Episode Spotlight: "The Probe" (1/16/1965)

“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 8^th 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 13^th 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.

Episode Spotlight: "The Inheritors, Parts I and II" (11/21/1964 and 11/28/1964)

“The Inheritors, Parts I and II”

Season 2, Episodes 10 and 11 (42 and 43 overall)

Originally aired 11/21/1964 and 11/28/1964

“These men are tormented and unable to control themselves. They’ll be charming if they have to be, and vicious if they must, for whatever dark and evil purpose their efforts are leading them towards.”

Each of these four unacquainted servicemen takes a bullet in the brain while fighting in Vietnam, separately, over an 18-month period of time. All four survive against all odds and, upon recovering, sport two brain wave patterns, develop IQs over 200 and start working independently on a mysterious project. Minns is the financier and coordinator, Conover is the metallurgist, Hadley is the biochemist, and Renaldo is the physicist.

Perpetually one step behind them is Adam Ballard, Assistant to the Secretary of Science, who is convinced that the men are up to no good. He learns that the bullets used on them were smelted from the ore of a crashed meteor; both the bullets and the ore exhibit the same microscopic honeycomb pattern. His attempts to intercept the men prove fruitless, as their enhanced brains sense that he’s coming and vacate just before he arrives.

In Stockholm, he learns that Conover has designed some sort of flight-capable vehicle, for which he’s developed a metal alloy that is lighter than its sum parts and is impervious to heat and cold. In Hadley’s lab in Wichita, Kansas, he finds evidence of experiments with rare gas combinations and air duct design. He manages to connect with Renaldo in Tokyo, who has perfected an anti-gravity device that requires no power.  Renaldo conveys that he (and presumably his three counterparts) has no control over his actions and expresses deep frustration at not knowing what he is working toward. When it becomes clear that Ballard is a threat to the project, Conover uses mind control to throw him off the scent.

Ballard wakes up two weeks later in Indianapolis with no memory of how he got there. He reconnects with his team and states that he believes the project involves the construction of a space craft. They track Minns to an apartment building, and set up an ambush. Meanwhile, Minns begins making contact with various disabled children, promising them a trip into space. Upon returning to his apartment, Minns senses Ballard’s trap…. but enters undeterred.

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Ballard’s attempt to snare Minns fails: Minns proves himself impervious to bullets and simply leaves. Meanwhile, Conover and Renaldo join Hadley at his warehouse lab to assemble the ship, while Minns sets out to round up the children. Ballard and his men storm the warehouse but are thwarted by an invisible force field---- “Renaldo’s Barrier,” a smaller version of which he previously sent to Minns (which allowed him to escape Ballard unscathed).

Soon after, Minns arrives with the children, who are promptly loaded into the ship. Ballard tries to reason with the men, who have grown increasingly suspicious that their efforts have a dark purpose. Sensing an imminent mutiny, Minns relays the truth of the project: an advanced alien race, driven to extinction, launched meteors laced with their own genetic material into space in the hopes that their planet could serve as a gift, a new beginning of sorts for another species.

Ballard still won’t relent, so Minns allows him aboard the ship… where he finds that the children have been cured of their respective ailments thanks to the atmosphere inside, which simulates that of the planet. Minns explains that the children will certainly revert if they are removed from the ship, but on their new planet they’ll be whole. Ballard is rendered speechless and is unable to object any further. All four men eagerly agree to accompany the children on their journey.

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RANDOMONIUM

“The Inheritors” is typically mentioned alongside “Demon with a Glass Hand” as the best of season two. I won’t argue that point, but I must admit it’s not one of my favorites (well, not top ten anyway. Maybe top twenty? I dunno. I try like hell not to throw myself down that particular rabbit hole). I do enjoy it quite a bit, and it’s probably as good as it could possibly be under the Brady regime, but…. I’d probably classify it as a flawed masterpiece, which is damned frustrating. It reaches for greatness, and often comes close… you can almost hear its bones creaking as it struggles against its budget constraints.

Note that Lester and Neuman's names are swapped...twice on each credit!

