A Feasibility Study (episode)
Encyclopedia
"A Feasibility Study" is an episode of the original The Outer Limits
television show. It first aired on 13 April 1964, during the first season. It was remade in 1997 as part of the revived The Outer Limits series with a minor title change. See "Feasibility Study
"
Although many episodes explore all types of scientific experiments gone wrong, at the heart of each is a very human story. Feasibilty Study is the best example of this. The inhabitants of a six-block suburban area awaken one Sunday on the planet Luminos.Six square blocks of a major city is removed from earth overnight and taken to the planet Luminos. There, the inhabitants of this neighborhood soon learn they are no longer on earth but are prisoners to be experimented on by the Liminoids.
If the experiment is successful, all of humanity on earth will be brought into slavery. Rather than allow that to happen, this small group of people make the ultimate sacrifice. They deliberately allow themselves to be infected with a disease that already plagues the Luminoids. By doing so, the human race is spared from eternal slavery. The feasibility study ends with those still on earth totally unaware of the sacrifice that was made for them. This episode was so well regarded, it was remade when the series was resurrected in the mid 90s.
In the shadow of shows like, "The Twilight Zone" there is a tendency to remember "The Outer Limits" as a failed series. I believe it was anything but that. Stories like "A Feasibility Study" show the quality "The Outer Limits" was capable of. In the hands of Joseph Stefano the series should have been a huge hit and would have had it not been robbed of its chance in the 60s by nervous network executives who did not understand the show or its audience. The 32 episodes of the first season and a few from the second stand today as true gems of science fiction at its best. There will always be critics of the show, but who can argue with author Stephen King who once called "The Outer Limits" the best program of its type ever to run on network television.
Comments:
The space footages from the prologue of Act I are wonderful—actually they're recycled from "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Invasion from Mars". Too bad, the badminton spaceship (one of the cheapest spaceship ever conceived without forgetting the one from "The Zanti Misfits"), which teleport the Midgard Drive's population—a means of transport use many times in the season—ruins the poetic pace. Another classic episode with a good abduction start ("They need million of us as labors to work for them, to manufacture their dreams...", said Dr. Holm; I wonder if it is not a metaphor of the fate of most Big Studios' employees) with one fascinating scene (the discovery of the Luminoid society by Dr. Holm, depicted in a foggy and ethereal surroundings—the realm is also showned with fixed pictures a la "Borderland"—where the leader reminds "Moonstone" with his "Stop" order) that I don't like for many reasons: an irritating jeopardized suburbanite couple-oriented one with soap-opera dialogues ("She thinks our marriage is the beginning of our mental and spiritual deterioration.
What gives the episode its lingering power is Stefano's convincing portrayal of a human society incapacitated by its inability to find a collective purpose. Each of the characters in "Feasibility" is narrowly devoted to principles that serve only to isolate them from one another: for Simon, it's his unquestioning and unyielding religious faith, while Andrea adheres to a naïve idealism that is too untried to be genuine activism; Ralph Cashman appears only to live for his work, to which he dutifully marches even on a dreary Sunday morning. Even Rhea, Ralph's aimless wife, seems blindly focused on her role as homemaker and (routinely abandoned) wife. In this sense it's significant that Simon and Andrea's marriage (which she defines as "the beginning of [her] mental and spiritual deterioration") has eroded into separation on the very day of Midgard Drive's abduction—its separation from Earth. It's clear that the desperate individualism on display leads only to a permanent, dissatisfied isolation from which there is little chance of return.
The Fashion of Dreaming: A Critical Guide to The Outer Limits
The Mutant
Directed by Alan Crosland, Jr.; written by Allan Balter and Robert Mintz (story by Jerome Thomas). Cast: Warren Oates (Reese Fowler); Larry Pennell (Dr. Evan Marshall); Betsy Jones-Moreland (Dr. Julie Griffith); Walter Burke (Dr. Riner); Robert Sampson (Lt. Chandler); Herman Rudin (Dr. Lacosta). Broadcast March 16, 1964. Story:A United Space Agency psychiatrist visits colony planet prototype Annex I to investigate strange reports. Resident radiation casualty Reese Fowler makes it abundantly clear: the experiment has failed.
