… just this programme
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| A super-evolved David McCallum in the Outer Limits episode The Sixth Finger. If he's so smart, he'll know not to waste his time watching it, then... |
At the age of 19, stopping up till
12.45am should have been no big deal, but somehow it still felt that
way. I’d been up at some ludicrous hour of the morning to catch the
first of several trains that would take me to college (I’d stupidly
decided to commute from home to Coventry), but the next day was
Saturday, so what the hell. The reason for my burning the midnight
oil was simple: BBC2 were starting a repeat run of The Outer
Limits, the US science fiction/horror anthology TV series from
1963-5. Looking back, it seems extraordinary now to realise that the
series was a mere fifteen years old, for it already had the look of
an artefact from a much earlier era. What’s fifteen years ago now?
2002. I don’t think any film or TV series made then could possibly
look as much of a period piece as The Outer Limits looked in
1980.
To be pedantic for a moment, the BBC2
run wasn’t technically a repeat, as the network had never shown the
series before. In fact, its only British airing had been on a limited
number of ITV regions in the mid 60s. My first encounter with The
Outer Limits came a decade later, when a magazine (possibly the
short-lived World of Horror) featured a colour spread of gum
cards produced to tie in with the series (albeit in the very loosest
sense – the text accompanying the pictures was unrelated to the
content of the TV episodes). Shortly afterwards, the series was
featured in Starburst magazine, and an episode guide appeared
in a publication called Fantastic Television. By this time,
I’d seen enough to know that The Outer Limits, with its
weekly doses of insane monsters, looked like essential viewing. The
gum cards included some memorable entries, such as the ‘Man With
Super Sight’ (an unrecognisable Warren Oates with eyes like fried
eggs in the episode The Mutant) and David McCallum as a
super-evolved human.
At the time these articles appeared,
there was no prospect of ever getting to see The Outer Limits;
and yet, within five years, here it was on BBC2, albeit in a time
slot even later than the usual late night favourite Sergeant Bilko
(which I also began watching later that same year – having
seemingly discovered a taste for late-night televisual nostalgia).
ITV’s run had been incomplete, and
limited to a couple of regional networks. So the late night 1980
broadcasts were to be The Outer Limits’ first (and only)
networked run in the UK. The episode order was something else
entirely. I already knew (from Fantastic Television) that
there had been two seasons of The Outer Limits, beginning in
1963 with the pilot episode Galaxy Being. Yet it was a second
season episode, Demon With a Glass Hand, that was chosen for
the series’ BBC2 debut. Clearly, someone involved in the scheduling
of programmes was a science fiction buff, and Demon... had
been chosen as a series opener for its credentials: winner of two
major awards, and penned by Harlan Ellison, a name that would be
familiar to every Star Trek fan.
As an example of The Outer Limits,
Demon With a Glass Hand isn’t exactly typical. There is, for
instance, no ‘bear’ (the name given by the production team to the
weekly monsters that were a regular feature of the first season), and
its claustrophobic setting within the stairwells of Los Angeles’
Bradbury Building (later a location for Blade Runner) gave the
episode a unique look and feel that set it apart – quite far apart,
in fact – from the rest of the series. The next episode was another
series two entry, but much more typical in that it featured a
supposedly scary monster. Keeper of the Purple Twilight also –
unfortunately – typified the drab, grey interiors seen in much of
the series, not to mention some drab, grey acting and writing. For
week three, the BBC delved back into series one for the episode
Moonstone, notable only for some imaginatively-realised alien
beings. It was back to series two and Harlan Ellison again for week
four, and the episode Soldier (later, famously, the subject of
a law suit between Ellison and Terminator writer/director
James Cameron).
I kept note of all these episodes in
my diary, giving special mention to any that struck me as
particularly noteworthy. I wrote up a brief synopsis for Demon
With a Glass Hand, and also noted the fact that week five’s
episode The Premonition was a good story (a test pilot and his
wife, suspended in a moment of time, have to work out how to save
their toddler from being run over by a truck). It’s fair to say
that I greeted the return (or arrival) of the series with enthusiasm.
