Customer Reviews

The Outer Limits Companion

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David Schow's terrific overview of this classic television series is stuffed with illustrations many of them never published before. His critical assessment of the various episodes is always well informed (although there are a couple that I do disagree with very strongly). The most important thing is that this groundbreaking gothic science fiction/horror series is finally being appreciated.

The Outer Limits was always a poor cousin to The Twilight Zone; critics preferred Rod Serling's O'Henry like twists and turns in the plot. Twilight Zone was a terrific series but it couldn't touch the one hour (or two hour)format. Likewise, the bulk of the audience preferred Serling's morality plays. What's fascinating is to compare and contrast the two--it's like comparing Steve Spielberg to Terry Gilliam; both are technically adept and brilliant filmakers but Gilliam's films have a dark vision missing, for the most part, from Spielberg's films. Spielberg always feels the need to lighten up even his darkest toned films. Gilliam has no such compunction.

Time has been kinder to The Outer Limits than The Twilight Zone. The series had no peer as a 1 hour gothic science fiction/fantasy/horror program. What made the series so appealing and great was the contrast in styles between Leslie Stevens' science fiction plot driven tales and Joseph Stefano's dark character driven morality plays. Their collaboration on the series brought out the best of both writers/producers.

Stevens created the series and let writer/producer Stefano do the day to day production of the show for the first season. The bulk of the most powerful episodes are from the first season. Stefano, like Rod Serling, had a hand in a large number of these scripts often writing originals, providing stories or rewriting other writers to make the episode fit the format, improve the drama or characters (or make it affordable to shoot).

Schow interviewed all the major participants in the series and has a wealth of memos, original scripts and background information on the show. I'd also recommend the boxset DVD of The Outer Limits. It contains all the first season episodes on 4 two sided double layer discs. There aren't any extras to speak of (which is too bad given that Stefano, Martin Landau, Martin Sheen and many of the actors are still alive).

The second season was more difficult for the show; Stefano left in a disagreement over pared down budgets and the demands to modify the series. There were still a number of outstanding episodes. One of the best episodes was Harlan Ellison's Demon with a Glass Hand. Robert Culp gives a startling, powerful performance in this episode. Ellison also contributed Solider (which was radically rewritten by others. It reflects the poor quality control at the time. Still, Solider has a number of interesting ideas and strong performances (chiefly Michael Ansara).

The best episodes -- The Galaxy Being, The Man Who Was Never Born, It Crawled Out of the Woodwork, OBIT, Feasability Study,Nightmare, The Chameleon, Demon with a Glass Hand, The Inheritors, The Form of Things Unknown, The Sixth Finger and The Man with the Power all rival the best written shows from the 60's and 70's. The new verison of the series, while it has many admirable moments, is closer to The Twilight Zone in spirit and lacks the sharp, engaging writing/direction of the original series.

The direction of The Outer Limits if often overlooked. Gerd Oswald, James Goldstone, Leslie Stevens and others strived to make the series look like short movies. Conrad Hall's and Kenneth Peach's distinctive cinematography created a vaguely European feel to many of these classics.

Schow's book is worth it and would make a great three-fer gift with the first disc of the original soundtrack and the boxset.

Back in the era of Black and White television, a dark and scary show was broadcast that controlled our television sets and placed fear in our minds about the unknown and the possibility that alien life forms could be lurking around the corner. The Outer Limits worked on those fears and produced new phobias! An ordinary vacumn cleaner picks up a dust ball in the corner and produces an indestructable and violent electrical monster that can make you disappear! A saucer ride in an amusement park is producing mysterious sounds at 3AM in the morning and a lonely security guard checks it out only to find out that the spaceship is REAL and there is an alien on-board! Our poor guard is zapped into eternity! Micro waves combined with radio station power contact a creature from the Andromeda galaxy, who is drawn in by a power surge to haunt our neighborhood. I saw these episodes one by one and as a result....stayed clear of vacumn cleaners, especially industrial type shop vacs being operated by maids and always left balls of dust in corners alone, I never went on a single ride in an amusement park...it may be a source for alien abduction ... I stayed away from Radio stations with large towers. I also stayed away from old victorian houses in the country, because one episode featured an alien who was upstairs and the house was a trap for the alien to infest your mind and hold you prisoner, possibly forever! As each episode was broadcast, it was one more ordinary thing to stay away from! Thank God it did not last too many seasons or I might have been housebound forever! Anyway, this is a great book about the series and covers every angle about the writers, music and work that went into the show about special effects and scripts. One of the most innovative and challenging shows ever to broadcast, this book is the final word on the subject. Well recommended, but don't go near any amusement parks!

