DISCOVER--the thirty best episodes of The Outer Limits
Despite the presence of some truly wonderful vintage pulp sci-fi bug-eyed monsters from the likes of John Chambers, Janos Prohaska, and most notably Wah Chang, this was a sophisticated and sensible series for those with broad imaginations and artistic sensitivity, and probably the most intelligent science-fiction series ever produced of television, the perfect fusion of stylish direction and camerawork, remarkable writing and ideas, and brilliant performances. Younger members of the audience may scoff at the not-so-special effects, but the strength is in the above qualities, not a few wobbly cardboard spaceships, and virtually every sci-fi movie or series produced since the 1980s owes a debt to the content of either The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits.
You can ignore the supposed cast list under the main title. This was an anthology series with different players each week. Vic Perrin was the narrator, Bob Johnson was a voice artist, Ben Wright was a bit player, and William Douglas played a couple of the monsters. Episodes are listed in the order they were produced.
There were 49 episodes of The Outer Limits. The fact that this list could only be trimmed down to thirty shows just how good this series was.
You can ignore the supposed cast list under the main title. This was an anthology series with different players each week. Vic Perrin was the narrator, Bob Johnson was a voice artist, Ben Wright was a bit player, and William Douglas played a couple of the monsters. Episodes are listed in the order they were produced.
There were 49 episodes of The Outer Limits. The fact that this list could only be trimmed down to thirty shows just how good this series was.
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30 titles
- DirectorLeslie StevensStarsLee PhilipsJacqueline ScottCliff RobertsonA scientific technician working at a radio station makes first contact with an energy alien from the Andromeda galaxy. An underling's disobedience brings it to Earth.A radio ham inadvertently makes contact with an extraterrestrial being and accidentally draws the creature to Earth...
With Cliff Robertson - DirectorByron HaskinStarsSidney BlackmerPhillip PineMark RobertsA new skin molding technique enables a foreign power to replace a presidential figure inside the U.S. government with an agent.The President of the United States is replaced by an impostor with a malleable face...
With Sidney Blackmer - DirectorByron HaskinStarsRobert CulpLeonard StoneMartin WolfsonOne scientist from a group of ten is chosen to undergo a painful and bizarre mutation from human to Thetan.A scientific cabal plots to terrify the world into peace by creating an artificial but crucially credible alien threat...
With Robert Culp
Featuring an extraordinary alien creation by the late, great Janos Prohaska - DirectorLaslo BenedekStarsDonald PleasencePriscilla MorrillFred BeirA mild, timid, man unknowingly acquires the power to subconsciously vaporize those who aggravate him.A bitter little man finds his pent-up rage taking violent telekinetic form...
With Donald Pleasance - DirectorJames GoldstoneStarsDavid McCallumJill HaworthEdward MulhareA scientist hires a miner to be the human subject in an experiment to speed-up evolution, which slowly turns the miner into a highly intelligent, alien-like being.A frustrated and angry young man is transformed into a callous and insensitive evolved man of the future with huge brain...
With David McCallum
Amazing make-up job by John Chambers - DirectorLeonard J. HornStarsMartin LandauShirley KnightJohn ConsidineA time traveler desperately tries to stop the birth of an inventor whose bacterium turns humans into mutants.A man with the chance of travelling back through time to prevent a nuclear holocaust is put in an appalling moral dilemma...
With Martin Landau
Superb direction on this one from Leonard Horn - DirectorGerd OswaldStarsPeter BreckJeff CoreyJoanne GilbertAt the top secret Cypress Hills Research Center, scientists are kept under constant watch through O.B.I.T., Outer Band Individuated Teletracer, a mysterious electronic device that tunes in on the different wave lengths of the human body.A superb Wah Chang alien fronts this yarn about extraterrestrial infiltration of a paranoid Big Brother security system...
With Jeff Corey - DirectorGerd OswaldStarsRobert CulpSalome JensBarry AtwaterEnabled by the metal plate in his head, Dr. Paul Cameron can overhear the immediate invasion plans of two parasitic rock aliens. Now they must kill him.A man with a metal plate in his head overhears aliens plotting a take-over of Earth... and then planning his demise when they realise he's aware of them...!
