“The Probe”
Season 2, Episode 17 (49 overall)
Originally aired 1/16/1965
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
--- T.S. Eliot (The Hollow Men)
Fifty
years ago tonight, The Outer Limits
unspooled its final “great adventure” for the loyal fans that were still tuning
in after the Brady regime had scraped away most of the show’s brilliant first-season
luster with a crowbar. It opened on a cargo plane, flying through some scary-looking storm clouds, carrying Amanda Frank to her wedding in Tokyo... but that pesky
Ma Nature just ain’t having it. Coberly, the pilot, attempts to avoid certain
disaster by flying into the eye of the hurricane... and everyone promptly blacks out. They
wake up in the plane’s inflatable life raft in a swirl of fog, but quickly
discover that they aren’t floating in the ocean: they’re inside a large
structure with plastic flooring.
Strange
mists and beams of energy are directed toward the raft, one of which nearly
freezes Navigator Dexter to death. Coberly, Amanda and Jefferson Rome (the
group’s de facto leader), set out to explore while Dexter stays behind to warm up and radio
for help. A bulbous, slithering blob appears out of nowhere and appears to
swallow him. Rome launches into some serious scattershot and baseless theorize and determines that
they’re trapped inside a gigantic microscope of alien origin, an automated interstellar
probe roaming the galaxy for research purposes. They too encounter the bloblike
creature, which Rome figures is a mutated microbe that’s somehow immune to the
probe’s super-hygienic design. The probe’s internal mechanisms douse the trio
with a chemical repellent that protects them from the microbe’s advances, at
which point it occurs to them to try to communicate with the alien scientists
who are likely monitoring the probe from afar.
Amanda
pleads with the unseen aliens to set them free before the probe leaves Earth
for its next destination (which the group has determined to be Venus, thanks to
a convenient map incorporated into the probe’s machinery). All seems lost when
suddenly the group finds themselves outside the probe, adrift in their raft, with help
on the way to pick them up. Flying
back to civilization, they see the probe rise upward into the sky---- and
promptly explode. They surmise that the aliens destroyed it to prevent the
microbe from infesting Earth, and deduce that, some day, the aliens will
return.
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RANDOMONIUM
“The
Probe,” which was both the final Outer
Limits episode produced and the final to air, was written by Seeleg Lester from a story idea by Sam Neuman. In the director’s chair was
Felix Feist (director of 1953’s Donovan’s Brain, which The Outer Limits kinda blatantly ripped
off for “The Brain of Colonel Barham” two weeks ago). Feist directed a few film
noirs (1947’s The Devil Thumbs a Ride,
1949’s The Threat, and The Man Who Cheated Himself in 1950)
and, after his work here, would direct six episodes of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea before passing away in 1965.
The
director of photography duties were split between Kenneth Peach and Fred
Koenekamp (I’m not sure why; perhaps Peach was already gone when pickups
and/or re-shoots were required). Koenekamp served on a whopping 90 episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (a series which
starred TOL alum David McCallum), two
episodes of Mission: Impossible (a
series which starred TOL alum Martin Landau), and the pilot episode of Tales
of the Gold Monkey in 1982 (which didn’t feature any TOL vets, but it’s a show that I enjoyed the hell out of). His
theatrical cinematography credits include genre releases like The Swarm (1977), the original Amityville Horror (1979), and (deep
breath) The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
across the 8th Dimension (1984).
The
show’s cancellation had already been announced when production on this final
episode started, so it’s hard to imagine Brady and Company breaking a sweat
trying to achieve anything remarkable. And… yeah, it shows. There’s so little
here to grab onto in terms of story or character development that the entire
affair just feels vacuous and pointless. Every character is flat and
indistinct; we aren’t given an ounce of information about any of them. We know
that Amanda is about to get married, and that the crew is flying her to Tokyo
to meet her fiancé, but that gives us no insight into her connection to them,
or who she is, or what she does for a living, or why she’s getting married in
Tokyo, or how the crew knows her to begin with, or where they took off from. We
do learn about halfway in that she majored in ancient languages in college, but
that fact ultimately has no bearing on anything. Now, I’m not the type who
necessarily requires three-dimensional lifelike characters to enjoy a good
story… if that’s what it is: a good story. This ain’t, primarily due to the
lack of focus in the story or, more to the point, the lack of story in general.