“The Inheritors” (both parts) was blocked out by Seeleg Lester and Sam Neuman from an original idea by Ed Adamson (all three receive screen credit).  As Schow relates in his indispensable Outer Limits Companion, part one was originally titled “The Hui Tan Project,” a reference to the area of Vietnam where the meteor crashed (as near as I can tell there’s never been a “Hui Tan” in Vietnam), while part two was originally titled “The Pied Piper Project,” a reference to Minns’ endeavor to round up the children (I’ve gotta say, I find those titles infinitely superior, but what do I know?). For the most part, the script is intelligently written, but I do have a nit to pick (you knew I would, right?). Much of the story focuses on Ballard’s fervent--- at times almost rabid--- determination to stop the project at all costs. Unfortunately, we aren’t given a single iota of information about his life, so we really have no idea why he’s so driven. Because he’s essentially a blank slate outside of said determination, there’s no real emotional payoff when he finally learns the project’s benevolent nature. This should’ve been a weighty and satisfying character arc; instead, it’s a straight line without much punch or ultimate release.

“The Inheritors” is reminiscent of season one’s “The Children of Spider County,” as both deal with the assembling of brilliant minds for an alien purpose. We also find Dabbs Greer wielding a gun and being disarmed by telepathic suggestion in both episodes (at least he survives this time around). One area in which the episodes are vastly dissimilar is their respective production designs: “Spider County” is positively dripping with atmosphere, surreal visuals and poetic dialogue; “The Inheritors,” despite incorporating multiple sci-fi concepts (interplanetary genetic manipulation, parasitic mind control, fantastic inventions, etc.), seems doggedly determined to look as plain and everyday as possible. It may be more a budgetary issue than anything else, but it’s a real shame that the visuals don’t match the grand scope of the story being told. Director James Goldstone also helmed “The Sixth Finger” in season one which, as I recall, was more workmanlike and less distinctive than other episodes produced around the same time (John Nickolaus was the DOP on that one, while Kenneth Peach lenses the proceedings here). That’s not to say “The Inheritors” is devoid of visual treats: Minns’ brain surgery in Part I, with its canted angles and moody lighting, reminds me a bit of 1966’s Seconds, the John Frankenheimer thriller that I’ve referenced many times in these pages.

Conover’s chapel prayer is immeasurably elevated by its lighting scheme. Every point of candlelight gleams like a four-pointed star, including Conover’s eye for a few frames, which recalls Martin Landau’s glorious “twinkling tooth” shot in season one’s "The Man Who Was Never Born.” In fact, this entire scene, brief though it is, feels more like the glory days of the Stevens-Stefano reign than anything else in season two.

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Ballard’s multimedia presentation (well, what would pass for one in 1964) for Director Branch is an effective stage-setter; it provides quite a bit of exposition quickly and succinctly. If it feels a bit familiar, it’s because we saw a similar presentation last season in…. yep, you guessed it, “The Children of Spider County.”

We’re also treated to a pretty powerful rainstorm during a subsequent briefing session early in Part II, which has no bearing whatsoever on the proceedings, but does provide a nice hint of atmosphere (I appreciate little details like that, particularly since Part II is otherwise bright and flat throughout). This scene is also notable because it cleverly drops in a recap of the events in Part I (in the form of a speed edit of Ballard’s initial presentation to Branch); it comes out of nowhere and is admittedly a bit jarring… albeit necessary for viewers in 1964, who wouldn’t have had the luxury of rewatching Part I on their DVRs right before Part II aired.

I don’t usually critique the acting much in these pages, aside from an occasional single-line throwaway praising, but a few performances really stick out for me. Each of the four actors playing the solders turns in great work, but Ivan Dixon (Conover) and James Frawley (Renaldo) are my favorites; both expertly convey their frustrations in different but equally effective ways (Conover quietly worries about his complicity in something potentially heinous; Renaldo outwardly rages against his lack of control over his own actions). Renaldo’s line about him and Conover being “brothers beneath the skin” feels like a nice subtle point about race relations, which I definitely appreciate. Unfortunately, the associated goodwill is completely ruined a bit later when Renaldo refers to the alien influence in their heads as “Charlie,” a common slang term for enemy soldiers in the Vietnam War. It’s impossible to know whether or not this was an intentional sideways racial slur, but it definitely hit a sour note for me as I rewatched the episode(s) in preparation for this entry (it didn’t bother me at all back in ’87 when I first saw it, but I was an insensitive and unenlightened punk in those days).

