Customer Reviews

Outer Limits: Counterweight [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Good, middleweight OL episode.

Prospective travelers to the closest planet inhabitable by man (called Antheon in the script, which interestingly is reached in the same number of days it takes our probes to reach Mars) audition for the privilege, by taking a simulated journey beforehand to see if they can stand the trip. Unbeknownst to them, an inhabitant of that planet is aboard with them, running its own experiment on the worthiness of human beings.

The characters are a bit cliched, and the situations and dialogue simplistic, but the small cast handle the material well. The invader alien manifests itself first as a forked lightning-snake that clandestinely slips into the travelers' ears at night to hear their thoughts, and later assumes a truly grotesque form (in memorable Jim Danforth stop-motion animation) to confront the group and inform them that they've failed to pass muster - which most of them have realized themselves, by that point.

The production sustains a fair amount of suspense, and an eerie atmosphere of progressive menace, as it begins dawning on the group that "they are not alone." It's a tad bit melodramatic, as were most of OL's second season entries, but the story is good, the performances are capable, and it has a satisfying payoff.

Second season episodes of classic Outer Limits were not as good on average as those of the first season, which were produced by the show's creators. But they usually still delivered the goods, as in "Counterweight". The plot involves a space agency experiment designed to study how well humans will endure physically and mentally on long space voyages, by sending a handful of volunteers on an earth-bound mock-up of a spaceflight. As in the first season episode "Second Chance", we meet a small ensemble cast embodying various human virtues and vices, especially greed in the latter case. The experiment will be considered a success only if, during the months-long duration of the simulated spaceflight, none of the volunteers presses a "panic button" (installed so they can bail out if the journey becomes too much). But unbeknownst to them, an inscrutable alien intelligence, worried at the prospect of humans eventually visiting its planet, has taken an interest in the outcome. Its native form is simply a flickering light (foreshadowing Star Trek episodes like "Day of the Dove"). The alien begins staging some psychologically powerful events intended to unnerve the humans. This reaches its peak in some fine, stop-motion scenes (animated by Jim Danforth) in which a fern-like plant taken aboard by one character, a botanist, is possessed and mutated by the alien into this episode's "bear". In an eye-opening shock sequence, it first strangles other plants within its reach, and eventually confronts the frightened humans. There are various minor flaws in this show, but after all is said and done it remains an excellent sci-fi chiller from the Golden Era. This is unique, original, memorable, and thought-provoking stuff, like the great majority of classic OL episodes. As usual, this is recommended for intelligent and discriminating fans of vintage scifi, versus those whose scifi tastes were acquired from watching, say, almost anything put out by Hollywood in the last 15 years or so.

Second season episodes of classic Outer Limits were not as good on average as those of the first season, which were produced by the show's creators. But they usually still delivered the goods, as in "Counterweight". The plot involves a space agency experiment designed to study how well humans will endure physically and mentally on long space voyages, by sending a handful of volunteers on an earth-bound mock-up of a spaceflight. As in the first season episode "Second Chance", we meet a small ensemble cast embodying various human virtues and vices, especially greed in the latter case. The experiment will be considered a success only if, during the months-long duration of the simulated spaceflight, none of the volunteers presses a "panic button" (installed so they can bail out if the journey becomes too much). But unbeknownst to them, an inscrutable alien intelligence, worried at the prospect of humans eventually visiting its planet, has taken an interest in the outcome. Its native form is simply a flickering light (foreshadowing Star Trek episodes like "Day of the Dove"). The alien begins staging some psychologically powerful events intended to unnerve the humans. This reaches its peak in some fine, stop-motion scenes (animated by Jim Danforth) in which a fern-like plant taken aboard by one character, a botanist, is possessed and mutated by the alien into this episode's "bear". In an eye-opening shock sequence, it first strangles other plants within its reach, and eventually confronts the frightened humans. There are various minor flaws in this show, but after all is said and done it remains an excellent sci-fi chiller from the Golden Era. This is unique, original, memorable, and thought-provoking stuff, like the great majority of classic OL episodes. As usual, this is recommended for intelligent and discriminating fans of vintage scifi, versus those whose scifi tastes were acquired from watching, say, almost anything put out by Hollywood in the last 15 years or so.