December 13, 2024: Our Outer Limits rewatch continues with season 1, episodes 21-24!

Season 1, Episode 21, “The Children of Spider County”

This episode was first broadcast February 17, 1964

Like many of the previous scripts, Joseph Stefano – for better or worse – did an extensive rewrite on another writer’s draft. Some of the changes included bringing down the number of prodigy boys from ten to five, losing some of the instances of the hatred Ethan experiences in his community, and some violent elements like the fact that Ethan sets his victim on fire after breaking his jaw in three places. In fact, the early draft contained a fire motif that was excised completely from the final version.

As for the “monster” in this episode, writer Anthony Lawrence was not a fan: “That monster was merely gratuitous. It was added to please the network .“

For his part, producer Stefano was critical of Leonard J. Horn, and specifically cited the barn scene discussion between father and son that ended up far more elaborate than he had scripted: “A director will get bored, or scared he can’t maintain interest in a scene where there i s nothing to do except sit and watch actors act. So he makes the viewer into two people-one watching and one listening. And that’s a conceit I detest. I think Leonard was afraid to play a scene between two people that ran for more than two pages, and that changed the show unproductively.“ I kind of empathize with Stefano here, having been there myself. But even while watching the episode, I had to roll my eyes at some of the directorial choices, like that scene where we go to a neutral shot of Ethan, then cut to an ominous low angle shot of his father coming through the door, back to neutral on Ethan, back to that low angle shot. It was like a student film.

Alan Baxter, who was rewriting “The Mutant” at the time, had his own take on the situation: “Joe was overcome by the authority of being i n the captain’s chair, and laid down difficult rules, such as no script changes on the set without his approval – then he wasn’t available when you wanted to follow his rules by clearing it with him. Lenny Horn in particular ran afoul of this . Horn’s changes were not wrong, but they were not what Stefano had envisioned.” Which is why, on Dark Matter, I had Ivon Bartok on set to field any questions and put out any fires while I was in prep or doing rewrites. On the other hand, I have heard of other, uh, franchises where the mere suggestion of altering a single word is considered blasphemous.

Anthony Lawrence, the writer of this episode, had a four script deal for the show. “The Children of Spider County” was his second script after “The Man Who Was Never Born”. He would never get to write those last two scripts. Said Lawrence: “”It was interesting but I wasn’t terribly excited by i t .“

Which approximates my feelings for this episode, minus the interesting part. Bad script, bad direction, and a pretty awful performance by our lead, Lee Kinsolving, who delivered an equally wooden performance in the Twilight Zone episode “Black Leather Jackets”. Also, did they really have to do the vaseline-smudged camera lens schtick again for this episode? I mean, I can buy it for the last episode because it kind of tracked with the fact the alien was a light being, but here it just looks like a filthy lens. Boy was this bad.

Season 1, Episode 22, “Specimen: Unknown”

This episode was first broadcast February 24, 1964

This episode purportedly features the first use of the term “space shuttle” in television history.

The space ship set and suits were re-uses form the television series Men into Space (1959).

150 prop plants were created for this episode, most of which fired mist and spores (aka Puffed Wheat cereal).

If this episode feels like it dragged at points, that’s because it came in at 45 minutes and required an extra 7 minutes of padding. After all they had gone through on this episode in production, series creator Leslie Stevens referred to this revelation as “adding the worst kind of insult to grievous injury.”

This was the highest rated episode of the first season. This, no doubt, the result of the preceding episode, “The Bellero Shield”, that probably led viewers to believe the show would be delivering episodes of the same caliber week to week – only to get saddled with this stinker.

Series creator Leslie Stevens on this episode: “‘Specimen: Unknown’ was a case where I was just in hysterics. You get past being afraid and you laugh, and slide under your seat and have to be picked up. It was just a disaster; we got it together out of blind hope, really.“

Director Gerd Oswald: “I got stuck with that script and there wasn’t much you could do. It was a very weak story. The only interesting thing about it was the end-the rain destroying the plants like a word from God. I built the whole film up to that one moment; otherwise there wasn’t much meat to it. Dreadful.“

