January 18, 2025: Our Outer Limits rewatch continues with season 2, episodes 9-12! - Joseph Mallozzi's Weblog (2025)

January 18, 2025: Our Outer Limits rewatch continues with season 2, episodes 9-12! - Joseph Mallozzi's Weblog (1)

Season 2, Episode 9 “I, Robot”

This episode was first broadcast November 14, 1964

“I, Robot” is one of only two Outer Limits episodes to feature a robot/android.

This episode was actually based on a couple of short stories about a robot named Adam Link (“I, Robot” and “The Trial of Adam Link”) by Eando Binder. Eando and his brother Otto wrote a series of stories about the robot and this series would later inspire Isaac Asimov.

In the original story, Adam is found guilty but ultimately pardoned, allowing him to open his own business: Adam Link Inc.

Story editor Seeleg Lester recalled: “When I told ABC the story, I’ll never forget Adrian Samish saying ‘Who the hell cares about a pile of tin?’ And when the thing finally played on TV, I got a lump in my throat watching that pile of tin throw himself in front of a truck to save that little girl.“

This episode is full of not so subtle allusions to Frankenstein (1931). Interestingly, in the film version, the monster drowns the child while in Shelley’s novel, the monster saves the child from drowning as Adam does in this episode.

I have a soft spot for robots and androids and, for that reason, I really did like the Adam character even if he did feel at times a little robotic in his speech patterns. The flashbacks to him learning (and the scenes where he was sitting down to a good book) were kind of cute and the set-up intrigued, but the shift to courtroom drama really bogged things down. Also, the ending would have been much more effective if The Twilight Zone had not done in two years earlier in “I Sing the Body Electric”. This one was…so-so for me.

January 18, 2025: Our Outer Limits rewatch continues with season 2, episodes 9-12! - Joseph Mallozzi's Weblog (2)

Season 2, Episode 10 “The Inheritors, Part 1”

This episode was first broadcast November 21, 1964

Story Editor Seeleg Lester had always wanted to do a story where aliens aren’t a malevolent force bent on invasion: “Monsters coming to destroy the world is garbage. We had the god-damndest trouble with ABC because they didn’t understand the story. I told Ben: ‘We’ll fight for this. If they want monsters, we’ll put in the other shows.’ And when ABC saw the final-draft script, they told us, ‘You know, this could make a damned good story — let’s not fuck it up!’ That illustrates the kind of mentality the network had.”

According to Lester, “[Writer] Sam Neuman came into my office and said ‘Seeleg, I need some money, and I’ve got an idea for one of those Outer Limits shows . But I’ve just got the opening; I don’t know anything else. ‘His idea was that a bunch of doctors are watching an encephalograph during an operation, and suddenly two brainwave pattern s appear on the screen. One doctor says ‘some entity has entered the brain of that man.’ Sam and I entered into weeks of discussion on how to use that, and finally came up with a concept .”

But, according to producer Ben Brady: “Seeleg got bogged down starting with The Invisible Enemy,’ and never really recovered his pace. He worked on the first draft of ‘The Inheritors’ for nearly ten weeks, and we just couldn’t afford that. These things had to come out faster, and that’s why I brought in Milton Krims and Bob Dennis. Seeleg labored over every script and got way behind. We had been the best of friends until The Outer Limits brought us to some very harsh scenes, and that’s a recollection that’s rather unhappy.“

Part one was originally titled “The Hui Tan Project” which was a a reference to the area of Vietnam where the meteor crashed.

Assistant to the producer B. Ritchie Payne recalled: “I came in one day and Seeleg’s secretary, Maggie Lutwen, was crying . She was typing the script, and she said, ‘Ritchie, this is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read!’ I told her that yes, by god, it had gotten to me, too. Ben had to fight very hard to get New York to even aIlow him to do a two-parter.“

Director James Goldstone had the cast rehearse for two days prior to filming.

All the same, writer Sam Newman was dissatisfied with the results: “The script was better than the finished film.”

Seeleg Lester intended for the Inheritors to serve as a backdoor pilot for a new series…that never came to be.

A somewhat promising start to what is considered to be one of the show’s best. I don’t know if that is going to hold true for me as I found the direction rather staid and Duvall’s performance surprisingly bland. Still, I am intrigued and looking forward to seeing how Part 2 delivers. To be continued…

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Season 2, Episode 11 “The Inheritors, Part 2”

This episode was first broadcast November 28, 1964

According to story editor Seeleg Lester, he wanted to incorporate a Pied Piper aspect to the script. As a result, Part 2 was initially titled “The Pied Pipe Project”.