It’s basically four people inexplicably stuck in a strange location with
virtually no help from anyone (unlike the Darcys last week, this group doesn’t
even have a Limbo Being to sashay in to drop clues), who eventually figure out
their situation and somehow survive/escape it. The episode is somewhat
reminiscent of The Twilight Zone’s
“Five Characters in Search of an Exit,” and not just because the two share
similar themes: the giant half-circle set piece donation barrel used in that
episode, which reappeared as the space craft’s fuselage in “The Inheritors, Part II,” is on hand here as part of the oversized interior of the probe.
So
we’re facing a dearth of believable characters and a lack of story. What’s
left? Might there be some other aspect of the production that can provide a
least a modicum of relief for the viewer, rendering the experience at least
semi-bearable? I’m happy to report that there is: the visuals. The sets and
effects are the best thing about the episode, a surprising achievement given
the lack of money and time invested. The probe set ---- essentially three
connected rooms--- is spacious and enormous, lending an impressive sense of
scale (and an automatic boost to the production value). There’s a curious lack
of close-ups throughout most of the episode; everything is shot medium or long,
which contributes to the illusion that our heroes are in a large environment
(this may or may not have been intentional; it’s entirely possible that there
wasn’t enough time to get sufficient coverage). There’s a nice surreal quality
to the imagery, starting with the (quite effective) reveal that the lift raft
is sitting on a hard floor instead of floating in the ocean. It’s just plain
eerie to watch the various gasses and mists moving toward the characters slowly
and purposefully, as if alive and sentient (remember Finley’s energy cloud in
“The Man with the Power” and the Energy Being in “It Crawled out of the Woodwork”?). The glass tubes that envelope the characters to “inoculate” them
against the Microbial Menace™ are glorious from a pulp sci-fi standpoint, and hearken back to season one’s “A Feasibility Study.”
Question: is Jeff the captain of the cargo plane’s crew? He assumes the leadership
role, despite the fact he's only the radio operator. Coberly is the
pilot, but he clearly defers to Jeff in all respects. And Amanda is a passenger, yet she pours coffee for the crew and hands out
life vests as if she’s a stewardess. I dunno, maybe she's working off the price of the flight...? The guys refer to her as "babe" and "honey," so she may be doing more than just flight-attendanting.
Mikie,
the series’ final alien antagonist, is embarrassingly ridiculous. It’s not as
bad as last week’s Limbo Being, but it’s not far off. It’s hysterically awful,
but it does work as comedy relief in an otherwise dour and humorless story (I chuckle every time I see it, so it definitely succeeds on that level). It’s an oversized
microbe, an organism too simple for facial features, but I swear to god it’s
got a goddamned face. There’s one shot where it turns toward the camera and
damn it all, it’s got eyes, or little holes that look like eyes. I hate to say
it, but the damned thing is kinda cute. It takes on an almost canine demeanor, toothlessly
menacing our heroes like a skittish and tentative dog lacking any formal guard
training. When the globular critter divides and multiplies, its diminutive
offspring (let’s call it Mini-Mikie™) possesses a wiggling phalange of sorts
that could easily be interpreted as a wagging tail. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t
mention that, when it shimmies its way up onto the life raft, it engages in some
decidedly doglike behavior… yeah, that’s right, it totally humps that thing.
Woof, baby, woof.
So
the mysterious alien race is presumably benevolent, since they safely return
our heroes and then destroy their probe to prevent Mikie the Malevolent
Microbe™ from infecting Earth… why, then, do they destruct the probe in our atmosphere, where its remnants
will fall into our ocean and very possibly lead to the very catastrophe they’re
striving to avert? They may not be as intelligent (or as benevolent) as they
appear.
I received a rather humorous e-mail from my friend David
J. Schow,* author of The Outer Limits
Companion (or, if you’re me, The Holy Bible), the other day. He happens to
own all 49 Outer Limits episodes on
16mm film, many (if not all) containing the commercials shown during the original
broadcasts (!). In honor of “The Probe” turning 50, he dug his print out
and---- well, I’ll just hand him the mic and let him tell the tale himself:
I swear I was gonna do
you a solid. Watch "The Probe." Send images and a list of
the commercials that were broadcast thereof, the consumer items The
Outer Limits was "brought to you by" on this particular
swan-song week.
Threaded it up.
That print probably hasn't projected for 15 years at least.
And the drive wheel
inside the projector goes sproooooinggg!
And I dismantle the
thing but cannot ascertain the nature of the malfunction (other than by saying, "Projector
broke.")
Minutes before I had
unreeled a commercial mailed to me by a friend -- supposedly an Outer
Limits spot but it turned
out to be a trailer for a Sherlock Holmes movie. All was well.
