Season 1, Episode 5 “The Sixth Finger”
This episode was first broadcast October 14, 1963.
According to series producer Joseph Stefano: “‘The Sixth Finger’ was the first, and possibly the only script I read through and immediately said film it. Now, you can’t know what that means when I felt the need to rewrite every script that came in.”
Some of the sound effects heard in the radiation chamber were used in Forbidden Planet (1963).
This episode’s director, James Gladstone, would return for the season 2 two-parter “The Inheritors”.
The first draft was pared down to remove five speaking parts, a scene where Gwyllim kills the deputies, and another in which he attacks the mine. However, the trims made the episode short at 40 pages, so actor David McCallum suggested the addition of the piano-playing scene. The son of accomplished musicians, McCallum actually learned to play the piece although a recording was actually used in the final edit.
In the first draft Gwyllim lists morality as one of the things that hinders man’s development. Fearful of offending viewers, the production changed “morality” to “immorality”.
Along the same lines, it was originally scripted for Cathy to accidentally regress Gwyllim to an ape but, again, it was felt that doing so might offend some viewers so they made him a caveman instead. According to actor David McCallum: “There was also some discussion that Cathy should open the box and out would jump this sort of rhesus monkey. For that we would’ve used a real monkey. That was all that was left of Gwyllim, and he would go leaping around the room. I still think there would be something wonderful about the idea of this woman keeping her boyfriend as a pet monkey!”
Professor Mathers’ chimpanzee, Darwin, was played by stuntman Janos Prohaska who had played the alien in “Architects of Fear”. He’ll also make an in-costume appearance as an amoeba in the show’s final episode, “The Probe”.
John Chambers, who would go on to win the first ever Academy Award for make-up for his work on The Planet of Apes (1968), made a life mask of David McCallum and then sketched and designed the three stages of Gwyllim’s development.
I thought this was a pretty terrific episode with one of the most unintentionally hilarious moments on this rewatch so far. Professor Mathers steps out of a room and hears someone playing a piano. Curious, he heads down the hall one way, looks around and then realizes “Wait, it’s actually coming from the piano upstairs!”
David McCallam was fantastic (Most of you know him as Donald Mallard from NCIS, but he’ll always be Illya Kuriyakin to me), and I thought Jill Haworth did a great job as the simple yet down-to-earth Cathy. I did like the fact that his fast-paced evolutionary process matured him past feelings of hate and vengeance. I thought that was a nice little unexpected development. Apparently, the original draft of the script called for Gwyllim to be devolved back to an amoeba state but, again, the production felt this might offend viewers and scrapped the idea.
Boo!
Season 1, Episode 6, “The Man Who Was Never Born”
This episode was first broadcast October 28, 1963.
Andro, the name of Martin Landau’s character, is Greek for “man”.
According to writer Anthony Lawrence: “I wanted to do a romantic fairy tale . I wanted to touch people emotionally with a kind of lyrical, poetic thing that not
too many people were doing in TV. ”
Martin Landau recalled: “” I got a telephone call from Joe Stefano. ” He said, “There’s a script on it’s way I’d like you to have a look at because I think you’ll find the character very interesting .” The script arrived within the hour, and I read it, and loved it. “
Shirley Knight and Martin Landau already knew each prior to production as, five years earlier, Knight had been a student in an acting class taught by Landau. He attended her first wedding: “But that time,”said Landau in an interview, “I didn’t pack a gun .“
Knight, meanwhile, revealed: ” I almost didn’t do the part because I was five months pregnant. Everybody was so wonderful; Joe S tefano, Conrad Hall. I remember asking Martin “So, are you going to be giving me advice in this other capacity, actor to actor?” And he said, “Absolutely not. You’re on your own .” Leslie Stevens was a very socially conscious man, a loving producer who cared about what he was doing, which is why he did it so well, I think.”
Apparently, the Andro mask was ill fitting. Recalled one crew member: “Martin Landau couldn’t breathe. It’s too bad some of those things couldn’t have been taped; there were some horrendous bloopers that went on .“
The Outer Limits Companion on that final shot: “Noelle,
alone in the spaceship cockpit, dwindles back and back
into space until she becomes just another star in the
firmament. Hall laid a great deal of camera track down
inside KTTV’ s Stage #2, got the longest boom mike
MGM had, and lit only the two cockpit seats, killing
every other light onstage . Once the camera had pulled
far enough away from Shirley Knight, she was
replaced by a photo cutout that was shrunk optically.”
Interestingly, this was not originally planned as the episode’s final shot. In the original edit, Noelle awakens on a grassy knoll and encounters a man in what is described as “an air car”. The following dialogue ensues –
MAN : Could I help you?
NOELLE (after a pause) : What is this place?
MAN : It is London. (smiles) That is, if you follow this road, you will come into the Old Town.
NOELLE : And the time?
MAN : The time?
NOELLE: The year?
MAN (a smile, then ): Twenty-0ne-forty-eight. Are you lost?
NOELLE (pauses) : No. Just alone.
But the episode was running long so they lost this epilogue, choosing instead the more somber ending that sees Noelle stranded in space.