And then there’s Robert Duvall, out in front as Ballard. He was great in last season’s “The Chameleon,” and he was really great in “Miniature” over on The Twilight Zone, and he was outstanding as Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird… and of course he’s been really great in a lot of things since (Apocalypse Now, The Godfather I and II, Lonesome Dove, many others, name yer favorite). Many of you will probably disagree with me on this, but I’m really not a fan of his work here. I think Duvall was really skilled at playing eccentric, off kilter types in the early part of his career, and Ballard isn’t that at all. As I stated a bit ago, Ballard is essentially a blank slate; we have no idea who he is, and no clue as to what drives him or what matters to him (does he have a wife? A family? A dog? Anything?). He’s about as straight-laced and vanilla as they come; consequently, when you cram Duvall’s singular energy into the role, things just feel…. I dunno, off. He just comes off as awkward. That’s not to say Duvall’s acting is necessarily problematic or terrible… well, except for one glaring bit in Part I: Harris complains about his assignment, prompting Ballard to slam the file in his hand down onto the desk while not emoting at all and say: “Am I fighting a lone battle with this thing? Don’t you understand? They could be a terrible threat.” This should’ve been a dynamite moment, but instead… welcome to Flatsville, baby. Check it out for yourself: 

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The EEG of Minns’ dual brain wave pattern is vaguely reminiscent of the overlapping-brains graphic seen in season one’s “The Human Factor.” While this later effort is certainly more realistic and believable, the earlier one is more interesting in a pulp sense… and undeniably more fun.

In his initial presentation to Branch, Ballard reveals that, when the soldier’s actual brain wave patterns are removed, the remaining four alien brain waves are identical, connecting the four beyond a shadow of a doubt. What isn’t mentioned is the rather humorous fact that the solder’s own brain wave patterns are identical as well! See, when when we superimpose all four dual brain waves on top of one another one at a time at reduced opacity…. well shit, they all match perfectly, both the alien waves and the soldiers' own "lethargic" comatose waves. Does this mean that the soldiers are in fact clones of one another, and that their features have been changed (say, by a Chinese skin-plasticization serum)? Or could it be that audiences in 1964 had no way to pause or rewind live television, making such production shortcuts far too easy?

Woof.

Oh, it gets better (or worse, depending on your particular brain wave pattern): the magnified photograph of Minns’ brain-bullet (above, left), with its honeycomb pattern, is really neat…. however, when we see a magnified photo of the ore from which the bullet was made (above, right), it’s the exact same photograph. The second photo is supposed to depict an unknown genetic substance inside the honeycomb chambers (which are absent from the first photograph), so they should’ve looked different…. right? Well, they don’t. Now granted, audiences in 1964 probably wouldn’t have noticed on their tiny TV screens, and they certainly couldn’t have extracted individual frames for analyses… but still, it is bit disappointing that they couldn’t mock up something to differentiate the two. If you ask me, it looks like a big batch of Snausages™ coming out of whatever godless machine makes them. And that big dark blotch? Looks a lot like a dog's face, doesn't it? I don't know what it all means, but I'm gonna get Bijou and Luna a treat... y'now, just in case.

The girls often hang out in my office while I write. They're part of my process.

Renaldo’s anti-gravity device is cool and whatnot, but c’mon. It looks just like those goofy little air fresheners... you know, the ones with the adjustable plastic cone thing with that weird gelatinous shit inside. I laugh every time I see it, which I’m sure wasn’t the intent. In fact, I’m fairly certain that that configuration of air freshener didn’t even exist in 1964, so maybe someone in the Renuzit Company took inspiration from it. Hey, it’s possible.