Yes, "The
Probe" was so awful that my projector refused to show it.
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DEJA VIEW
Mikie
the Microbial Horndog™ would resurface, in modified form with a splashy paint
job, as the tunneling Horta creature in Star
Trek’s “The Devil in the Dark” in 1968.
But this isn’t just a case of a reused costume or prop: Janos Prohaska,
the man inside the microbe, climbed back in to play the Horta, giving us one
last Outer Limits-Star Trek
connection before we amble off into the sunset.
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AURAL PLEASURE
“The
Probe” affords us one final dip into the deep pool that is Harry Lubin’s library of stock music. Selections swimming their way
to the top this week include "Hostile Space," which appears multiple times throughout the episode, along with "Imminent Ambush" and "Dark and Scary." There are others, to be sure, but... yeah, I'm done trying to identify these goddamned cues.
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DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Mark Richman (Jefferson Rome) has a long list of
sci-fi/fantasy/horror TV credits, and is a Daystar Productions vet to boot: he
starred in season one’s “The Borderland” after a guest appearance on Stoney Burke (“The Journey,” that
series’ final episode) the year before. You’ll find him on The Twilight Zone (“The Fear”), The
Fugitive (“Ballad for a Ghost” and “The Last Oasis”), The Invaders (“The Leeches” and “Inquisition”), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (“Man with a
Problem” and “The Cure”), The Man from
U.N.C.L.E. (“The Seven Wonders of the World, Parts I and II”), and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (“the
Monster’s Web” and “Secret of the Deep”). In my lifetime (1969 onward), he
appeared on Mission: Impossible
(“Gitano,” “My Friend, My Enemy” and “Underground”), Galactica 1980 (“The Night the Cylons Landed, Parts I and II”), The Incredible Hulk (“Triangle”), and Star Trek: The Next Generation (“The
Neutral Zone”). You may also recognize him from the comedy masterpiece Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason
Takes Manhattan (1989).
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Peggy Ann Garner (Amanda Frank) ain’t no slouch in the genre
connections department. She popped up on Alfred
Hitchcock Presents (“Victim Four”), Alcoa
Presents: One Step Beyond (“Tonight at 12:17”) and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (“The Project Strigas Affair," which also guest-starred TOL alum William Shatner). She can
also be found in the Fox film noirs Daisy
Kenyon (1947) and Black Widow (1954)
and, even further back, played Young Jane alongside a young Elizabeth Taylor in
the opening scenes of 1943’s Jane Eyre
(also from Fox).
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William Boyett (Co-Pilot Beeman, that poor sumbitch) holds
the sole Robert Culp connection this week (he appeared in “The Tiger” on I Spy). Boyett’s other genre credits of
note include appearances on The Invaders
(“Summit Meeting, Part I”), Alfred
Hitchcock Presents (“Silent Witness”), The
Alfred Hitchcock Hour (“The Dividing Wall” and “Beast in View”), Mission: Impossible (“Leona,” which also
guest-starred Dewey Martin from last week’s “The Premonition”), The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (“The Secret
Sceptre Afffair” and “The Man from THRUSH Affair”), The Incredible Hulk (“Veteran”), Circle of Fear (“The Ghost of Potter’s Field”), Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories (“Alamo Jobe”), and Star Trek: The Next Generation (“The Big
Goodbye” and “Time’s Arrow, Part II”). On the big screen, he played an unnamed
crewman in 1956’s Forbidden Planet.
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Wriggling
around on the floor under a thick layer of silver latex as Mikie the Microbe is Janos Prohaska, who also inhabited the
elaborate Thetan costume in “The Architects of Fear” and played Darwin the
chimpanzee in “The Sixth Finger.” As previously mentioned, Prohaska would don
the Mikie costume again in Star Trek’s
“The Devil in the Dark,” which was one of a total four Treks he’d appear in (he also brought to life the Mugato in “A
Private Little War,” Yarnek the Living Boulder in “The Savage Curtain,” and
both the Anthropoid Ape and the Humanoid Bird--- which was the Empyrian costume
from TOL’s “Second Chance”--- for
“The Cage”). He also played Heloise, a female chimp, in 1971’s Escape from the Planet of the Apes.
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Ron Hayes (Pilot “Cobe” Coberly) has a pretty paltry
selection of genre credits outside of The
Outer Limits: a single stint on The Invaders (“Valley of the Shadow": below left) and two on The Bionic Woman (“The Jailing of Jaime”
and “Sister Jaime”). William Stevens (Navigator
Dexter), meanwhile, doesn’t have any genre credits outside of The Outer Limits, but he does hold the
unique honor of appearing in both the very first--- and very last--- episodes
(he played a police officer in “The Galaxy Being”; below right).
