DVD The Outer Limits - The Original Series, Season 2:
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Editor: Columbia Tristar Hom
Category: Television
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DVD The Outer Limits - The Original Series, Season 2
Despite forced changes in executive and creative personnel, plummeting ratings and the constant threat of cancellation, the truncated second season of The Outer Limits (1964-65) yielded some of the series' finest episodes. While The Twilight Zone was fading fast on CBS, the bean-counters at ABC used focus groups and ratings statistics to enforce their previous mandate for a "monster of the week" format for their flagging science-fiction series, and after a few promising episodes early in the season, Outer Limits settled into a regrettable routine of reduced budgets and rubber-suit creatures that wouldn't pass inspection at a drunken Halloween party. A former network executive with minimal creative input, Perry Mason producer Ben Brady struggled to keep the doomed series alive while coproducer Seeleg Lester sought legitimacy by courting respected writers and material.
As Harlan Ellison observes in David J. Schow's indispensable book The Outer Limits Companion, weak ratings allowed quality episodes to slip under the radar of ABC executives. Ellison's own classic teleplays--"Soldier" (which would later inspire The Terminator and subsequent legal squabbles) and "Demon with a Glass Hand"--yielded the season's finest stand-alone episodes, while the two-part "The Inheritors" (featuring the young Robert Duvall) fulfilled the series' neglected potential for longer-form plotlines. While these highlights redeem the season, "Wolf 359" (a title that would later factor in Star Trek: The Next Generation) is eerily effective despite low-tech restrictions, and "Behold Eck!" is the "best" (relatively speaking) of the tepid monster-themed shows that ABC demanded. It wasn't enough: After 17 episodes against the Saturday-night dominance of The Jackie Gleason Show, the greatest science-fiction anthology series of the 1960s was mercifully canceled, primed for phenomenal success in syndication and eventual revival as the "new" Outer Limits in 1995. --Jeff Shannon
Review(s): DVD The Outer Limits - The Original Series, Season 2
outstanding EXCEPT
i bought both season's
the first season dvd worked perfect and i enjoyed them very much
but as others have stated the second season dvd's were flawed
they froze, digitized, wouldn't read at all
Defective discs, 2 for 2
I enjoy the old sci-fi shows like Outer Limits. In many cases, these shows contain some of the earliest instances of certain ideas ever seen on TV. (Naturally, they appeared in written fiction years earlier, but this is TV, which is usually 20 years behind written science fiction. So one makes allowances. :^)
For example, the episode "The Invisible Enemy" has what is probably one of the first appearances (if not THE first appearance) of a "sand monster" on TV. Sand monsters now show up regularly in skiffy and fantasy shows.
Sadly, the production quality of this DVD set is just not up to par. Disc 2 of my first set had major problems. "I, Robot" and "The Inheritors Part 1" pixellated and froze. Fair enough, I thought. Snail mail had not been kind to the set, and it had arrived with 2 discs loose and scuffed pretty severely. I exchanged the set.
Now I'm on my second set, and "I, Robot" and "The Inheritors Part 1" once again pixellate and freeze, even worse than the first time! I did a little research, and discovered that lots of people have trouble with these episodes. This set is also going back. This time I'm getting a refund.
Whoever is handling quality control on these discs is obviously not doing their job. I'll give it a few months (or maybe a year) and try again. Maybe I'll get lucky next time and receive a functional set of discs.
Original Outer Limits Season 2
Like Season 1 I enjoy having my own set of The Outer Limits. I have always like the series since seeing it when originally aired in the 60's.
Robert A. Soles
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