With Robert Culp - DirectorJohn ErmanStarsJames ShigetaEd NelsonMartin SheenA stranded team of soldiers are captured and experimented on by demonic-looking aliens.In a war between the Earth and the alien Ebonites, human soldiers are tortured by callous interrogators...
With Martin Sheen
Another wonderful alien from Wah Chang. - DirectorGerd OswaldStarsScott MarloweKent SmithBarBara LunaA dustball caught in a vacuum cleaner gives birth to a mindless energy creature, which a research director uses to mercilessly exert unconditional control over his staff.An energy force is controlling a scientific research institute with fatal heart monitor devices...
With Ed Asner
The opening scene with the cleaning lady is classic typical Outer Limits... - DirectorLeonard J. HornStarsMichael TolanOlive DeeringRobert F. SimonAliens from the planet Zanti decide to make Earth a penal colony for their criminals.An escaped bank robber stumbles onto a covert military liaison with evil ant-like aliens...
With Bruce Dern
A wonderful episode often recalled by the series' more casual viewers, incredibly well done for the period... - DirectorAlan Crosland Jr.StarsHenry SilvaDiana SandsMichael HigginsDr. Thomas Kellander, Director of Neo-Kinematics, is in charge of a machine that will break down matter to electrical waves so it can be transmitted like radio and reassembled at the reception point.A convict volunteers for a dangerous military experiment involving contact with an alien race, and discovers a plot...
With Henry Silva - DirectorGerd OswaldStarsMiriam HopkinsJohn HoytRussell CollinsOn the night of her marriage in 1929, Mrs. Harvey Kry's husband suddenly disappeared. He made the mistake of unwrapping a gift labeled "Don't Open Till Doomsday.Two eloping teenagers trying to evade the girl's stern, authoritarian father stumble into an appalling ongoing tragedy involving a deranged elderly woman and a malevolent alien force trapped in a box...
With Miriam Hopkins
A perfect example of what SFTV could get away with that straight drama never could. This is about the treachery of the old and the naïveté of the young, with a wonderfully hideous creature that resembles a fusion between the sex organs! Weird gothic horror, with honourable mentions to Nellie Burt and John Hoyt. Wonderful. - DirectorJohn BrahmStarsPhilip AbbottMarsha HuntJoanna FrankAn entomologist develops a machine to communicate with bees. Unknown to him, a queen bee has taken human form, with plans of her own.Great fun, with an entomologist plagued by a pouty Lolita who applies to be his lab assistant, but is actually a bee in human form!
With Phillip Abbott, Joanna Frank
Frank is gorgeous as the bee girl, and Marsha Hunt very good as the understandably troubled wife. Marvellous direction and lighting. - DirectorGerd OswaldStarsDon GordonGeorge MacreadyDee HartfordThree nobodies volunteer to become part of a new world order by allying with body-bonding crab-like alien invaders - but one nobody is a G.I.A. mole.Bodysnatching alien parasites that have already infiltrated the highest echelons of the power structure start painfully attaching themselves to disaffected loners and outcasts of society for use as foot soldiers...
With Don Gordon, George MacReady, Walter Burke, Neil Hamilton
What could have been another typical aliens-take-over-humans yarn becomes instead an incisive study of the attitudes and mentality of both fascism and the military, with extraordinary over-the-top performances from George MacReady and Neil Hamilton. Invisibles, of course, has a double meaning here, referring not only to the alien infiltrators, but the position of their soldiers in everyday life--low intelligence non-entities, cannon-fodder. The entire cast is magnificent from top to bottom, and the creatures themselves wonderfully absurd. An absolute joy from start to finish. - DirectorJohn BrahmStarsMartin LandauSally KellermanChita RiveraA humble laser scientist's maniacally ambitious wife brings ruin to her husband, herself and an accidentally snared alien from beyond the stars.The greed of power-hungry individuals, one a self-serving idealist, the other the wife of a timid but talented young scientist, results in murder and madness when contact is inadvertently made with an alien life form...