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According to Martin Grams in his exhaustive The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic (gawd, even the title is exhaustive!), the rocket’s fuselage was first seen in the TZ episode “Five Characters In Search of an Exit,” in which the giant curved piece of fiberglass (or whatever the hell it is) served as the “blank limbo set” the five amnesiacs were trapped in (which was ultimately revealed to be a toy donation barrel, and the characters were actually unloved dolls; zing!). We’ll see it again in January’s “The Probe,” where it will serve as… well, you’ll see.

I love those telepathic hypnosis bits: the camera rapidly pushes in, the intended target goes blank-faced and an overwrought musical sting, well, stings. It just cracks me up. It took some deep probing of my inner mind, but I finally figured out why these hypnosis scenes hit my funny bone instead of tingling my spine... 

A zoom too far (Spaceballs,1987).

“The Inheritors” was semi-remade in 1999 for Showtime’s Outer Limits revival series, co-starring Nicolas Lea (Alex Krycek for you X-files fans out there) and Bill Smitrovich (Lieutenant Bob “Bletch” Bletcher to you Millennium fans out there). The military and government aspects are dropped entirely, the number of project workers is reduced to three, and an intergalactic teleportation device replaces the original’s space ship. It is nice to see all three writers getting credited, and I suppose overall it’s a decent attempt... but it pales in comparison to the original (a reversal on the two versions of “’I, Robot’” discussed last week).

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AURAL PLEASURE

“The Inheritors” has a slightly different musical landscape that distinguishes it from the rest of season (though not quite as dramatically as that of “Demon with a Glass Hand,” but alas) thanks to a cue called “Dreamy Lullaby,” which appears late in part one and repeatedly throughout part two. It’s gentler and more hopeful than Harry Lubin’s usual offerings, certainly appropriate to the direction to story ultimately moves in. Additionally, the following cues appear in either part one or part two (or both):

Tragic Events

Fearing the Worst

Out of the Crypt

Sinister Streets

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DRAMATIS PERSONAE

It’s no surprise that a globe-trotting two-part epic like “The Inheritors” would have a large cast. As fate would have it, almost everyone in said large cast has numerous notable genre credentials (including a surprising number of Robert Culp connections, I’m happy to report), so kick off your shoes and lean back in your chairs, kids… this is gonna take a while.

Robert Duvall (Adam Ballard) is both a veteran of The Outer Limits (he was transformed into an alien in season one’s “The Chameleon”) and Stoney Burke (he played the titular character in the episode “Joby”). He can also be found in episodes of The Twilight Zone (“Miniature”), The Fugitive (“Brass Ring” and the two-part “Never Wave Goodbye”) and Alfred Hitchcock Presents (“Bad Actor,” which he certainly is not, despite my misgivings about his work here). He played the title role in 1971’s dystopian THX 1138; he also had an uncredited role as “Priest on Swing” in the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which sounds kinda ominous; however, he was much spookier as the reclusive Boo Radley in 1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

Steve Ihnat (Lieutenant Philip Minns) doesn’t have a lot in the way of genre experience, but what he does have is impressive: he can be seen on The Fugitive (“Cry Uncle” and “The Walls of Night”), Star Trek (“Whom Gods Destroy”) and three episodes of Mission: Impossible (“The Astrologer” and “The Mind of Stefan Miklos,” which starred TOL two-timer Martin Landau; later, Inhat appeared on “The Amnesiac,” which starred Landau’s replacement and fellow TOL two-timer Leonard Nimoy).

Ivan Dixon is quite good as Sergeant James Conover, which is his second trip to the Outer Limits well (he also appeared in season one’s “The Human Factor”); he first caught Daystar Productions’ eye during Stoney Burke, on which he was cast in the episode “The Test”; pictured below left). Additionally, Dixon graced two Twilight Zones (“The Big Tall Wish” and “I Am the Night – Color Me Black”) and two Fugitives (“Escape into Black” and “Dossier on a Diplomat”). Dixon has two very impressive Robert Culp connections: he was the featured guest star on the very first episode of I Spy ("So Long, Patrick Henry," below right), and later, he’d direct Culp in six episodes of The Greatest American Hero. Oh, and he also directed the “Boragora or Bust” episode of Tales of the Gold Monkey, a blatant Indiana Jones knockoff that I nevertheless enjoyed the hell out of during its one season on the air in the early 80’s.

