|
Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
|
|
|
|
|
Martian Phobos (Barry Morse) comes to earth to study the phenomenon
murder, which seems to be unique to our planet - and with the Martian
caretaker on earth Deimos (Carroll O'Connor), disguised as a seedy
pawnshop owner, he visits a hotel where a murder is about to happen, to
analyze it using a temporal converter allowing him to run time forwards
and backwards in various speeds and a mindreading device.
But in however great detail he plays and replays the sequence of a
jilted girl (Grace Lee Whitney) shooting her two-timing lover (Robert
Fortier) and from whatever angle he looks at it, he just doesn't get it
... until he decides to intervene and make the girl's bullet miss the guy
- which in a weird turn of events leads to the guy proposing to her ...
By now Phobos has realized that murder makes no sense at all ... when
he learns that his interference will produce a dictator (the child of the
couple) who will believe he's immortal just because his father wasn't
fazed by the bullet that day - and that dictator will ultimately destroy
the solar system.
But having created a beautiful happy ending to this sad story, Phobos
is reluctant to have the man shot dead again ... so he has another idea:
why not have the bullet miss but still knock out the guy, so his son will
no longer think he's immortal ? The loving couple is saved, earth and the
universe are saved, only Phobos still can't even begin understand murder -
but no matter, he liked his earth-experience that much that he decides to
stay here ...
With this episode, The Outer Limits, normally a
dead-serious, reactionary sci-fi series, takes a new, different direction:
comedy. And against all expectations, it succeeds admirably, thanks to a
clever if a bit cheesy script, fun dialogue and great, amusing and amused
performances. Very possibly the best episode of the series.
|