December 3, 2024: The Outer Limits rewatch continues with season 1, episodes 9-12!

Season 1, Episode 9, “Corpus Earthling”

This episode was first broadcast November 18, 1963.

This was the only first season episode based on a book – Corpus Earthling by Louis Charbonneau.

According to Orin Boston who wrote the episode: “During my story conference with [Outer Limits Producer] Stefano, I gave him an idea for a teleplay. He
passed on my idea, but gave me the paperback novel
Corpus Earthling , to which the series had rights. Would I come back with my own ideas for translating it to television ?“

And then, after reading the novel: “I found the book uninteresting dramatically. But the central concept of
rocks turning into beings, I decided, could be the basis
for an interesting segment.“

Director Gerd Oswald admitted to an unusual laissez-faire approach to this episode: “There was no
real attempt to accentuate the nightmarish feeling in
this particular episode .” Oh. Okay.

Actor Robert Culp, for his part, didn’t hold this role in particularly high regard. He once remarked: “I must have phoned that one in.“

Director Oswald and the crew paid tribute to cameraman William Fraker during the scene where Paul refuses to answer the phone and a strange thumping is heard. Laurie peeks outside to investigate and then reports: “It’s Billy Fraker. He’s been drinking again.”

Another episode that feels like a jumbled mish-mash of fantastical elements: telepathic alien rocks bent on world domination that can infect and assume control of people and also posses the power of hypnosis, a lab accident that conveniently allows a guy to eavesdrop on the telepathic communications of these rock aliens, a spiritual cleansing circle that goes nowhere.

This one was unremarkable and, almost ten episodes into the Outer Limits rewatch, I’m regretting not having gone with Batman.

Season 1, Episode 10, “Nightmare”

This episode was first broadcast December 2, 1963. It was originally scheduled to air November 25 but was delayed for one week due to the coverage of the state funeral of President John F. Kennedy.

The 91 word Control Voice closing narration was the show’s longest.

Byron Haskin was originally slated to direct this episode, but the decision was made to give the opportunity to casting consultant John Erman. According to producer and episode writer Joseph Stefano: “I inherited John, but I liked him and wanted him to have one of my scripts, even though he hadn’t really directed anything before . That didn’t worry me.”

In retrospect, it should have. Erman admitted: “I had no real technique as a director. And I think one of the deficiencies of that show was that it was done on [Director of Photography] Connie Hall’s off-week. He alternated episodes with John Nickolaus, and while John is a lovely man with whom I’ve worked a great deal since then, he’s very conventional. Unless you pushed him into doing odd or provocative lighting, he wouldn’t do it. Whereas Connie would walk onto a set and say, ‘Oh God, wouldn’t it be interesting if we did this! ‘ John could do all that-he could do anything,
and was very skilled- but the director had to come up with it, and I was not ready to come up with it.“ Clearly.

According to Producer’s Assistant Tom Selden: ” It j ust didn’t work. It wasn’t that Joe was disappointed in the direction; it just didn’t matter. Sometimes the pace is
wrong, the angles are wrong, something is wrong, and a film doesn’t jell. So he reworked the show in the editing room, reconstructing it and turning it almost entirely around .“ Almost.

“I was promised a certain number o f Outer Limits
in my deal with Leslie,”said Erman. ” But after Joe
saw ‘Nightmare ‘, he was not happy with my work, and
told me he didn’t want me to do any more . In
retrospect, I think he was right when he said I dealt
wonderfully with the actors, but did not have enough
film experience. I asked Al Sargent, who is now a
successful writer, what was wrong and he said, ‘It
looks too much like a play; you approach things from
the proscenium arch, and you have to learn the film
medium better. ‘ I imagine Joe, in editing, wanted to
make it more theatrical, and I’d let him down, and he
was pulling every trick he could to give it more style
than I had. I went to Leslie and said, ‘I’m very
confused. I really feel I want to be a director and Joe
doesn’t want me to direct anymore. ‘ And Leslie said, ‘If
that’s what you really want, then you should stop
casting. And direct.’

Erman would go on to direct a similarly themed episode for Star Trek, “The Empath”, that sees Kirk, Spock, and McCoy being tormented by aliens on a sparse set.

One major production issue was the poorly-designed alien suits that didn’t breathe well. The episode was shot in the California heat and the air conditioning was fighting a losing battle against the extra lighting brought in to light the massive set. As a result, more than one actor fainted during filming.