Director James Goldstone was faced with the challenge of showing the plywood spaceship ascending to the heavens: “We couldn’t do it optically, and didn’t have the time or the money to shoot it any other way, so Ken Peach and I just dollied the camera back until we were off the stage, then tilted up to the sky.”

The speech Lieutenant Minns delivers at episode’s end was largely improvised by actor Steve Ilnat. According to Morgan Brittany who played the physically challenged Minerva Gordon: “He put it into his own words… not a word-for-word memorization. It just came out so beautifully. To me, it made the whole show… You’ve never in your life seen crew members so mesmerized. Just silence on the set.”

Ilnat suffered from a heart condition that made him reticent to commit to a role as a series regular. As a result, he passed up many an opportunity. He suffered a heart attack and died at the all-too-young age of 38.

Dee Pollock, who played the youthful Pfc Francis Hadley and kinda reminded me of a young Michael Shanks as Daniel Jackson, left acting to dedicate himself to the pursuit of religion, an off-shoot of Hinduism. He was such a notable figure within the movement that, after suffering a fatal heart attack, the Dalai Lama noted his death and asked for prayers.

James Frawley, who played Pvt Robert Renaldo, became a director. His credits included The Muppet Movie (1979), 28 episodes of the Monkees, 5 episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, and many more. He too died of a heart attack.

Jan Shutan, who played Mrs. Subiron, is perhaps best remembered as Lieutenant Mira Romaine in Star Trek’s “The Lights of Zetar” (1969).

Some viewers may recognize actor Kim Hector, who played her son Johnny, for his portrayal of Whitt in the Twilight Zone episode “The Bewitchin’ Pool”.

Despite a bit of a slow star (Part 1), I thought this one came together nicely and I consider the whole one of the show’s better stories. I did quite like the ending even though I wondered about the Johnny character who, unlike the other orphans, actually had a mother who would miss him. I also found Duvall’s performance and arc surprisingly lackluster. All the same, this one will probably end up in my top ten.

January 18, 2025: Our Outer Limits rewatch continues with season 2, episodes 9-12! - Joseph Mallozzi's Weblog (4)

Season 2, Episode 12 “Keeper of the Purple Twilight”

This episode was first broadcast December 5, 1964

Years after this episode aired, no one associated with the production could explain the significance of its title.

The music that plays during Professor Plummer’s night time ride was a re-use from Earth vs. the Flying Saucers.

In their quest to hire very tall actors for the towering aliens, the production ended up going with Gene Wiley and Leroy Ellis, both players for the LA Lakers.“

Four years later, actor Warren Stevens would play yet another alien with a poor understanding of emotions in the Star Trek episode “By Any Other Name”.

Steve Lord, who wrote the first draft of the script, claimed: ” It was so butchered I cannot recall much about it. It was more of an intellectual melodrama, which was mutilated by a hack and overloaded with monsters . [Producer] Ben Brady had little feeling for cerebral entertainment. [Story Editor] Seeleg Lester was around, too, rewriting anything and everything.“

In truth, Seeleg was busy working on The Inheritors at the time and didn’t touch Lord’s script. That task fell to Milton Krims because, according to Ben Brady: “The idea was beautiful. To have an alien pick up human emotions. All I can tell you about Stephen Lord is that he wished to christ he could whip it, but he just couldn’t pin it to the mat. Everything he tried was no good.“

And so it fell to Krim to produce a satisfactory rewrite. And, in Lord’s estimation, he failed: “Krims made it a joke, a worthless Saturday matinee kind of thing.” According to David J. Schow in “The Outer Limits Companion”, soon after the episode aired, Lord sent producer Ben Brady a six-foot funeral wreath with a card that read : MAY THE KEEPER OF THE PURPLE TWILIGHT REST IN PIECES.”

“I thought it was very funny,”reminisced producer’s assistant B. Ritchie Payne. “I put the wreath up in the office, then had to take it down because Ben came in and didn ‘t think it was funny – he was darned mad!“

Well, I mean…okay. Not a particularly remarkable episode although I did kind of like the look of those oversized aliens. Also, it’s always nice to see actor Edward Platt (Get Smart’s The Chief) in these 60’s productions as he is always great. Also, for the life of me, the title of this episode will just not stay in my memory. I must have had to look it up at least a dozen times in researching the production history and episode trivia. It reminded me of SG-1’s “Cold Lazarus”, a title that elicited the following terse response from a studio executive: “Who the hell is Lazarus and why is he cold?!”

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January 18, 2025: Our Outer Limits rewatch continues with season 2, episodes 9-12! - Joseph Mallozzi's Weblog (2025)
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