by Sam Juliano
There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to… The Outer Limits.
Trent: The control voice intonation that ushered in one of the most unique television shows ever conceived has over the years become as famous as the individual episodes it introduced. Today the deceit of course seems a bit dated and laughable, but in a remarkable twist a great many know it without even having seen a single epsiode of the show that spawned this all-too-familiar catch phrase. I’d like to introduce myself. For purposes of today’s panel discussion I will be going by the name of “Trent.” I will be moderating a brief discussion of the classic science fiction series with three others, who will hereby be known as “Judith Bellero”, “Gwyllm Griffiths” and “Andro”. I would like to extend my appreciation to the organizers of today’s science fiction convention for giving our panel disccussion the green light and to the workers at the Javits Center here in Manhattan for their yeoman work in setting up the chairs and audio equipment. Our fearless quartet, three men and one fair lady can be accurately framed as baby boomers, those who grew up at the time The Outer Limits and other renowned anthology shows were being aired. While we are fans of science fiction and horror, we also favor shows with supernatural and fantastical elements, both of which are manifested in today’s cerebral, all-encompassing talk. Judith I would like to get this discussion started by asking you what attracted you to the show? I won’t dare ask you your age, but as a Baby Boomer you are right there with the rest of us so to speak.
Judith: I am not one of those vain women who devote their lives towards concealing their age. I am 59 now, and discovered The Outer Limits a few years after its short initial run had concluded as a very impressionable young girl. A local station in Cincinnati, where I grew up picked up the 49 shows in a syndication package, and because my father was such a passionate science fiction adherent, I sat next to him on the living room couch sitting as quietly as the control voice demanded, though the austere tone of the show somewhat unerved me. (pause) I was also kind of a tomboy at that age and shared my feelings about the show in the schoolyeard with some boys who counted The Outer Limits as a regular obsession. I was too young at the time to realize that one of the two men who conceived the show -and wrote some of the very best episodes- was none other than Joseph Stefano, who wrote a little horror movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock called Psycho. But my first run through the show was uncomplicated and in a sense it meant more to me than the re-viewings and introspection encountered years later. Even with the phony rubber masks and cheesy sets, it was an incomparably imaginative show with a rich and expressionistic visual scheme – I dare say it eclipsed the more famous The Twilight Zone strictly from that visual standpoint. Nothing like The Outer Limits was ever done, nor even attempted later on, not even in the inferior, if occasionally impressive re-make of the 90’s. The Outer Limits, at its peak, was one of the most unique shows on the small screen: Created by Leslie Stevens but produced during its superior first year by Joseph Stefano, the show told sci-fi stories through a lens of Gothic horror, using surreal imagery and stark, sometimes expressionist cinematography to create an eerie mood and look.
Andro: Judith, I’d like to interject. I think The Twilight Zone – though a tour de force of television and the anthology show most will remember in the most glowing terms – was a melting pot that included fantasy, comedy, science fiction, horror and cautionary tales. Morality was woven into the scripts, especially those written by Rod Serling. Many of the shows had twist or trick endings, and because of the half hour format there wasn’t an opportunity to narratively develop characters or go beyond a basic prermise.
Judith: But The Twilight Zone did go with one hour during the fourth season.
Andro: Exactly. Yet with the exception of some excellent installments that year, like “Miniature,” “On Thursday We Leave For Home” and “Jesse-Belle” the season was markedly weaker than any of the other four, when the half-hour shows were aired.
Judith: I always found that peculiar, but that shows that Serling and his writers were much more comfortable with the concise scripts.
Trent: Over the years I have found that many people confused episodes of one show as being part of the other. One of my favorite shows in all of television, and my favorite Outer Limits episode, “Demon with a Glass Hand” is one that some people think is part of The Twilight Zone. Another, an early first season episode “The Architects of Fear” has always seemed to confuse people. The author of The Outer Limits Companion, David J. Schow reported that one respondant to a newspaper query about the re-runs of old television shows provided a detailed plot of an Outer Limits episode called “Fun and Games,” declaring it a particularly scary Twilight Zone episode. The opening Twilight Zone film produced in 1983, depicts two people arguing over whether a particular episode was from the Outer Limits or The Twilight Zone. I mean, the two shows ran concurrantly even if Serling’s magnum opus began fours year earlier, and both were black and white anthology shows that attracted a wealth of famous guest stars – some whom often identify their flings on these classic shows as among the best work of their career. We know that to be true of Burgess Meredith (“Time Enough at Last” – The Twilight Zone) and Martin Landau (“The Man Who Was Never Born” – The Outer Limits) but there are so many more instances. Andro (laughs) I think you might want to have a little more to say about the Landau episode, no?
Andro: (smiling and gently guffawing) Yes indeed I certainly world. But first I’d like to say something about your own chosen name for this panel discussion. All Outer Limits aficianados know “Trent” (played brilliantly by Robert Culp) is the human computer so vital to the continuation to the human race in “Demon with a Glass Hand” which I know is your favorite episode – and one of Gwyllm’s top two or three I think – and the one identified most often as the show’s crowning achievement.