Make no mistake: "The Mutant" is a wildly inconsistent episode, careening between brilliance and bombast so readily that it must be considered a troublesome entry. Yet, as further testament to the multiple strengths of the show's first season, this installment projects pure Outer Limits force and stands repeated viewings—indeed, it gains from them, as the fractured elements hindering its best features begin to unite and make sense thematically. At the peak of the questionably-composed pile that makes up "The Mutant" stands the mutant himself, Warren Oates, in one of the most affecting, skilled performances ever filmed for television. He is a man named Reese Fowler....
Less a man than a radioactive tyrant—physically and psychologically scarred by the decimating "R.I." (radio-isotope) rain which renders Annex I an utter catastrophe as an Earth settlement. Fowler, losing a battle with destructive impulses increasingly beyond his rational control, is one of the series most awesomely frightening monsters: at once recognizably human and shockingly freakish, his massively swollen eyes, bald head, deadly touch and sadistic glee inspire repellent dread. Yet he is human, struggling with a need for contact beyond domination; this is heartbreakingly conveyed in a climactic scene in which Fowler, unable to tolerate darkness (it physically hurts him), attempts to coax Marshall and Julie out of their cave hideout with a plaintive, pathetically childlike "come out...". It is an Outer Limits moment, magnified by the dignity of Oates's performance as he imparts Fowler's barely masked awareness that the half-truth conceit from which he operates (that he is a mutation, not a monster) is a sham— what he truly is, or is becoming, is no less horrendous than his appearance. He is a sad antagonist, as pitiable as he is terrifying.
Too bad about the romance subplot. Pennell's and Jones-Moreland's characters, it seems, once had a thing going; Julie couldn't take Marshall's constant need to analyze, and bolted into the arms of Annex I leader "Griff" (Hollywood vet Richard Derr, seen very briefly in flashback). The thematic links with the primary plot require some detection, but they are present: connecting notions of privacy and secrecy; needing to know (and knowing too much, either through Fowler's lethal telepathy or Marshall's analytic impulse) contrasted with the allowance of a relationship, a thought, hope or dream to merely be (as both Julie and Lt. Chandler require in order to figuratively and literally survive); the metaphor of constant, revealing daylight contrasted with the respite of veiling darkness. The romance figures in, but as played, it doesn't work— especially on first viewing, as it drains power from the story proper. Beyond the episode's chilling first quarter, dominated by Fowler and Chandler (Sampson is the only other actor up to Oates's level), the thrust of text and subtext is interrupted ad nauseum by hammy scenes meant to convey the wounded longing between Marshall and Julie—the music swells, Kenneth Peach goes in for (pretty dreadful) maximum close-ups, and the flow of meaning and menace stops dead, straining time and again to restart. The Outer Limits could do romance well, as classic episodes "The Man Who Was Never Born" and "The Architects of Fear" so ably prove; here, it is at best distracting and ill-conceived. Other limitations abound: the bewildered histrionics of butch Pennell (yes, The Beverly Hillbillies' Dash Riprock) and occasional Corman diva Jones-Moreland; the accurate but careless insertion of references to two works of literature dealing with tyranny and disintegration (Orwell's 1984 and Conrad's Heart of Darkness); a barely justified use of a retooled Zanti, complete with signature buzz and shriek; and the written-by-committee feel of the script (the credited writers comprise fewer than half of those involved). All would have benefitted from director Crosland utilizing his skills as a film editor, his "regular" Hollywood job (on, among many others, 1955's Marty, and something called Blowing Wild from 1953).
Thankfully, even surprisingly, these shortcomings don't destroy "The Mutant." The episode never approaches the ruin of "Tourist Attraction" or "The Special One." This is due in part to the sophisticated (if routinely undermined) quality of the subtext; primarily, though, it is due to Oates's genuinely moving interpretation of Reese Fowler, a man losing his mind and humanity to cruelly random forces. In many roles throughout his career, Kentucky-born Oates often conveyed basic human character and capabilities, while impressively communicating the experience of entanglement in terrifying complexity, and dealing with such circumstance in sometimes crazy, sometimes scary, always fated and strangely sensible ways. His Outer Limits mutant is an emblem of both the actor-as-character, and of the series—impressively, in a non-emblematic episode. Mr. Fowler and Mr. Oates are plainly unforgettable. Rest in peace.