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HOME VIDEO RELEASES
“The
Probe” was released on VHS in 1991, one of the remaining dozen episodes that
hadn’t been released up to that point. But retail wasn’t the only game in town:
Columbia House offered the series in a mail-order “Collector’s Edition”
subscription series, which offered two episodes per tape (“The Probe” was
paired with its predecessor, last week’s “The Premonition”).
MGM
released the episodes on VHS in groups of three, ignoring both the original
broadcast schedule and production order (they focused on the more iconic
episodes early on, which I guess makes sense from a fiscal standpoint). This
approached carried over into the LaserDisc releases, which collected eight
random episodes in each volume (volumes three and four contain six episodes
each, however). How random, you ask? “The Probe,” certainly not one of the
show’s better efforts, was included in the second
set, ahead of classics like “The Sixth Finger” (volume three) and “O.B.I.T.” (volume
four). I know, it boggles the mind.
The
arrival of the DVD format, which quickly made both VHS and LaserDisc obsolete,
fixed this randomness with full season sets in 2002 (season one) and 2003
(season two). Suddenly it was possible to own the entire series and only
sacrifice three inches on one’s video
shelf (as opposed to the four feet a complete set of the VHS tapes required;
half that if you went the Columbia House route). How could you not love MGM?
Here’s how: they subsequently released the exact same discs two more times in
different packaging (in 2007 and 2008) without once remastering the episodes or
producing a single supplement (documentary, commentary track, etc.); worse,
they still haven’t brought the series
into the high definition realm.
But
this is the Digital Age now, so who wants to hassle with physical media at all?
Throw your VHS tapes and DVDs into a landfill, kids, because you can stream the
entire series from the Holy and Benevolent Cloud that hovers invisibly
overhead, keeping our entertainment heritage safe forever (or until the
internet collapses). All 49 episodes are available on Hulu Plus, which costs
$7.99 per month (despite this paragraph’s heavy sarcasm, it's actually
a really great deal).
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MERCHANDISE SPOTLIGHT
Dimensional Designs has released resin model kits for most of the monsters and aliens that
inhabit The Outer Limits, and their website
does list a Mikie Microbe Monster (gawd, the three M’s!) kit, sculpted by Danny Soracco in the 1/8 scale
(DD/OL/MM-37); however, there’s no price listed and no option for ordering. So
maybe it was planned but scrapped….? I dunno.
The
closest you can get to owning your own Mikie would be to pick up Diamond Select’s action
figure diorama commemorating Star Trek’s
“Devil in the Dark,” which includes a Mr. Spock action figure and the Horta.
Pick up a can of silver spray paint and you’re all set. Or you can endeavor to
make your own… like I did. That’s right, bugs and ghouls, it’s time for one
last Project Limited, Ltd.!
So I
could’ve taken a couple of different paths with this one. My first impulse was
to twist a bunch of silver balloons together, since Mikie is somewhat puffy
looking. But I felt compelled to sculpt, to squish my fingers in something cold
and sticky and, y'now, create. But I was also mindful that every one of these projects
invariably ends up in the garbage, so I wanted something that would, y’now,
reduce my carbon footprint or whatever. Teresa was watching one of the endless cooking competitions on the Food Network in the background as I mused, which inspired me
to make an edible Mikie, which would
minimize waste (other than the time I’d be wasting, but I clearly have a
lot of that on my hands). It was decided. I dug a pound of ground beef out of
the freezer and went to work.
Turns
out Mikie’s quite tasty with a slatherin’ of barbecue sauce.
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THE WRAP-UP
Here
we are: the end of the line. Final episodes are rarely satisfying (exceptions
include Breaking Bad’s “Felina” and Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “All
Good Things…,” both of which are excellent; don’t even get me started on that
bullshit Lost finale). The Outer Limits certainly deserved a
great sendoff, but it just wasn’t meant to be (some will argue that the show actually died with the departure of Leslie Stevens and Joseph Stefano at the end of the season one, a point of view that I can't argue with, even though I don't really share it). “The Probe” does have its moments
(well, maybe one or two)… and lots of cool visuals… and that damned Mikie is
almost charming, but… there’s just nothing here to latch onto or care about.
Fifty-one years and six months ago, The Outer Limits took control of television sets across
America and, fifty years ago tonight, relinquished it one last time with
nothing more than a feeble blip.
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