This was a terrific cast headlined by a young Martin Sheen, with fantastic performances by James Shigeta and Bill Gunn among others – but the cast was unable to save an episode that, ultimately, felt like a stage play. Poorly directed and cheap-looking, the episode is championed by several Outer Limits aficionados for its script and, while the dialogue is tight, the entire premise and plot developments is nonsensical. Compare to The Twilight Zone pilot, “Where Is Everybody”, that tackles a similar scenario (military experiment) in much more grounded and believable fashion. The military enlists the help of a bunch of reluctant aliens to torture these men, forging ahead despite one dying of a heart attack, and crushing another’s arm…to what purpose? To test if they would crack under the pressure of being prisoners of war…even though there really was no war? Also, did they really have to name the Asian character Major Jong – Maj Jong! Get it?!! And why was he the only character to introduce himself by his last name, Jong, while all the others introduced their full names and rank?

Season 1, Episode 11, “It Crawled Out of the Woodwork”

This episode was first broadcast December 9, 1963.

This is the first episode whose pre-credit sequence is not a teaser re-use of a later scene.

1st AD Lee Katz’s breakdown of this opening scene is as follows…

The character of Dr. Bloch was probably named after Robert Bloch, the author of Psycho, a book that Joseph Stefano (who wrote this episode) adapted to the big screen for Alfred Hitchcock.

Actor Edward Asner, who portrayed the young Sgt. Thomas Siroleo, was very excited to work on the show. Until he actually worked on the show. According to Asner: “I thought that (“The Sixth Finger”) was one of the most interesting, poetic, dramatic shows I’d ever seen, so when I got the call to do The Outer Limits , I almost might have done it for nothing. When I first heard the Control Voice it was like, yeah , I ‘m with you; wherever you’re going, take me with you. I thought I was going to levitate out of my living room !“ However, he would later describe the script as “dreadful”.

Barbara Luna, who played Gaby, appeared in Star Trek’s “Mirror, Mirror” while Michael Forest, who played Stuart, appeared in “Who Mourns for Adonis?”.

So whose story was this anyway? At first it appeared to be Stuart’s story, but he is killed early on, so then it looks like it will by Jory’s story, but he is ineffective and, after finally gathering up the courage to act, arrives just in time to be told everything has been taken care of. I mean, it can’t be Detective Siroleo’s story as he arrives too late in the episode – although he does help address the issue of the escaped energy creature…with a big assist from Stephanie Linden who sacrifices herself in the process. And what was going on with that energy creature? Where did it come from? How was it let out long enough to kill that mouthy security guard and then lured back into containment? How did it know the security guard squealed on them and why would it care? Was it intelligent enough to care? Who was the Gaby character (an escort?) and how did she glom onto this mystery after going out on a single date with man-child Jory Peters (who was supposed to be 20 in the episode but was played by a 30-year-old actor)?

I mean, sure, it’s a story about the fear of atomic energy and abuse of power but, in the end, not a very good one.

The episode’s biggest highlight was the fact that the facility (What was its legitimate purpose again?) was named Norco – which was the name of the stage where we housed all of our Stargate props while the series was in production.

Season 1, Episode 12, “The Borderland”

This episode was first broadcast December 16, 1963.

The generators depicted in this episode are actually part of a hydroelectric dam.

The magnetic coil power pylons were actually spray-pained, coiled garden hoses. They were used as background set dec in later episodes.

How, pray tell, did they pull off the two right hands shot? Well, according to actor Peter Mark Richman who portrayed Professor Ian Fraser: “In one shot they had another guy in my jacket with me; I had my arm in
one sleeve, he had his arm in the other, and we had to time our movements so that the two right hands would work together. It felt kind of ridiculous, but it worked.“

Veteran director and VFX expert Byron Haskins was called in to assist with this episode. He recalled: “‘The
Borderland’ was filled with moving, shimmering lights filmed at odd angles . And you’ve got to know what an effect is going to look like in advance so you can shoot to fit it. You can’t go panning around an actor when the background is going to be double-exposed. We had to take the film apart reel by reel, frame by frame. We marked the many times the [ionic rain] effect was to be seen, and doing this one effect ultimately cost $14,000. [Producer Leslie] Stevens saw the bill and cried.“

The great Gladys Cooper puts in an appearance here as Mrs. Palmer. She guested in three memorable Twilight Zone episodes: “Nothing in the Dark,” “Passage on the Lady Anne” and “Night Call”.

What was that opening shot? A magnet sweeping through iron fillings? Shag carpeting?

This was an okay episode that would have benefited immensely from stripping out the whole medium and afterlife angle and making it a pure science fiction story. The spiritualist elements added absolutely nothing to the episode outside of a means for the research team to acquire funding for their project, but the writer could have come up with an alternate source. Also, it was never made clear why everyone assumed that the flip-flop dimension also a conduit to the hereafter.

Top-notch technobabble spewed during the experimental phase, but I’m not sure I would been so eager to hazard the crossover after witnessing test subject #1 explode.

In the end, the experiment was all for naught. Which mirrors my feelings about this episode.

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