I have the 1986 original version of this book and I always thought that there was no need for this new reprint, also for its steep price.
One day after being one more time enthusiast of this Great Series I ordered it and I couldn't believe when I finally saw it, I was amazed! ^_^
It's got almost the same text of the original but it is totally filled with new pictures with incredible crystal clear quality, excellent paper, new interviews and brand new chapter. Every episode has 3/4 big-sized (and rare) pictures at least while
the old one had 1 only and sometimes 2. The old one was quite
small and this one is Giant-Sized! Love was surely put again in this new revision. It is like having a totally new and book!
The old one was an excellent treatment of the Series but they improved on it dramatically and thankfully didn't include the New 1995 Series!!!
It's totally worth its price and a must for any fan of the series even if already owning the original companion.
Buy it while you can and before it goes out of print again!

For fans of the BEST sci-fi show ever (1963-65)...nirvana is here! A terrific book that has been recently updated,lengthened and turned into a work of art! Thank You Mr. Schow!

What a wonderful book! I love watching the old horror programs on television, such as Karloff's Thriller, The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. What I enjoy most is watching each program, and then spend a few minutes reading up on the production history and trivia about the program, thanks to books like this. I just spent the last three years reading "The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion" by Grams and Wikstrom and watched each and every episode of the Hitchcock TV series one by one. What a fascinating program. So logically, I purchased this book and am done the first season. With each viewing I turn to this book and find out trivia I did not know, and other neat facts. That's what tells me if the book is a good book or not. A must-have.

This book is a reworking of the 1986 release (also by Schow). The first OL Companion was an inexpensive, small book with lower quality paper. The more recent edition is a massive edition, with more pages, more photos, beautiful paper with a luster, and most important more info. This is the only book available about Outer Limits, no one would dare try to top this. An easy choice for fans.

Don't be put off by the steep price. If you are a fan of this great 60's tv series (and how could you not be?)this book is required. It is exhaustively researched, with lots and lots of great photos on glossy paper. There are so many little tidbits and pieces of trivia to enhance the experience of viewing these classic episodes that I can only feel a sense of gratitude to Mr Schow for all his hard work. Treat yourself!

I must confess to being among the few in the visible universe who still prefers the original "Star Treks" to the later ones. Sure the effects were weak, to put it mildly. The plots were fairly predictable, the acting at time dubious. But I grew up with it! Then I dragged it through college with me (despite its being between other reruns like "Hogan's Heroes," and "Gilligan's Island").

And believe it or not, that relates to this book. This delightful series-which I have for years called sci fi fables-also has a later incarnation. It too has far, far superior effects, better known stars, and, yes, even better stories. But I still prefer the episodes from the old series. There was something delightfully rudimentary about them-The special effects on one of my favorites, the creature's glow, was made possible by petroleum jelly on the camera lens! I'd seen a marathon of them about 30 years after the series was first on. Actors, producers, etc. discussed they had one week to put them together, effects, writing, make-up, music and all. A week! Yet they were so creative! Now they have all the computer graphics and all the other amenities that make the process so easy. In those days it took real work!

The actors appeared almost as in a series. Martin Landau was on I think three of them, Robert Duvall was on at least two, Leonard Nimoy was on at least two, James Doohan and William Shatner on at least one each. (Yes, that's true). This book covers all of that as well as the production of the show, complications, changes in scripts, you name it.

There's times I could take some personal offense by the book. See, when I first saw some of them, I was mystified. They were mysterious, had clever conceptions, e.g., creatures from worlds with nitrogen-based life (episode no. 1, starring the son of a Supreme Court justice), other creatures bounced into our present from their future (starring a future "Star Trek" klingon), lots of anti-war themes, which were in that portion of the early 1960s before their time. However, the author and even those who produced them acknowledge some of those I liked as some of the worst scripts of the series. Either the network discouraged suggested themes as a tad to risqué, or the director just ran out of good ideas, or the script couldn't translate well into a screenplay. But I don't choose to be offended. If I want to like them I still will, or I'll watch them and thrive despite those in-the-know finding them less than I'd like.

If you enjoy the show as much as I did, or even the concepts of sci fi morality plays, I can't recommend the book enough. You can even learn a lot about relatively early television production if that's your subject.

Be forewarned: this book doesn't cover the show's later incarnation and the author points that out early in the book. I might get that companion if it's released (I prefer the earlier ones but have taped all the later ones...) but for now, enjoy this one.

Excellent book! If you liked the 1960's series you MUST own this book. This is the outer limits bible. I enjoyed the pictures and in depth and detailed description on each episode, such as air date and quotes from the Outer Limits control voice. Some of the episodes dealt with some pretty touchy subjects for the 1960's such as the episode The Expanding Human which deals with consciousness expanding drugs. A classical Jekyll and Hyde story that is one of the best. I own all of the Outer Limits videos and this book describes them verbatim. An excellent read.

This book is an outstanding companion to the original "Outer Limits" DVD sets. The amount of research that went into this volume is staggering. The author describes each episode in Seasons One and Two in great detail, including a transcription of the "Control Voice" narrative that began and ended the shows. Plot summaries, special effects, dialog, production problems--it's all here. Filled with rare, high-quality photographs and brimming with behind-the-scenes details about the show and its creators, "The Outer Limits Companion" is truly a "must have" for anyone interested in this vintage sci-fi television classic.