January 23, 2025: Our Outer Limits rewatch concludes with season 2, episodes 13-17!

Season 2, Episode 13 “The Duplicate Man”

This episode was first broadcast December 5, 1964

This episode was based on Based on “Good Night, Mr. James”, a short story by Clifford D. Simak published in the March 1951 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine.

Henderson James’ watch is the same as the wrist device worn by Quarlo Clobregnny in Soldier (1964).

The Megasoid costume seen in this episode was re-used for the humanoid bird alien in Star Trek’s “The Cage” (1966). Stuntman Mike Lane, who spent most of the episode in the outfit, dubbed it “The Big Chicken”.

Director Gerd Oswald took pains to ensure the episode maintain a futuristic look and feel: “I dressed everyone a little bit differently from custom. No one wore a knot in their tie, the fountain idea was mine, the cars were odd, and the story didn’t dwell o n the monster.”

In addition, the exterior of the Demosphere house, an oddly shaped home in the Hollywood Hills was used for the establisher of Captain Emmet’s residence. It was accessed by a funicular.

This one felt like two different stories, the first a B+ movie plot, the other a more complex and provocative study of far-future tech, ethics and morality. I liked the first one well enough, but found the appearance of the Megasoid (not to mention its name) so silly that it undermined the suspense. The second story involving the clones was terrific (and something I would have explored via transfer transit had Dark Matter been renewed for another season). I just wish more time could have been spent exploring it. Not a bad episode but, at times, alternately fascinating and frustrating.

Season 2, Episode 14 “Counterweight”

This episode was first broadcast December 26, 1964

This episode was written by Jerry Sohl, based on his story of the same name, published in the November 1959 issue of Worlds of If.

Sohl reflected on pitching for The Outer Limits: ” It was a depressing thing. I even offered them the TV rights to my novel Costigan ‘s Needle , which, to my relief, they did not take. As a result of ‘The Invisible Enemy,’ ‘Counterweight’ was corrupted. I could not stand to watch it when it appeared, and have not, to this date, seen the finished product.“

Story editor Seeleg Lester felt the script was a missed opportunity: “I liked the idea of it being a test flight and the viewer not knowing until afterward that they were still on Earth. But I would’ve held that back, used it as the climax. Instead of exploring that concept, Milton
Krims went off into a stupid mystery . . . “ I wholeheartedly agree with Lester here.

According to producer Ben Brady: “‘Counterweight’ was another victim of budgetary limitations.“

The production had a six foot tall alien they manipulated with wires as well as a small model that was animated through stop-motion animation.

There is a one and a half minute boarding sequence where each character is introduced off the top. The sequence was shot, dropped, then put back in when the episode was running short. It’s the only time in the series that this was done and I actually found it one of the more interesting elements of this not-so-interesting episode.

Yet another missed opportunity although I think the “The test flight was on Earth the whole time” would have been a foregone conclusion for any science fiction fan. Yet another mishmash of concepts where none are explored in any satisfactory fashion. I did love the fact that, due to storage constraints, the passengers had to eat paste – but, to be fair, it was probably a choice between real food or the heavy cutlery and plates they were eating off of and I feel they ultimately made the right choice.

Season 2, Episode 15 “The Brain of Colonel Barham”

This episode was first broadcast January 2, 1965

This is was no doubt inspired by the 1942 novel “Donovan’s Brain” by Curt Siodmak in which a scientist saves a millionaire’s brain following a plane crash only to have the intelligence take over his mind.

Paul Lebaron who worked on the visual (and, presumably, practical) effects for this episode recalled: “I made a dome to go on top of a three-gallon jar and drilled holes to run in all the tubing and wires and stuff.
We got a calf’ s brain from a slaughterhouse and stuck it in there. I still have that jar out i n my garage.“ Here’s hoping he cleaned it before putting it in storage.

This deep into the season, producer Ben Brady felt the show’s fate had been sealed: “Today, if a show doesn’t do well in three weeks, it’s off the air in three weeks. Back then, it took as long as a season to get canceled. ABC gave us all kinds of reasons not having to do with ratings as to why they wanted to kill The O uter L imits. The bottom l ne is that there are no abstruse reasons why. If there’s no rating, the sponsors leave!“ With two shows to go before the mid-season run, the show was canceled. As director Gerd Oswald put it: “ABC pulled the plug.”

If this had been a better episode, the news of the cancellation would have been bittersweet. As it stands, given the overall quality of the episodes, I’m not all that surprised it never got to complete its second season. Yet again, an interesting concept that, for whatever reason, just never quite manages to stick the landing. Had Barham been a sympathetic a character, his turn into a megalomanic intelligence (and subsequent demise) would have been a little more interesting. For me, this episode’s biggest suspension of disbelief wasn’t the experiment that kept this dying man’s brain alive but the fact that sweet Jennifer Barham would be married to this asshole.