James Frawley (Private Robert Renaldo) also has a Robert Culp connection (he appeared in “It’s All Done with Mirrors” on I Spy); he can also be seen on The Fugitive (“Coralee”) and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (“The Giuoco Piano Affair” and “The Dippy Blonde Affair”). Like Ivan Dixon, Frawley successfully transitioned from acting to directing. Among his credits are 28 (!) episodes of The Monkees in the 60’s, two episodes of the criminally-underrated Tales of the Gold Monkey in the 80’s (“Escape from Death Island” and “High Stakes Lady”), and… that’s right, kids, The Muppet Movie in 1979 (in which he also played a waiter). And call me crazy, but he looks a helluva lot like actor Brad Garrett, best known as Ray Romano’s brother on the long-running Everybody Loves Raymond (the cast of which, incidentally, included Robert Culp in a recurring role).

His role as Private First Class Francis Hadley represents Dee Pollock’s sole sojourn into science fiction (he did mostly westerns throughout his four decades in the business). However, of interest to us in these pages is his appearance on The Fugitive (“Devil’s Carnival," below left) as well as bit parts in two noir films: 1952’s Beware, My Lovely (which remains frustratingly unavailable on home video) and 1958’s The Lineup (which, happily, is easily acquired on DVD). Pollock's final role was a 1985 episode of Airwolf ("Kingdom Come"), which has no connection whatsoever to The Outer Limits... I'm just including it because Pollock looks so goddamned creepy in it (below right).

Ray “Art” Harris is played by Donald Harron, who can also be spotted in One Step Beyond (“Doomsday”), The Fugitive (“Conspiracy of Silence”) and The Invaders (“The Pit”); he also crossed paths with TOL alums David McCalllum (“The Double Affair” and “The Four-Steps Affair” on The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) and Martin Landau (“The Legacy” on Mission: Impossible). Regrettably, Harron is probably best remembered for his role as Charlie Farquharson in TV’s long-running ode to inbreeding, Hee Haw.

We enjoyed the distinctively gruff Ted de Corsia (Secretary of Science Randolph E. Branch) last season in “It Crawled out of the Woodwork”: prior to that, he did two Stoney Burkes (“The King of the Hill” and “Web of Fear”), two Twilight Zones (“The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine” and “The Brain Center at Whipple’s”), two Alfred Hitchcock Presents (“Dead Weight” and “You Can’t Be a Little Girl All Your Life”) and one Alfred Hitchcock Hour (“The Magic Shop”).

James Shigeta returns as AIO Captain Ngo Nwa (he stole the show as Jong in season one’s “Nightmare”). Like Ivan Dixon, he has the distinction of possessing a dual Robert Culp connection thanks to his appearances on I Spy (“Three Hours on a Sunday Night," below left)) and The Greatest American Hero (“The Hand-Painted Thai," below right). Many viewers probably know him best as the ill-fated Joseph Yoshinobu Takagi in one of my all-time favorite Christmas movies, 1988’s Die Hard (I’m totally serious).

Dabbs Greer (E.F. Larkin) returns to The Outer Limits as E.F. Larkin (he also had a gun pointed at him in season one’s “The Children of Spider County”). Like many TOL vets, he can be found on Stoney Burke (“Image of Glory,” which also guest-starred series alum Simon Oakland). Greer’s genre credentials are pretty comprehensive: he pulled double duty on The Twilight Zone (“Hocus-Pocus and Frisby” and “Valley of the Shadow”), The Invaders (“Beachhead” and “The Experiment”) and Alfred Hitchcock Presents (“There Was an Old Woman” and “The Belfry”), and he can be found in a whopping six episodes of The Fugitive (too many to list; head over to his IMDB page if you’re curious). Later, he appeared on The Incredible Hulk (“The Beast Within”) and scored a Robert Culp connection on The Greatest American Hero (“Train of Thought”).