Mixed feelings about this episode. It’s one of the show’s most highly rated entries and, while I really love it on a conceptual level, there were just too many instances where the viewer is required to buy into illogical instances. How did Andro learn to pilot a spaceship? What are the chances that the ship would crash land on Earth in close proximity to his target? Why did he wait until the wedding to dispatch of Cabot when he could have done it in a more discreet manner? Why did Noelle run after Andro after he disrupted her wedding and why would she throw everything away to be with a guy she’d met only days earlier? If Andro was such a sympathetic character as scripted, why didn’t he reveal his true form to Noelle before whisking her off into space?
Still, I appreciated what they were trying to do here and thought the darker ending was very effective. What did you all think? Which ending would you have preferred?
Season 1, Episode 7, “O.B.I.T.”
This episode was first broadcast November 4, 1963.
This episode was written by Meyer Dolinsky who also wrote “The Architects of Fear” and would go on to write “ZZZZ”.
According to Dolinsky: “Originally, I had the OBIT machine all over the place. I changed it because they wanted to cut costs. My canvas had been wider. I confined it to the Army base, which helped the dramatics but wasn’t as much fun..“
The script actual names the alien homeworld as Helos, but this reference was lost in the final edit.
The O.B.I.T. console featured in this episode would serve as Mr. Waverly’s communication console in the first season of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964).
Actor Peter Breck, who played Senator Orville, was a remarkable quick-draw, able to draw a gun in 16/100th of a second. Breck also reportedly possessed a photographic memory that allowed him to memorize a script after two or three readings. He, ironically, died of Alzheimers.
Jeff Corey, who played Byron Lomax, refused to name names when summoned before the Un-American House Activities Committee, choosing instead to offer an acting critique of the previous witness. This offense cost him as he was unable to land film or television work for the next twelve years.
Harry Townes, who played Dr. Clifford Scott, also appeared on The Twilight Zone in “The Four of Us Are Dying”.
Very well-written, provocative but undeniably a little dull, this episode is surprisingly topical given our increasing surveillance state. Lomax’s claim that people who have nothing to hide shouldn’t be worried about the government spying on them echoes supporters of the Patriot Act (among other increasingly Orwellian panopticon models). A solid and fascinating episode but, in the end, too confined and slow-paced for me to grant it a spot in the Top 10.
Season 1, Episode 8, “The Human Factor”
This episode was first broadcast November 11, 1963.
This episode was written by Donald Duncan (with some revisions by producer Joseph Stefano) who also wrote the big screen adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. Duncan was displeased with one particular scene which I also found kind of strange: “You may have noticed the blurry bit where the heroine attempts to get the keys to the cell. I had rewritten this scene at the request of Joe Stefano, who had said, ‘Let’s get some suspense into it, so she has difficulty getting the key. ‘ The panel holding the keys was placed behind a switchboard operator, who thereby became its guardian. The excuse manufactured by the heroine so that she could approach the panel was that she pretended to forget the number of her own extension, and so had to look it up in the phone book, which was right next to the panel. While doing so, she pinches the keys. In the finished film, the key panel was ten feet behind the operator, and within easy reach of the heroine, so that all my dialogue-which had been retained became meaningless . When I saw the film, I asked Stefano how come, and he said something like, ‘You know, I thought that looked sort of strange myself, but no one else said anything, so I figured it must have some kind of subtle meaning, and I wasn’t going to lay myself open by asking any questions ! ‘”
In the first draft of the script, Ingrid’s line to Hamilton,
“You don’t need a woman or a wife ” originally ended
with “but you might want a mistress. For some reason, the decision was made to lose it.
This was director Abner Biberman’s sole episode of The Outer Limits, but he directed four episodes of The Twilight Zone: “The Dummy”, “The Incredible World of Horace Ford”, “Number 12 Looks Just Like You”, and “I Am the Night – Color Me Black”.
Special effects advisor Byron Haskin and Wah Chang of Project Unlimited designed a life-size figure encased in translucent ice, with frozen stalactites hanging from its outstretched arm and a yellow bulb inside the head that caused the empty eye sockets to glow. Nicknamed “Chill Charlie”, it never appeared in the episode. Instead, a far less effective alternate was used: a guy in an icicle-encrusted jacket with black eyes. Chill Charlie did, however, appear in some publicity stills.
This episode marked Sally Kellerman’s first t.v. role.
Actor Ivon Dixon, who played Kinchloe on Hogan’s Heroes and made two Twilight Zone appearances, as Bolie Jackson in “The Big Tall Wish” and Reverend Anderson in “I Am the Night – Color Me Black”.
Ceeerpies, this episode was not good. It felt like a mishmash of various plot elements that never really came together. And what exactly was Colonel Campbell’s plan? He was going to set off a nuclear device in order to…hide the fact he had abandoned someone for dead? Was that it? And don’t even get me started on the beautiful Ingrid’s infatuation with her decrepit-looking boss. Also, the whole “Hey, show me how I could set off the nuclear device if I – theoretically – was going to do it – which, of course, I am not” scene ludicrous.
I’ve noticed that one thing The Twilight Zone had going for it that The Outer Limits does not are those trademark final twists. There was, of course, the final, shocking twist of Noelle being stranded in space last episode, but that wasn’t so much planned as it was an 11th hour decision as a result of the episode running long. Gotta be honest. I’m not enjoying the straight-forward storytelling as much.
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