With Martin Landau, Sally Kellerman, Neil Hamilton, John Hoyt
Landau and Kellerman are great, but Neil Hamilton steals the show for a second time as he relishes some wonderful dialogue. John Hoyt of Don't Open Till Doomsday is the alien. More wonderful gothic horror from first season Outer Limits. - DirectorLeonard J. HornStarsLee KinsolvingKent SmithJohn MilfordThe male-scarce planet Eros needs boys. An Erosian returns to Earth to collect its five fully grown sired sons, but one is held up on trumped-up murder charges.Impotent mandible-faced aliens that impregnated Earth women decades earlier to replenish male stocks return to collect their now teenaged progeny
With Lee Kinsolving, Kent Smith
Another typical Outer Limits twist on an old cliche. Standard 1950s bug-eyed monster stuff, but beautifully done, and who couldn't love a monster in a suit and tie? - DirectorAlan Crosland Jr.StarsLarry PennellWarren OatesWalter BurkeA scientist visits an isolated expedition on a planet plagued by radioactive dust storms. He discovers that one of the team has been mutated by the dust and gained telepathic powers, which he is using to terrorize the rest of the colony.Visiting a remote scientific community, an investigator finds out that one of their number has been transformed into a telepathic, mind-reading madman who is keeping his colleagues in subservient terror...
With Warren Oates
The bug-eyed monster to see 'em all off. Pure pulp SF, but isn't that what this list is all about? - DirectorPaul StanleyStarsGeoffrey HorneNellie BurtVaughn TaylorA drifter enters a lonely house, unaware that it is actually an alien creature in disguise. Soon he realizes that he is a prisoner, along with several other half-mad inhabitants, but he is determined to escape.A young drifter is held captive in an alien construct of a gothic mansion populated by wretched individuals frozen in time by an alien life form studying human nature...
With Geoffrey Horne, Gloria Grahame, Nellie Burt
Don't Open Till Doomsday revisited, but worth it... - DirectorGerd OswaldStarsNick AdamsNancy MaloneBill HartFor entertainment, a superior alien pits an Earth pair against a Caligo Galaxy pair in a game fought to the death. For the losing planet - annihilation.A lonely woman and a two-bit gangster find themselves forced to fight an evil alien hunter with the Earth's survival at stake...
With Nick Adams, Nancy Malone
Similar to Star Trek's Arena, or indeed The Most Dangerous Game (perhaps the most plundered plot of all time), and one of the few episodes to feature a cackling, comic-book-style evil alien. Still good though, and pure pulp... - DirectorByron HaskinStarsSam WanamakerPhyllis LoveJoyce Van PattenThe inhabitants of a typical suburban street find that they've been abducted by a diseased alien race, which wants to discover if humans will make suitable slaves for them.An entire city block is transported to another planet, where the inhabitants must forget their petty squabbles and band together to save the Earth.
With Sam Wanamaker, David Opatoshu, Joyce Van Patten
Dark and downbeat, with a fabulously hysterical pre-credits teaser. Remade quite efficiently by the crappy 1990s reboot with Outer Limits veteran David McCallum, and one of only two episodes in that series worth seeing (the other one A Stitch in Time). - DirectorGerd OswaldStarsRobert DuvallHoward CaineDouglas HendersonTo penetrate the spaceship of secretive alien visitors, a compromised agent is surgically altered to resemble them and learn their purpose.A cynical dirty ops agent is hauled out of drunken retirement by the military to get inside an alien saucer...
With Robert Duvall
A good early role suited to Robert Duvall, also superb in Time Tunnel's Chase Through Time... - DirectorGerd OswaldStarsVera MilesCedric HardwickeScott MarloweTwo disparate women with a body in their car trunk come upon a house by chance wherein a crazed inventor has a time machine that can bring back the dead.Two young women who murder a blackmailing gigolo stumble onto (another Outer Limits) gothic mansion where an odd young man plays with time and space...
With David McCallum, Vera Miles, Barbara Rush
Back-door pilot, the very recognisable score for which was later used for The Invaders. Nothing quite like this has ever been seen on U.S. TV before, and nor will it again, I suspect. - DirectorCharles F. HaasStarsWilliam ShatnerGeraldine BrooksLloyd GoughFollowing a mission to Venus, an astronaut finds himself constantly cold and has strange dreams about encountering an alien outside his spacecraft.An astronaut returns to Earth suffering from debilitating coldness and hallucinations of a strange alien being...