Professor Andrew Whitsett is played by William Wintersole, whose other genre credits include appearances on Star Trek (“Patterns of Force”), The Fugitive (“This’ll Kill You” and “The Devil’s Disciples”) and The Invaders (“The Leeches” and “Dark Outpost”). He also played one of the doctors in that harrowing operating room scene in 1966’s Seconds, a favorite of mine that oftentimes feels like an extended Outer Limits episode.

Simon "Sy" Prescott (Hospital Guard) can also be found on The Fugitive (“Landscape with Running Figures: Part 1” and “The Sharp Edge of Chivalry”) and Mission: Impossible (“The Innocent”). More recently, he’s helped voice English versions of many Japanese anime films and TV series, including Akira, Cyborg 009, and Ghost in the Shell (a favorite of mine; he plays Section 6 Department Chief Nakamura).

The Swedish Shop Superintendent is played by Leon Askin who also acquired a Robert Culp connection by showing up on I Spy (“Will the Real Good Guys Please Stand Up?”). Like Simon Prescott above, he also crossed paths with Leonard Nimoy on Mission: Impossible (“Death Squad”). Askin is probably best remembered as General der Infanterie Albert Burkhalter on TV’s Hogan’s Heroes, which of course isn’t among our usual pool of genre-connectable shows; however, the series also featured this week’s costar Ivan Dixon and TOL alum Richard Dawson in its regular cast and many beloved TOL veterans in recurring guest roles, including John Hoyt, Ben Wright, Willard Sage, Parley Baer and Theodore Marcuse.

The afflicted Johnny Subiron is played by child actor Kim Hector, who also appeared in the final episode of The Twilight Zone in 1964 (“The Bewitchin’ Pool”). And speaking of To Kill a Mockingbird, he played Cecil Jacobs in the 1962 film.

Jan Shutan has an unfortunately brief appearance as Mrs. Subiron. She's a bona fide TOL Babe and, well, I would've appreciated much more of her. She also graced The Fugitive (“The Old Man Picked a Lemon”), Star Trek (“The Lights of Zetar”) and Rod Serling’s Night Gallery (“Tell David…”). She can also be found in 1978’s Zoltan: Hound of Dracula (aka Dracula’s Dog), which I would've never bothered tracking down, but now that I know she's in it... well, I just might.

Sigh.

The blind Minerva Gordon is well-played by Suzanne Cupito, who appeared in three Twilight Zones (“Nightmare as a Child,” “Valley of the Shadow,” and “Caesar and Me”) a Thriller (“The Fingers of Fear”), and Alfred Hitchcock's avian terrorfest The Birds. When she grew up, she became the smokin' hot Morgan Brittany and showed up on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (“Happy Birthday, Buck”).

Jon Cedar (Agent Grainger) can be found in several genre series, including Mission: Impossible (“The Condemned” and the two-part “Old Man Out”), which starred TOL alum Martin Landau, and the pilot episode of TV’s short-lived The Invisible Man, which starred TOL alum David McCallum. Other credits include The Incredible Hulk (“Behind the Wheel”), The Greatest American Hero (“Who’s Woo in America”; yet another Culp connection!), and Tales from the Darkside (“Dream Girl”). On the big screen, Cedar appeared in 1978's Capricorn One; that same year, he co-wrote and co-starred in the horror film Manitou, which also co-starred TOL alum Michael Ansara.

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If that nurse who gets hypnotized by Minns looks familiar, it’s because she’s played by Linda Hutchins, last seen in season one’s “Controlled Experiment” as Arlene Schnebel (below left; her brief work here constitutes her final acting credit). Playing stock broker Jessup is Robert Cinder, whose acting career was extremely short (three years!); however, in that time he managed to appear both here and on The Fugitive (“Tiger Left, Tiger Right”; below center). Finally, the unnamed surgeon operating on Lieutenant Minns in the prologue is played by Robert J. Nelson, who other genre work includes appearances on Tales of Tomorrow (“Thanks”) and Science Fiction Theater (“Project 44”); he can also be seen as Dr. McCuller in 1956’s Revenge of the Creature (below right), Universal’s second entry into their legendary Creature from the Black Lagoon trilogy.