The episode was not without its issues. And, uh, tissues. According to Leslie Stevens: “When I saw the first dailies, they told me, ‘Leslie, we cannot afford enough flowers . . . ‘ I said that was too bad; they’d have to make more out of. . . something. So Dick Rubin, the prop man , made them out of Kleenex. Past the twenty or so flowers in the foreground, there they were, plain as day – Kleenex! It was all perfectly in focus, so of course you could see that there were only six rows of flowers and 40 rows of Kleenex on sticks after that. And I thought, holy shit, this isn’t going to work! And then we showed the flowers ‘dealing death’ and it looked like they were squirting out talcum powder and popcorn. I could see the wires on the plants. I was beside myself!“

Looking back at the episode, Stevens concluded: “Talk about laughs. We were just dying. And this wasn’t fun
laughter. This was the kind of nervous laughter that comes out of you just as you get put before a firing squad ! “

A terrific space station setting squandered on an abysmal script. This episode was just one imbecilic decision after another, building on self-inflicted injuries that culminate in one of the most unsatisfying deus ex machine endings in recent memory. From the idiot in the science lab who mentions spores yet makes no attempt to protect himself from potential contagion to the military arriving at the scene of the crash, without hazmat suits, so they can traipse about the killer fauna.

Easy Bottom 5 episode of the entire series. This one will be hard to beat.

Season 1, Episode 23, “Second Chance”

This episode was first broadcast March 2, 1964

The original title of this episode was “Joyride”.

The original script was written by Sonya Roberts but her first draft was rewritten by Lou Morheim. Apparently, the basic premise and plot was retained but the revised version lost a lot of the charm, character nuance, and humor, instead becoming a more simplistic story with more focus on “the monster” as per ABC’s request. A disappointed Roberts ended up opting for a pseudonym on the episode, going with Lin Dane.

The look of the alien was a source of amusement for some. Recalled one crew member: “The mask got joked about a lot. We called it Chicken Little.” It was later repurposed for the original Star Trek pilot “The Cage” (1966).

I actually really love the idea of an alien posing as a cheap amusement park mascot to coax unwary humans onto a real spaceship but, yet again, we have a case where a promising premise is undone by poor execution. This is one that could and should have been played for laughs and, in the end, suffered from its overly serious tone. I don’t know. For some reason, I saw David Harbour as the Empyrean and kept waiting for the funny.

Our Outer Limits rewatch continues with…

Season 1, Episode 24, “Moonstone”

This episode was first broadcast March 9, 1964

The lunar surface was comprised of four feet of multicolored sand while the backdrops were paintings by astronomical artist Chelsey Bonestell.

The Grippians had ping pong balls for eyes and were filmed inside a water tank allow for their tendrils to sway. The Grippian sphere, meanwhile, was a lamp post globe from Beverly Hills street. During filming, more than one crew member was heard to shout: “Bring on the street lamp!”

Writer William Blast included several dynamic action sequences in his original draft – which proved too costly for production and were either cut or significantly altered.

Producer Joseph Stefano on this episode: “Anytime we began to get really science fictiony, I knew we were in trouble. “‘Moonstone” caused a lot of problems, as did any show calling for ‘futuristic’ qualities. The things we could afford to do were tight, naturalistic dramas and Gothic melodramas.” Gothic melodramas? Pretty stunning to hear the showrunner of a science fiction series admit they weren’t very good at pulling off science fiction.

Series creator Leslie Stevens was no less pointed about this episode: “I don’t dislike any of the Outer Limits episodes, but some of them are hysterical, for all the wrong reasons. Case in point: “Moonstone”. It had an entity in the middle of it that talked, and everything it said was absolute bilge! We went into hysterics every time it spoke!“ Another interesting admission – that basically the script was crap. And I would consider the fact that they laughed at their own crummy work kind of amusing – except this is like the third episode it has happened. Rather than being funny, I now find it rather sad.

The best thing I can say about this episode is that it places us at the halfway point of our Outer Limits rewatch. Otherwise, another squandered opportunity. The episode writer and the director would never work on the show again. And, I suppose, with good reason. The script was pretty pedestrian and the direction…ouch. Go back and rewatch the moment where Anderson “trips” and stumbles into the exposed machine wiring, pretty much throwing himself into the damn thing. Good lord. It really looked and felt like they didn’t even care.

***

Past the halfway mark but only eight episodes to go in season 1.  I propose we take a little break once we complete it and come back strong and energized to finish up in the New Year!

The post December 13, 2024: Our Outer Limits rewatch continues with season 1, episodes 21-24! appeared first on Joseph Mallozzi's Weblog.