December 7, 2024: Our Outer Limits rewatch continues with season 1, episodes 13-16!

Season 1, Episode 13, “Tourist Attraction”

This episode was first broadcast December 23, 1963.

This episode boasts the longest opening narration at 181 words.

This is the only episode in the series to feature narration within the body of the show in addition to the episode intro and outdo.

This episode does not end with the familiar “We now return control of your television to you.”.

“The material I’d written was mediocre,” said writer Dean Riesner. “I blame certain shortcomings the show had on the fact that I wrote in many special effects aspects that gave the production people difficulty.” To address this, Joseph Stefano did a rewrite on the script. According to Riesner: “They didn’t have to change it too much to make it awful.”

Years later, Reisner who would go on to script the t.v. miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man and co-write Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry and The Enforcer, admitted he would occasionally sit down and watch his old Outer Limits effort: “I sit and watch it with dreaded fascination, wondering what the hell is going on .“

Underwater cameraman Paul Stader worked out a hand-clapping signal for the actors in the fish suits so they could indicate when they needed to surface . At one point, the gesture was interpreted as “hammy self-applause for a successfully completed shot”, and Stevens remembered watching dailies in which the monsters suddenly surface, tear their heads off and yell” Goddammit, I’m drowning “

Outside of actor Henry Silva who played General Mercurio, it felt like the cast was pretty much sleepwalking through an episode that felt very much like a mini-sized schlock sci-fi flick of the era. The creature design was pretty good, but the story did them no favors – especially when the creature escapes containment (Thanks to those drunken stereotypes) and “makes a break for it”. It’s fearsome-looking enough, but its sluggish movements don’t really suggest it’s going to be much of a threat. So cue the table leg-breaking sonic powers!

P.S. This episode does score +1 for the scene in which the guy KO’s the creature while fighting it underwater. Not enough to get into the Top 10 (That, at this point, is looking more like a Top 5), but a memorable moment nevertheless.

Season 1, Episode 14, “The Zanti Misfits”

This episode was first broadcast December 30, 1963.

In 1997, TV Guide ranked this episode 98 on its “100 Greatest Episodes of All Time”.

This was the only episode in the entire series in which the aliens do not speak english.

The console featured in the control room was previously used in “O.B.I.T.”

This was one of the few instances where stop motion animation was used on television at the time given how pricey and time-consuming it was.

Burt Reynolds apparently turned down the role of Ben Garth.

In the original script, the action cuts out much sooner. The screen goes to black as we hear the first shot of the battle ring out before going to the closing voice-over. The action-packed battle they ended up shooting was incredibly time-consuming, but quite memorable.

Writer-Producer Joseph Stefano on his writing process: “I didn’t have the time to do treatments or outlines. I just made them up as I went along, according to a vision in my head, not a step-by-step formula, but more like a dream. This made my analysis more difficult. I’d no longer free-associate, but I ‘d correct and edit what I’d dreamt the previous night, and spin it into a tale! But this was great for my writing, though, and this was a very lush period for me .“

Ghost Town Street, a Western set on the MGM lot, was used as Morgue, California, while the exteriors of the Zanti landing zone were filmed at the Vasquez Rocks formations outside of Los Angeles.

I don’t know if this show has worn me down or I’ve come to lower my overall expectations, but I quite liked this episode. I thought the aliens were pretty creepy and I loved the fact that Bruce Dern’s character is discovered on his back with his limbs in the air like a dead bug. The final action sequence was pretty great as well, highlighted by that shot of the soldier tumbling down the stairs, swarming with bugs, then pitching himself across the room. As usual, the female characters could have used some work (specifically the bored housewife tagging along with the crook, then traipsing around the desert in her mink coat, being chased by alien bugs before being saved by the nerd) but, overall, one of the better outings.

Season 1, Episode 15, “The Mice”

This episode was first broadcast January 6, 1965.

Writer Joseph Stefano named the episode’s anti-hero, Chino Rivera, after his friend, actress and dancer Chita Rivera.

According to Stefano: “It was a problem when I’d get a script from a writer, and make my suggestions for changes, and then get back a second draft that was still not good. At that point, you have a choice. Either you give the writer another shot, or you take it home with you. Which most producers do, because you know it’s going to be faster to do it yourself when you need it for next week. You don’t have to offer a third rewrite, so I didn’t ask for one. I just did it the way I wanted it .“ As a fellow showrunner, I empathize.

The name of the alien was changed from Soterian to Chromoite.

The alien costume’s headpiece was made of poured slip rubber and solidified glue. It weighed between 70 and 150 lbs and had to be lowered onto stuntman Hugh Langtry using a block and tackle.

I really liked actress Diana Sands who didn’t really get a lot to do in the episode but nevertheless impressed. I couldn’t find out much about her but learned she stepped in to play the part of Doris in the 1964 Broadway comedy “The Owl and the Pussycat” after actress Kim Stanley bowed out. She played opposite Alan Alda and the casting provoked little controversy. Some ten years later, while shooting Willie Dynamite, Sands herself had to bow out after collapsing on set. She was replaced by her good friend Diahann Carroll. Sands was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died soon after, cutting short a promising career.

Actor Henry Silva returns (two episodes later) and delivers a great performance in what sadly turns out to be an equally subpar episode. I mean, what is going on here?! They allow this alien creature to have free reign of the grounds, not bothering to put a secret detail on it as it wanders off – and then, in one of the most hilarious sequences of this series to date, it returns undetected to eavesdrop on a conversation before stealthily shutting the door. Also, I understand times are tough but that place really needed to splurge on additional security. As for Potato-Lobster, I couldn’t help but feel the production could have done a better job with his overall appearance. But, to be fair, I don’t think it would have saved this episode.

Season 1, Episode 16, “Controlled Experiment”

This episode was first broadcast January 13, 1965.

This episode was apparently a backdoor pilot for a series chronicling the adventures of the Holmes and Watson-like fish-out-of-water aliens Phobos and Deimos. It was not picked up to series.

The alien ship that appears off the top (presumably to allay the concern of ABC executives who wanted to make sure the show’s sci-fi and monster elements were front and center) was one of two models built for Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957).

Leslie Stevens wrote the first draft of the script on a New York to LA flight. The episode took four and a half days to shoot at a cost of $100k. It was the cheapest episode the show produced and was written to address cost overruns. Stevens coined the term “bottle episode” for the cash-saving episode, likening it to pulling an episode out of a bottle like a genie.

“We had a lot of fun making that episode ,” said 1st AD Robert Justman. “Robert Fortier was an extremely funny man who could walk backwards, miming his actions in reverse and keeping his eyes dead-ahead while the others moved around him .“

Grace Lee Whitney would go on the achieve cult status as Star Trek’s Yeoman Janice Rand. She recalled: “Barry Morse and Carrol O’Connor got along famously on that show. Between takes, they’d sit right down to their chess game .“

Love Barry Morse and Carrol O’Connor and I’m a big fan of any time anomaly story but this episode came up a short for me because it was, ironically, too long. A tighter, half hour version would have been somewhat better. A middling outing notable for the fact that the two aliens seemingly damn the galaxy to destruction when all is said and done.

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