Season 2, Episode 16 “The Premonition”

This episode was first broadcast January 9, 1965

Story editor Seeleg Lester remembered the episode (perhaps more fondly than actual viewers): “Ib Melchior brought in the idea for that show. […] Sam Roeca did the final script, and that show illustrates how I managed to combine a monster and a dramatic situation. You didn’t need that creature trapped between two worlds, but I brought it in because ABC needed something. I made the ‘horror’ of it the situation, rather than making the monster itself horrible. You feel kind of sorry for its predicament.“ Easy there, buddy. You included the monster because ABC needed one, but don’t trumpet its insertion as a great example of how to combine “a monster and a dramatic situation”. The monster felt superfluous and ultimately only served as a device for the episode’s deus ex machine ending.

Actor Don Gordon was originally cast to play Jim Darcy but he fell ill the night before the first day of principal photography and was replaced by Dewey Martin who, with little time to study the script beforehand, had to be fed his lines offscreen on his first day of filming. According to director Gerd Oswald: “Don Gordon had originally been cast as the lead, but he got sick the night before the first day of shooting, and we scrambled around trying to find a replacement. At four o’clock in the morning, we found Dewey Martin. Then we found out the show had been cancelled, and the pressure was really on since we’d already lost a day by replacing Gordon. Martin literally learned his lines the moment before we shot them, and getting him through was a struggle.”

At to that the fact they were under the gun according to Oswald: “Don Guest, the overseer from United Artists, told me we had to bring that show in on schedule even if we hadn’t shot the ending yet. “

The episode’s exteriors were shot at Palos Verdes
Air Force Base. Their use of an X-IS mockup was supported by the Air Force who saw it as great promotion for the armed forces.” According to producer’s assistant B. Ritchie Payne: “Most of the time, unless you wanted the entire Seventh Fleet, they were very accommodating.” Takes me back to good ole Stargate: SG-1 days and our working relationship with the Air Force.

Actress Mary Murphy, who played Linda Darcy, was supposedly discovered by a talent scout for Paramount while at her job wrapping packages at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills.

This is apparently the Outer Limits episode most misremembered as a Twilight Zone episode. I’m assuming a season 4 Twilight Zone episode as it’s an intriguing half hour idea stretched out into a near unbearable hour’s watch. I mean, how many times did we really need to see the Darcys run back and forth from the Air base? Besides feeling padded, the “monster” felt extraneous and its convenient info-dump at episode’s end annoying. It’s too bad as I usually enjoy a good temporal anomaly episode.

Finally, the episode’s biggest WTF moment has nothing to do with frozen time or interdimensional beings but Dewey getting his hysterical wife to calm down with a slap to the face. That wouldn’t fly on t.v. today and I’d be surprised if it flew in real life back in the 60’s.

Season 2, Episode 17 “The Probe”

This episode was first broadcast January 16, 1965

This was the final episode of the original series produced and aired.

In describing this episode, producer Ben Brady said: “We were tight all the way. We fought ABC all the way. At the end of the season, Seeleg and I did one show designed to cost nothing it was j ust people floating around in a vacuum. We did it for something like $70,000 when our average budget was $ 1 20,000.“

Actor Mark Richman who starred in the show’s very first and very last episodes recalled: ” I had to bust my neck to learn a lot of dialogue. I had these long, lingering closeups where I had to go on and on, and i t was a hell of a lot of work.“

This episode was not a pleasant experience for the cast. According to Richmond: “We think we’re at sea on the raft, and this heavy fog clears and we find we’re inside a giant space probe . That was shot on a soundstage, and in order to do the fog, the temperature on the set was kept at like 55 (degrees ) , maybe 52, and we were all freezing our asses off! Peggy Ann Garner got sick, I got sick, all the actors got sick. And we had to be sprayed before each take with water, to show that we had been hit by the ocean. So we were really very ill. We stuck it out, and we al l had bronchitis – they were doctoring us on the set. . . I was not hospitalized, but I was i n bed for a week after that show.“

Production Manager Claude Binyon admitted that, at that point in the season, with the show already canceled by ABC, morale was not high on set: “The people were trying, of course, doing their best, but I don’t think anyone was interested anymore. By this point, everyone was leaving.“

Producer Ben Brady made one final attempt to save the show – to no avail: “Just before we went out of production, I showed ABC a room full of letters from viewers , and I told them. ‘You can still get on with this show.’ No chance.” Those letters were the equivalent of today’s fan campaigns that have become pretty prevalent. I recall during Stargate’s run, being in the production office when I heard about the death of singer Rick James. I relayed the news to the staff and one Production Assistant dryly responded: “Can we launch a petition to get him back?”

Alas, The Outer Limits goes out, not with a bang but a whimper. The script is pretty dreadful, just a series of wild conjectures that end up being proven right. I did love the attempt to liven things up by peppering the over-long speeches with disconnected cut-aways to that slow-crawling amoeba.

And so ends our Outer Limits rewatch. So, what’s next?

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m thinking about doing something different for the next rewatch, longer viewings but only doing two a week (instead of daily updates). Considering the following…

Alfred Hitchcock Top 10 (10 movies)

Black Mirror (season 1 and 2 – 7 episodes)

Columbo (season 1 – 7 episodes)

The Pink Panther series (11 movies)

Thoughts?

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