Customer Reviews

Outer Limits: Specimen Unknown [VHS]

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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

This episode is neither as bad nor as good as other reviewers hype it up to be. It's a decent middle-of-the-road OL. Highly padded (by virtue of the overlong teaser, which is repeated verbatim in the episode), suffering from really cheap effects, but a decent enough story competently enough presented.

It's the Andromeda Strain, with space barnacles in place of a killer virus. The barnacles grow anywhere, reproduce like kudzu, and exhale a highly toxic gas in the process. The astronauts who discover them don't realize until too late that they are bringing a deadly organism back with them, and the government has one helluva problem on its hands.

The performances are good, and so is the suspense. The effects are pretty cheesy. The production team was badly strapped when this one was shot, but they did a creditable job of making-do in spite of it.

Not a front-runner episode in anyone's book, but enjoyable enough if you like this kind of thing.

The Official Companion reports that this episode ran undertime so was padded out painstakingly. This padding is noticable in the prologue and the set-up of a spaceship invaded by hitherto dormant space spores who grow into plants which emit lethal vapour. While we aren't shown how the spores managed to get inside the spaceship (one isn't likely to leave the ship door open) the naivety in which they are treated is the real surprise, probably influenced by how pretty they are and what attractive decor they make pre-vapour emittance. The spores resemble mushroom-shaped muffins, and the plants have cobra-like stems and large white petals. When a young Dabney Coleman as a botanist moves his face in for a closer inspection, we know what to expect. This episode was broadcast just after the release of the The Day of the Triffids film and the similarity (and solution to the problem) is evident, though these plants are passive-aggressive. Director Gerd Oswald provides enough suspense however to make this engaging viewing. Once the Earth base has to decide whether to allow the infected-shuttle to land or to be destroyed, the tension begins, aided by composer Dominic Frontiere's use of twittery strings to suggest both alien life and the rapid maturing of the spores into flowers with deadly stigma. This moment of decision is performed like a silent movie. Although the repair of a servomechanism of the shuttle was filmed in slow-mo to add time, the acrobatics are remarkeable, and the image of a bound corpse (the first victim of the vapour) buried in space evocatively gothic. Gail Kobe, who would later be in Keeper of the Purple Twilight, appears as the wife of one of the shuttle crew, and the only female in the cast. I suppose Oswald thought that her being in peril is more potent for the audience than the space shuttle rabbit. I rate this episode highly cos this time around, the "bear" is so feminine.

Similarities to Day of the triffid aside, the inventiveness of a "bad guy" taking the form of a flowering bulb from outer space hooked me when I first saw this as a kid.

Looking back at it nearly half a century after it was produced, one can take amusement at the sheer recklessness in absence of quarantine measures while taking these things on board a space station and then transporting them back to earth. But as a cautionary tale of invasive species and ecological mayhem, it was ahead of its time and may even have contributed to adoption of quarantine procedures in exploration and research.

While others have commented on cheesy production values, The Outer Limits ALWAYS worked on a shoestring budget. This episode was above par, topped off with decent direction and a truly disturbing musical score.

The plot and the ending bear too much similarity to Day of the Triffids. If you have seen that movie, you will not need to see this video. The decision to allow the spaceship, with its deadly infectious cargo, to land on Earth is a stupid decision - which would not occur in a real situation.

Specimen:Unknown may have been the highest rated episode of The Outer Limits, but it is easily the worst episode ever produced. The overlong teaser gives away that the spores are lethal, and if you were fortunate not to see it, the opening sequence reveals the same thing. Further along, when ground control finds out about the lethal plants, they stupidly let the shuttle land, giving the plants an opportunity to spread and possibly kill millions because they listen to the wife of one of the astronauts on board instead of listening to the astronaut. this is one video you should get only if you want the complete Outer Limits on video. Otherwise, forget about buying it.