Season 2 (1964-1965)
Outer Limits, The — The Original Series,
Season 2 (1964-1965) (DVD)
Science Fiction Video
ISBN: 0-7928-5807-7
Publisher: MGM Home Entertainment, Inc., $69.96
This set of DVDs is the second half of the entire original Outer Limits series from the 60s. It continues the innovative and explorative direction that the first season started, even though the show was canceled before a full season could be completed.
Since Season Two was never finished, this DVD set contains only 17 episodes (as opposed to the 32 on the first set). However, as with the first set, these three DVDs are double-sided, something which I’ve complained about before. The series is good, but the fact that they put them on double-sided discs makes it very difficult to figure out which disc is which and what episodes are on them. I would have thought they would have learned from the first set. The packaging is also flawed again, with the chance of the DVDs getting damaged over time a good possibility. There is just no excuse for this poor of a packaging job!
Even though there were some dramatic changes in the show during the second season, including executive changes, poor ratings, and the threat of cancellation (which finally came through), some of the best Outer Limits episodes were filmed during this time. These include: “Soldier,” a story about a warrior from the future brought back to our times that supposedly inspired The Terminator; “Behold Eck!,” a cool show about a two-dimensional creature caught in our universe; “Demon With a Glass Hand,” a rather low-budget entry that somehow turned out to be one of the best Outer Limits shows to date; and one of my favorites, “Wolf 359,” in which a miniature planet is created to study our possible future with nasty results (a concept that was also supposedly factored somewhere into Star Trek: The Next Generation).
Of course there are also some lemons in Season Two. “The Invisibly Enemy,” which started out good, but ends on a tacky note; “The Duplicate Man,” which was not bad, but had the the season’s worst monster costume; “The Brain of Colonel Barham” is just plain silly; and worst of all, “The Premonition,” a show with 75% still-frame shots of the world frozen in time! This last episode I used the fast forward button to get through, as it was that bad.
As with the first season of the original Outer Limits, this set is a delightful step back into a good classic TV show. It’s too bad that the executives at the time didn’t believe in the show, and kept cutting the budget until the show died of starvation!
However, one other problem I had with this set beside the poor packaging was that, like the first set, the quality of the DVDs themselves are troublesome. There is a good chance that you may need to keep your receipt for this set just in case you get a poorly master DVD. In my own case, the last 1/3 of “The Premonition” was virtually unwatchable due to DVD problems. I didn’t mind too much though, since that episode just plain stinks. However, just be aware that MGM has the same production problems with this set as they did with the Season One DVD set.
Once past the horrible package, and if you end up with a good mastered set, you should be in for a good time with some good shows from the mid-60s in glorious black and white!
(review (c) March 2004 / David Flemming)