—DCH
A Feasibility Study
Directed by Byron Haskin; written by Joseph Stefano. Cast: Sam Wanamaker (Dr. Simon Holm); Phyllis Love (Andrea Holm); David Opatoshu (Ralph Cashman); Joyce Van Patten (Rhea Cashman); Ben Wright/Robert Justman (The Authority); Glenn Cannon (Teenager). Broadcast April 13, 1964. Story: The inhabitants of a six-block suburban area awaken one Sunday on the planet Luminos. They discover that if they survive the humid, viral climate, the immobile Luminoids will abduct Earth's remaining population for enslavement. Are the human test subjects up to the challenge of making this plan infeasible?
"So, what's the catastrophe this morning?"
So goes the opening line in "A Feasibility Study," the first of Joseph Stefano's Outer Limits screenplays to see production. It's a fitting introduction to the style he was to employ during his tenure as the show's producer and primary author. By posing a disarmingly simple question with unexpectedly disturbing implications, Stefano makes it clear that his creative concerns lay less with scientific riddles and clever social parables than with the ongoing struggle between a fractured, divisive human race and an impeccably organized, (mostly) alien evil. What is the catastrophe of the day? For Joseph Stefano, the only possible answer to this provocative and potent question—if not to the catastrophe itself—lay squarely in The Outer Limits.
For all this, "A Feasibility Study" is a bit of a rough start for Stefano as television writer. Like all memorable works of cinema, The Outer Limits lived and died by its writing, and it's undeniable that the show was fortunate to have as daring and visionary a talent as Stefano as its primary architect. Still, the pressures of a weekly broadcast schedule ensured that even his reach sometimes exceeded his grasp. While his characteristic, seemingly paradoxical mix of charitable humanism and knowing cynicism helped to make the series what it was, Stefano was occasionally unable to find the right balance between the two extremes. On those occasions, his cynicism was as likely to become embittered and overwhelming (as in "The Bellero Shield") as his humanism was to slip into easy sentimentality. The latter is certainly true of "Feasibility," in which a dense melange of lofty ideas never quite manages to gel into a cohesive whole. Nevertheless, the episode remains interesting and powerful, and succeeds virtually on the strength of its author's convictions; as with many of The Outer Limits' more problematic episodes, "Feasibility" proves that it at least has something to reach for.
What gives the episode its lingering power is Stefano's convincing portrayal of a human society incapacitated by its inability to find a collective purpose. Each of the characters in "Feasibility" is narrowly devoted to principles that serve only to isolate them from one another: for Simon, it's his unquestioning and unyielding religious faith, while Andrea adheres to a naïve idealism that is too untried to be genuine activism; Ralph Cashman appears only to live for his work, to which he dutifully marches even on a dreary Sunday morning. Even Rhea, Ralph's aimless wife, seems blindly focused on her role as homemaker and (routinely abandoned) wife. In this sense it's significant that Simon and Andrea's marriage (which she defines as "the beginning of [her] mental and spiritual deterioration") has eroded into separation on the very day of Midgard Drive's abduction—its separation from Earth. It's clear that the desperate individualism on display leads only to a permanent, dissatisfied isolation from which there is little chance of return.
This leaves the Midgardians ripe for exploitation by the sterile Luminoids, who embody the emptiness the earthlings so perilously court. Luminos is an apt metaphorical representation of a world without purpose: its stagnate, austere landscape is listlessly dominated by creatures who revel only in pure, bullying intellect (a Stefano theme also on display in "The Guests" and "Don't Open Till Doomsday"), yet who are wholly incapacitated by their spiritual malaise. The Luminoids have become as physically immobile as their human captives are emotionally rigid, and are as indistinct as their hostile surroundings. While the Midgardians at least seek fulfillment on an emotional plane, however haphazardly and tenuously, the Luminoids can only aim for the insidious and vicarious satisfaction of slavery and oppression.