With William Shatner
An early trip into space for Star Trek's Captain Kirk... We are now in the series' second season with a new creative team more inclined to reach for the cliche rather than try to avoid it. Nevertheless, there were a few good ones, flawed or not... - DirectorByron HaskinStarsRobert CulpArlene MartelAbraham SofaerContinuance of the human race against alien invaders depends on a man with an incomplete glass computer hand and no memory of his past.Hostile alien invaders travel through time to pursue a desperate young man they believe knows the hiding place of the human race...
With Robert Culp
Talky but atmospheric, with yet another superb performance by Robert Culp. - DirectorLeon BensonStarsHoward Da SilvaFord RaineyMarianna HillA young woman hires a cynical lawyer to prove that her uncle was not killed by his invention - a sophisticated robot.A reclusive and cynical lawyer is tempted out of retirement to defend a robot on trial for killing the scientist who built it.
With Howard Da Silva
Da Silva makes a meal of his role as the lawyer, and Star Trek's Leonard Nimoy co-stars as a smug reporter. Nimoy was back for the 1990s remake, but as the lawyer. - DirectorJames GoldstoneStarsRobert DuvallDonald HarronJames ShigetaAn investigator seeks four ex-soldiers, each shot in the head with bullets fashioned from a meteorite, who heal, develop genius minds and relentlessly carry out an alien mission.Government agents hunt down a group of soldiers who have been taken over by an alien intelligence for a mysterious and unknown purpose that even they don't understand.
With Robert Duvall, Steve Ihnat, Ivan Dixon - DirectorJames GoldstoneStarsRobert DuvallDonald HarronSteve IhnatThe investigation into four men under alien mind enslavement and the purpose behind their relentless creation of a spaceship continues as handicapped children are gathered.Despite over-earnest dialogue and steely, melodramatic performances that render numerous scenes laughable, and despite the unintentional humour and even the ludicrously cheap spacecraft literally held together with string (despite the awe of the laboratory worker in part one), the beautifully executed sentimental scenes of this story still overwhelm and seduce the contemporary audience today. When Ivan Dixon asks God if the actions he has been compelled to perform "are good", or the little blind girl exclaims "look what my hands look like", all is forgiven. And those final scenes in the spaceship and as the camera pulls back between all the gun-toting federal agents, are superb. A triumph over adversity that is down to the choice of cast and director.
- 1963–196551mTV-146.9 (434)TV EpisodeDirectorCharles F. HaasStarsRobert WebberWarren StevensGail KobeAn overworked Earth scientist gives away his emotions in exchange for two alien equations needed to build a disintegration gun.A suicidal scientist distracted from his work by his human emotions is eager to transfer them to an emotionless alien being.
With Warren Stevens, Robert Webber
The episode title sounds like a really bad 1970s progressive rock album, but the finished product is more like a perfect recreation of those 1950s sci-fi monster comics Marvel used to turn out before they reinvented the super-hero. Robert Webber is excellent as the invading alien introduced to the concept of emotions, while wooden Warren Stevens is in his element as the scientist who has surrendered them. The alien goon squad is a cracker, but it's not all pulp monster mash--there's a wonderfully creepy scene when the alien materialises in the back of Stevens' car. The downside is yet another of the second season's drink-fixing devoted wives, a cloying simpleton who would be enough to drive anyone to suicide, and whose dress is almost as terrifying as the extraterrestrial bug-eyed Beagle Boys... - DirectorGerd OswaldStarsDewey MartinMary MurphyEmma TysonA husband and wife finds themselves in an elongated pocket of alternate time where their younger daughter is about to be killed by a truck.A test pilot and his wife find time temporarily frozen and their young daughter about to be hit by a car...
With Dewey Martin, Mary Murphy
A very Twilight Zone-y episode, but as gripping and weirdly discomfiting as any Outer Limits.
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Obsessed with the popular culture of the 1960s and surrounding decades, Jon Abbott has written about this series for several publications over the years, and recently featured it in his book Cool TV 2: More Cult TV from the 1960s. He has been writing about film and TV for over thirty years in around two dozen different publications, trade, populist, and specialist. He is the author of several books, including
Irwin Allen Television Productions 1964-1970,
Stephen J. Cannell Television Productions: A History of All Series and Pilots,
The Elvis Films,
Cool TV of the 1960s: Three Shows That Changed the World,
and Strange New World: Sex Films of the 1970s.
See his Amazon author's page, and his other lists on the IMDB, all under the pre-fix DISCOVER.