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The Outer Limits

Season 1 | Season 2 |
Related Links | Cast |

(Programming note: Reviews of The Outer Limits are currently on hiatus.)

The Outer Limits (1963-1965) is a unique science fiction anthology TV series. Just like original Star Trek, I caught most of it when I was a kid while it was running five nights a week during my family's dinner hour. (Yes, my family watched scary science fiction shows while we ate dinner. Doesn't everyone?) We may not have been as into The Outer Limits as we were into Trek (wow, we were into Trek), but I still remember how striking and thought-provoking some of those Outer Limits episodes were. A few of them stayed with me. And not just because of the memorable monsters.

This show has been eclipsed, unfairly in my opinion, by its longer-running contemporary, The Twilight Zone. While deserving of its fame, The Twilight Zone was more fantasy-centered, only half an hour long, and tends to be remembered the most for the famous plot twists at the end. The Outer Limits was an hour long and explored the nature of humanity through the lens of more radical and thought-provoking "hard" science fiction. Definitely more my sort of thing.

Season One

1.1 The Galaxy Being
1.2 The Hundred Days of the Dragon
1.3 The Architects of Fear
1.4 The Man With the Power
1.5 The Sixth Finger
1.6 The Man Who Was Never Born
1.7 O.B.I.T.
1.8 The Human Factor
1.9 Corpus Earthling
1.10 Nightmare
1.11 It Crawled Out of the Woodwork
1.12 The Borderland
1.13 Tourist Attraction
1.14 The Zanti Misfits
1.15 The Mice
1.16 Controlled Experiment
1.17 Don't Open Till Doomsday
1.18 ZZZZZ
1.19 The Invisibles
1.20 The Bellero Shield
1.21 The Children of Spider County
1.22 Specimen: Unknown
1.23 Second Chance
1.24 Moonstone
1.25 The Mutant
1.26 The Guests
1.27 Fun and Games
1.28 The Special One
1.29 A Feasibility Study
1.30 Production and Decay of Strange Particles
1.31 The Chameleon
1.32 The Forms of Things Unknown

Season Two

2.1 Soldier
2.2 Cold Hands, Warm Heart
2.3 Behold Eck!
2.4 Expanding Human
2.5 Demon With a Glass Hand
2.6 Cry of Silence
2.7 The Invisible Enemy
2.8 Wolf 359
2.9 I, Robot
2.10 The Inheritors, Part 1
2.11 The Inheritors, Part 2
2.12 Keeper of the Purple Twilight
2.13 The Duplicate Man
2.14 Counterweight
2.15 The Brain of Colonel Barham
2.16 The Premonition
2.17 The Probe

Related Links

Other sixties series that Billie Doux has reviewed:

The Prisoner
Star Trek

Cast

Since The Outer Limits was an anthology, there wasn't actually a cast, but here are some of the notable actors that appeared on the show. Several of them were in more than one episode, playing different characters.

Cliff Robertson
Robert Culp
David McCallum
Martin Landau
Sally Kellerman
Martin Sheen
Bruce Dern
Dabney Coleman
Carroll O'Connor
Ruth Roman
Gloria Grahame
Nick Adams
Leonard Nimoy
Robert Duvall
Vera Miles
William Shatner
Geraldine Brooks
James Doohan
Adam West