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HOME VIDEO RELEASES

“The Inheritors” was one of the first Outer Limits episodes to enter the home video market, arriving in the second wave of VHS releases in 1987 and sporting the simplest, least imaginative cover in the entire 48-volume series. It’s Robert Duvall’s head and some stuttering line effects, and… that’s it.  Now granted, there’s not a lot in the way of splashy imagery to be found in the episode, but MGM could’ve at least incorporated Minns’ dual brain wave pattern or something to make it interesting. Their questionable decision-making didn’t stop there, unfortunately: they combined both parts to create the series’ “only feature-length episode,” despite the fact that it was never once aired that way. Several minutes were excised in an attempt to seamlessly blend both halves; the casualties include a couple of minutes of dialogue in which Ballard admits he is “scared to death” to confront Minns (an effective moment that really humanizes Ballard, who frequently comes off as stiff), the Control Voice’s Part I outro and Part II intro, and the end credits for Part I (and since Dabbs Greer only appears in Part I, his name is nowhere to be found). All told, 5 minutes and 40 seconds was cut, replaced by an awkward quick fade which, for posterity’s sake, I’ve captured for your viewing (dis)pleasure:

A Tale of Two Tapes.

Oh, it gets worse. The recap of events that occurs a few minutes into Part II (which made perfect sense since a week would’ve elapsed since Part I aired) was NOT removed, effectively destroying the illusion of continuity they were going for. Worse, the “Part I” title at the beginning was left intact! This senseless mutilation carried over to the Columbia House release, but it isn’t immediately apparent until you actually watch the tape. Where the retail VHS release touts the fictional “feature length” nonsense, the Columbia House box indicates that the episode is indeed a two-parter (while both the spine and the cassette label list it as, simply, “The Inheritors”). The Columbia House release also included season one’s “The Chameleon” (making that particular volume a Robert Duvall double--- well, technically triple--- feature).

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Happily, “The Inheritors” was restored to its proper two-part form for the DVD release in 2003 (and subsequent re-releases in 2007 and 2008); unfortunately, each part is located on opposite sides of the two-sided disc, which means you have to flip the damned thing to watch both parts in sequence. Perhaps MGM did that to force a break between both parts, as a sort of backhanded acknowledgment of their previous hack job…or maybe they’re just dicks. I dunno, maybe both.

You can also view the “Inheritors” saga in its proper two-part form on Hulu. In fact, you can stay on their site and watch the entire 49-episode run of The Outer Limits while you’re at it, absolutely free of charge (gee, ain’t the internet grand?). It’s probably safe to assume that the “feature-length” idiocy has been permanently corrected, which I suppose makes those VHS editions kinda sorta collectible… particularly for obsessive completists like yours truly.

You can have ‘em when you pry ‘em from my cold, dead, analog fingers.

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MERCHANDISE SPOTLIGHT

Not a single collectible based on “The Inheritors” has ever surfaced, which isn’t surprising since it’s probably the least merchandiseable episode in the entire series. I did spot a few custom action figures of Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore (Duvall’s memorable character in 1979’s Apocalypse Now) online, so I guess a homemade Adam Ballard wouldn’t be a necessarily impossible task.

“I love the smell of Ted de Corsia in the morning.”

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THE WRAP-UP

Ah, “The Inheritors.” A great idea, a pretty great script, a mostly great cast… and a somewhat-underwhelming production design to undercut the proceedings (the space ship in particular is just silly-looking, inside and out). Is it a fatal flaw? I say no. Both hours are highly entertaining; happily, the barebones budget doesn’t slow things down much at all. Two thumbs up (wait, should that be four, since we’re talking about two episodes? Okay, two thumbs and two big toes up!).

Since we're covering two episodes, it's only fitting that we do provide a healthy double scoop of our usual closing meme. I'm reminded of the words of that great philosopher and poet, that wise old sage Sir Mix-A-Lot: "Uh! Double up! Uh! Uh!"

One more thing---- special thanks to David J. Schow for his invaluable guidance and error-spotting prowess. Those of you who read these entries early may never notice, but I frequently perform retroactive corrections, and DJS has been the impetus behind many of them. He truly is the Obi-Wan Kenobi of The Outer Limits.... and on that jumbled reference, I bid you good day.