Trent: (laughs) Yes I am the sentry who stands vigil, guarding the future of all mankind! And yes, I do consider “Demon” with that stupendous Harlan Ellison screenplay as the show’s finest hour.
Andro: As to my surname, Andro was perhaps the most sympathetic character of any on the show, and “The Man Who Was Never Born” is an installent of profound poignancy. I remember reading that the episode’s writer Anthony Lawrence wanted to do a romantic fairy tale fueled by poetry and lyricism. Because Andro is such a tragic figure – he is not around to appreciate his successful trip through time, where he changes history – he basically sacrificed his own future to prevent the bacterial plague that turned the world into a barren wastelend.
Gwyllm: If I can just make my debut in this discussion, I’d like to first say that I think the episode “The Sixth Finger” rivals “The Man Who Was Never Born” in aching poignancy, though the main character I have taken my name for -Gwyllm Griffiths – is alive in his original form by the show’s conclusion, which of course we can’t say for the doomed intellectual Andro. I’d also like to broach the matter of science-fiction shows -and The Outer Limits despite a few horror and mystery scripts is primarily science fiction – that use the time travel guise to attempt to undo history but failed. In the original Star Trek of course was the episode that many consider that show’s greatest, “The City on the Edge of Forever” when Kirk falls in love with a war pacifist Edith Keeler, whose death must not be prevented if the United States is to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II. In the episode’s most wrenching scene Kirk is restrained by Spock and McCoy from interceding in the traffic accident that kills her. And since we are using the comparison with The Twilight Zone in other ways I think we all fondly remember the Lincoln episode “Back There” when a young man in a 1960’s men’s club finds himself in Washington D.C. on the day the 16th President is to be gunned down by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater. Aside from the fact that the episode revisits one of history’s most tragic events -one that can’t ever be undone —
Trent: Well we do have the matter of artistic license, but where would such an idea lead? – you’d practically need a complete television show to examine that possibility or another film like the one about the Nazis winning the war….
Gwyllm: Yes that is precisely my point. In any case “Back There” was intended to project an iron clad view of history, that what has happened can never be reversed. The characters and inidividual instances can be altered, but the central event in that equation is fool proof. “The Man Who Was Never Born” is rather unique in that the Earth’s devastation is reversed by way of the consummation of love, though at the expense of two lives, one erased as a result of the person who wrecked all the havoc never having been born and the other doomed to gliding in a lonely space ship through the recesses of the universe. What I loved so much about Andro, and why he was my favorite Outer Limits character is that he was a very literate, affected with a dark philosopy and romanticism that has dampened his outlook, but above all it is his selflessness. This Beauty and the Beast tale of a mutant falling for an attractive blonde already possesses the emotional hooks, but unlike that time worn fairy tale, there is no happy ending regardless of what has been averted. In an intimate science-fiction fantasy like “The Man Who Was Never Born” one yearns for an upbeat resolution involving the central players. There is no sadder Outer Limits show than this one.
Trent: Nicely said there Gwyllm. And I agree it is a particularly melancholic show, but by all barometers of measurement one of Outer Limit’s finest.
Judith: One of the great ones that I use when responding to people who believe The Twilight Zone was greater television. Of course with “The Man Who Was Never Born” you are bringing out the heavy artillery, but this show produced a scant 49 episodes, making the masterpieces in the mix all that more obvious. I also thought Martin Landau gave one of his best performances in his complete film and television career, and Shieley Knight as Noelle gave a performance of emotional vulnerability.
Andro: And then there’s the final scene, one of The Outer Limits’ most celebated, where Noelle and Andro head through the time-warp, and Andro realizes that because Noelle won’t be around to give birth to Bertram Cabot, Jr., the whole world of the future will have changed, and Andro himself will have never been born. Then he fades away, leaving us with an expressionistic shot of Noelle on an empty stage, adrift. The narrator spouts some positive words about the transformative power of love, but the image on the screen belies what he’s saying. We’re watching a woman weeping and shrinking into the vastness of the universe, completely alone, destined to blend in with the background. I also thought Dominic Frontier’s beautiful score gave a delivate aural underpinning to the dreamy images from cinematographer Conrad Hall.
Trent: Gwyllm, would you speak a little on “The Sixth Finger” since that is obviously your own favorite show in view of your name choice?
My own top show of course is the one where my alter ego Trent is featured, the most revered Outer Limits of them all, “Demon with a Glass Hand.” Robert Culp plays Trent, a man with no memories who is being pursued by aliens from the future who are on a missio to kill him. The only way he can learn what they want — and what his purpose is — is to find and restore three missing fingers from his left hand, which is not a hand at all but a speaking computer made of glass. Trent’s quest leads him to shocking revelations about not just himself but the fate of the human race. Superly directed by Byron Haskin (War of the Worlds), and written by the great Ellison and showcasing another of program’s excellent scores, “Demon” is regarded as not just the greatest episode of The Outer Limits but one of sci-fi’s finest televised hours. Most of the episode was shot in the Bradbury Building, the same location used for the final scenes of Blade Runner, adding to its exalted place in genre history.
