The Twilight Zone was almost always imaginative, well-written and witty - The Outer Limits was occasionally so. It had its virtues, many of them matters of tone and style, but they were more limited than TZ.
Main Differences Between The Outer Limits & The Twilight Zone?
- Thread starter Aike
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The show verged on nihilism at times, didn't it?
They had a recurring thing, which maybe was no more than an attempt to leave the audience with cold chills (not a bad thing, itself) involving the utter conquest or destruction of humanity by aliens. We are simply helpless failures, and often it's because of our most human emotional attributes including positive traits of hope, trust or affection. There's the Wil Wheaton episode, the episode that it was a sequel to, the episode where Brent Spiner played a brain-washing researcher working for alien overlords, the episode where these folks are buried underground as a last-ditch "doomsday defense" against alien invaders...if you totaled them all up, it might be the most common recurring theme on the new series.
Jaws was released.
It was a bit like Earth was a small-time greasy hood trying to take on well-groomed better-armed and well-resourced mobsters and having no chance whatsoever. Neither side was innocent or likable; the aliens were just supremely advantaged. In fact, they were so much so the old question arises : what could our planet have, in resources or us as slaves, that could really aid people who could already do these things?
What I recall, especially about the Wil Wheaton ep, is that there was no aspect of Humanity's existence or nature that did not serve the aliens in some way; likewise there was no weakness in the aliens, from physiology to attack pattern. A lot of these came off to me like the inverse of older movies and Saturday-morning serials-- wait a moment and you'll find out that the bad guy really didn't go into the sun--in fact, it thrives on solar radiation and can now control the sun itself! Like I said, there are downers that grow 'organically' from the plot, and downers where the victory is something the writers just assign to the enemy.
It also had the atmospheric black-and-white cinematography of Conrad Hall and the wonderful music of Dominic Frontiere in its first season.
Season 2 of the original Outer Limits suffered many of the same problems as Star Trek in its third season, but still managed to produce a handful of good episodes.
I’ve only seen a few episodes of the revived Outer Limits and don’t consider it worthy of mention.
Which one? Every season of the '90s OL except the second ended in a money-saving clip show, and one of them was even a 2-parter. It was a hell of a weird thing for an anthology series to have clip shows. Some of them seemed to indicate that multiple past episodes had been in the same continuity, but some reinterpreted the clips to fit a different storyline and at least one presented them as simulations. What's more, they did a number of sequels and recurring arcs over the course of the series; for instance, every time they did a story about androids (which inevitably went crazy and homicidal), it was the same company making them (they must have damn good lawyers). I've never been too fond of the revival series, but I'd be curious to know just how many episodes of the show could be treated as part of the same continuity, and how many different continuity threads there were over its run.
The most common recurring theme I remember in the "aliens crush humanity" stories is that hope, trust and/or compassion doom us.
They also did some stories where we're done in by those old standbys distrust and violence of course.
They also did some stories where we're done in by those old standbys distrust and violence of course.
Ahh, I forgot about the clip shows. Yeah, I found them disorientating, as if they were trying to tie past episodes together. In my opinion, they made the show weaker by not letting the episodes stand out on their own.
Well, it's very rare that a clip show makes its show stronger (just about the only case I can think of is Andromeda's "The Unconquerable Man"). Nobody really likes making them any more than anyone really likes watching them. The problem is that they're often unavoidable due to budgetary realities. A lot of cable and syndicated series are pretty much obligated to do an annual clip show to save money. That's an unfortunate position for an anthology series to be in, but budget overrides all other considerations.
Yeah, I guess it's pretty rare when a show actually manages to use a clip show to its advantage and actually be good. Other times, they just seem forced. And it's even worse with an anthology show, because then they've got to find some way to tie some of the episodes together.
The most common recurring theme I remember in the "aliens crush humanity" stories is that hope, trust and/or compassion doom us.
They also did some stories where we're done in by those old standbys distrust and violence of course.
Sort of like when you're a kid playing with that one neighbor kid who constantly declares : 'Uh-Uh--I win when you do that too--and that--and that....'
