I’ve been watching through The Outer Limits (1963-1965), a show I have fond memories of from when I was a kid.
Uff da. They’re mostly terrible so far. The best episode of the first five was 1.4 “The Man with the Power”, with Donald Pleasance, a pretty good story–but a lot better when it was the plot of Forbidden Planet seven years earlier.
with someone he doesn’t know very well.
That person is… himself!
The next episode is another–homage, let’s say, to older sf: this one borrowing from Hamilton’s “The Man Who Evolved” (1931). Edward Mulhare plays a scientist intent on exploring the secrets of humankind’s future evolution, something Man Was Not Meant to Know (Nor Woman Either, If That’s What You’re Thinking, Éowyn).
David McCallum plays the scientist’s test subject, an unemployed coal miner with ideas above his station. In the first part of the episode, he looks like David McCallum with dirt on his face. In the second part of the episode, after he’s stepped out of Mulhare’s magic box, imbued with all the inconceivable powers latent in a human being after !T*E*N! !T*H*O*U*S*A*N*D! !Y*E*A*R*S! of evolution, he looks like… Larry Fine from the Three Stooges.
Middle: Edward Mulhare as Professor Mathers (first name Jerry?)
Right: Larry Fine again, or a highly evolved David McCallum
This was too dark a vision of the future for me to handle at the moment, so I turned it off. I’ll finish it later when I feel more able to peer into the abyss.