But it’s equally true that, by the ninth or tenth week, my loyalty
was being sorely tested with stinkers like The Invisibles and
Counterweight.
When the Outer Limits was at
its best – episodes like The Man With the Power or The
Sixth Finger – it could be imaginative, well written and
stylishly directed, and there was often a name guest star worth
watching (Martin Landau, Robert Culp and David McCallum amongst
others). At its worst, it could be dull, pedestrian and badly acted, with a cast of unknowns who looked to have been drafted in from daytime soaps.
There was, indeed, more than a hint of soap about episodes like The
Mutant and Moonstone, both of which included needless and
incredibly dull romantic sub-plots, and came across like
Peyton Place in space.
On 27th June, the BBC
showed the episode It Crawled Out of the Woodwork, widely
acknowledged as perhaps the nadir of The Outer Limits. I
certainly thought so: ‘very bad episode’, my diary records,
‘probably the worst yet.’ By 18th of July when the
first run of episodes ended, I was describing it as ‘last crappy
Outer Limits.’
It was off air for only a month
(presumably the person responsible for scheduling it on was on
holiday and didn’t want to miss an episode) and when it returned it
was with the iconic ‘bugs with human heads’ episode The Zanti
Misfits. I’d seen these somewhat risible creations pictured in
books and magazines and had long wondered about the episode: but now,
presented with the opportunity to see it at last, I passed. I didn’t
even tape it (we wouldn’t have a VHS machine in our house until
later that same year) but a friend of mine did. He brought the tape
round the following week when my diary records that I ‘watched a
bit of it.’ Which says it all, frankly. Indeed, I didn’t see the
complete episode until many years later when the complete series came
out on DVD.
The trouble was, The Outer Limits had cried wolf
(or, rather, bear) once too often, and by the time of The Zanti
Misfits, I knew enough to realise that, if the stills looked
crap, the actual episode wouldn’t be any better. From then on, I
made less of an effort to keep up with the repeats, and despite the
occasional decent episode such as the comedic Controlled
Experiment, I didn’t think I was missing out on the weeks when
I chose not to watch.
With a few short breaks, the BBC
repeats continued until July 1981, and despite the chaotic running order, every available episode was screened. The late Friday
night slot was retained throughout, with episodes typically starting
at any time between 11.30pm and midnight. I was often out on Friday
nights, and caught the tail end of a handful of episodes when I got
in: ZZZZ was a risible story about a queen bee who takes on
human form, while Cry of Silence, in which a couple are
menaced by tumbleweeds, has to be one of the least worthwhile hours
ever committed to celluloid.
Despite its many disappointments, I
was prepared to give The Outer Limits a second chance. As
mentioned previously, I’d kept no recordings of episodes, aside
from a couple of tape to tape dupes, so when the chance came to buy
both series on DVD, and at a fairly reasonable price, I caved in.
That was over ten years ago. To date, I still haven’t sat through
every episode. Now and then I’ll dig out the box set and give it
another chance. But every time, I run up against the same old
problems: rubbish acting, poorly realised science fiction
settings (a typical Outer Limits space survey team look to have been
outfitted by the quartermaster from Fort Baxter), muddled scripts (topped and tailed by some heavily moralising and patronising voice-overs) and a surfeit of men in rubber suits pretending to be monsters.
I’m well aware that there are still
many hardcore fans of The Outer Limits – mostly, it would
appear, of the white American geeky fraternity – but even devotees
of the show acknowledge its variability in quality. With Psycho
screenwriter Joseph Stefano on board as series one producer, one
might have expected something a little better. Part of the problem, I
think, lies in the anthology nature of the series: with no ongoing
cast members, viewers have to invest their time each week in a new
crop of characters, often sketchily realised and indifferently acted.
Compare this with Star Trek, which managed to do
anthology-style stories within a superbly-cast, solid series format. Actually,
don’t. There is no comparison.
As the ‘control voice’ at the
start of each week’s episode assured viewers, ‘there is nothing
wrong with your television set’. Indeed. Nothing that can't be cured by changing channel...
We now return control of your computer
to you…
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