Midgard Drive awakening to find their neighbourhood suddenly cut off from the rest of the world and surrounded by a thick hot mist and fog), It Crawled Out of the Woodwork (a cleaning lady unwittingly creates the right conditions for one form of energy to grow into another much more frightening and deadly), and O.B.I.T. (the Cyprus Hills Research Center it seems has created a type of peeping tom machine capable of focusing on any one individual's action within a 500 mile radius. Just how does this tie in with a deformed monstrosity roaming the premises?).

And yet a couple of more guilty pleasure favorites of mine include:

The Mice (also mentioned by Raffine above): which features a great big gelatinous monster that resembles a giant jellyfish on legs with crablike claws for hands (it's named the Chromoite) with a beak that produces and eat glop that is when it's not chasing after terrified lead Dr. Julia Harrison (Diana Sands).

Fun and Games: Two Earth representatives suddenly find themselves whisked away by some largely unseen superior alien race to do battle with another alien race named the Calco Primitives who greatly resemble alien monstrosities who would later appear in the Star Trek pilot "The Cage". At stake: the fate of the world! Similar to Trek "Arena", this stars familiar face Nick Adams.

Production and Decay of Strange Particles: A scientist experimenting with strange particles who accidentally tears a rip in time and space. "I know what's in there—something from another dimension, invading our space-time continuum. Laurel, I did it! I placed the heavy elements in the cyclotron: particles from out there, from quasi-stellar radio sources...bombarded it, split a crack in time and space. It'll widen and tear. Gravity will collapse. Radiation. Contagion. It'll burn us—BURN US!"...Dr. Marshall (George MacReady) explaining to his wife Laurel (Signe Hasso) the events he's set in motion by experimenting with strange particles practically unknown to our universe.

[lester1/2jr]

jase- I've seen some of those.  that thing the cleaning lady found was awesome.  that monster in the hallway ruled





I saw two completely awesome episodes I can't rememeber the titles

the first starred Carrol O Connor and it was two martian agents studying how humans murder.  it was nuts.  they watch the murder then rewind it then watch it again then rewind it and slow it down like 14 times, all the time you are frantic they are going to rip the space time continum or whatever.


the other was a competition of sorts between a phony mentlaist and a group of scientists.  the mentalist wants the rich guys money and so do the scientists.  so who can actually help the guy communicate with his dead son.  the stuff at the electric plant rocked my life. 

[JaseSF]

Lester, the 1st episode you described is named Controlled Experiment and the second is The Borderland. I think they are both very good, albeit somewhat underrated, episodes as they often don't get quick mention when someone discusses the best of the series.

[lester1/2jr]

at the hulu comments some people seem to dislike controlled experiment

[JaseSF]

Well Controlled Experiment to me is more in the realm of light-hearted storytelling than the usually more dark, grim and moody episodes of the series. At times, this episode almost feels like a potential spin-off pilot for O'Connor and Barry Morse. I thought it was a fun episode myself and it did have very dark elements, they just tended to be a bit overshadowed by the comedy.

[lester1/2jr]

I just thought it was crazy how they kept rewinding it and going back and forth all the while risking ripping a hole in the space time contium however you spell it.  The borderland had good tension too, with the mentalist tryin to sabatoge the whole thing

[trekgeezer]

The Architects of Fear, the episode that Alan Moore based the ending to Watchmen on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dctvOGl5nz4