Those are her words", said Dr. Holm or even worst: "My father used to say: 'Ralphy, marry a dumb girl or marry a smart girl, but keep away from the intelligent ones.' " and the recursive: "Really Ralph" and "Come and eat" by Rhea Cashman)—Ralph Cashman begins his day with the forewarning words: "So what's the catastrophy this morning?" and his wife Rhea deals with a possible atomic rain ("I bet it's radio-active.") and an "uncanny" noise (the sound, again!). Then, Cashman crawls like a snake in the mist and talks like a wounded animal ("Rhea... Rhea!"). And later on, newspaper Andrea Holm epitomizes the episode well-enough with her private uncomplished life: "Simon, love isn't supposed to weaken... (...) It's slavery. It's a kind of slavery!" In a way, the Luminoids, by putting Andrea in a sterilized glass tube, grant her wish to be independant and by not giving any children to her husband—, the existencial teenager Luminoid who encounters Dr. Holm, the incoherence of two disappearances (Ralph Cashman and the motor engine), the overall flat photography of John M. Nickolaus, Jr. (the close-up of the Luminoid's lava hand is similare to the Ebonite one in "Nightmare") and the preachy TZ ending with its community handshakes. Stefano's first script violates the prime characters' concept which is all about superior or maverick minds on the razor's edge which reach out the Olymp of discovery/accomplishment/enlightement/perfection. This episode subverts story elements from Byron Haskin's 1953 "The War of the Worlds": the Church setting as the last hope, the bacteriological fatality (this time, the plague is inoculated by the earthlings to fight back the alien proslavers). The theme of contamination/contagion is tackled via the mass suicide outcome—speaking of self sacrifice through suicide, this is the last one from that season, after "The Man wth the Power" and "Moonstone". Oddly enough, the Luminoid leader asserts that there are "doomed and immobile": isn't that, after all, Stefano's most characters line? As in "The Mutant", the hand element is recursive, a Midas-like plague touch ("At the threat of our touch, you will obey!", said the Luminoid Authority). Most of the sound effects (as the Church's bell) are recycled in Leslie Stevens' Incubus; notice that all communications are dead (see the saturated sound of the car's radio and the telephone—in fact, Luminoids' voices). Stefano's wide culture is blatant in the choice of the residential blocks' name: Midgard Drive; Midgard, in the Scandinavian mythology, is the domain of the men but surrounded by a stockade. TV Analogy: one episode of "The Twilight Zone" titled "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" has the same type of setting (see the detail of the street post) where people also undergo a test. Notes: Ben Wright is the voice of the Luminoid Authority even though First AD Robert Justman wears the
Midgardians at least seek fulfillment on an emotional plane, however haphazardly and tenuously, the Luminoids can only aim for the insidious and vicarious satisfaction of slavery and oppression.
To achieve this, they use their captives' traits and habits against them: by restricting only their physical freedom and allowing them to "marry, worship and think" as they had on Earth, the Luminoids present an undeniably attractive offer to the Midgardians—and, presumably, to the human species at large. For such enslavement solidifies (quite literally) the individualistic isolationism displayed by Simon, Andrea, Ralph and Rhea, and makes it not only a viable option but a virtual necessity. Rebellion is averted by the humans' overwhelming fear of "contamination"—not only from the Luminoids' sluggish contagion, but also from the intensity of their own long-suppressed solidarity. And yet, Stefano asks, what is contamination if not a kind of solidarity itself? Under the circumstances the two seem inextricably linked, and infection provides the human subjects with a commonalty they can finally appreciate, if not understand. Cashman and Andrea, both afflicted with the Luminoid virus, offer the Midgardians deliverance from their dual enslavement, and for Stefano the certainty of lingering death matters less than the humans' willingness to accept their fate collectively and with collective dignity.
Routinely interpreted as The Outer Limits' take on religion, "A Feasibility Study" actually skirts the spiritual questions raised by Simon's faith rather early on. Simon Holm may be the only openly spiritual character to grace a first-season episode, but his ill-defined faith is more refuge than comfort. The church that figures so prominently in his life, and in the episode's climax, exists largely as a reminder of the hollowness of human values that serve only the individual, and as such is little different from the elusive office Ralph Cashman is bound for as the film opens. Only in the end does the church take on any symbolic significance, and only through the admittedly desperate sacrifice of the Midgardians. While the implication may be that only collective values can make human institutions like religion, work and activism ring true, there's a characteristically ambiguous catch: the Luminoids are the embodiment of the solipsistic philosophical narrowness the episode cautions against, but they also inhabit an efficient society that's based on undeniably collective principles, however bankrupt. As so often in The Outer Limits, the choice that offers salvation also threatens damnation....
Despite the undeniable force of Stefano's story, "Feasibility" simply takes on too many issues to be entirely successful. The Luminoids' enslavement of the humans is echoed on a personal scale by the stifling nature of Simon's conventional expectations of Andrea. Yet this theme is taken nowhere beyond a few trite arguments, and is responsible for what has to be the worst line Stefano wrote for the series: "Marriage has become insignificant in this big, troubled world of ours. Maybe that's why the world's in such big trouble." Oh. While the episode makes much of the waning power of marriage as a unifying force, Stefano and The Outer Limits both explored these themes more frankly elsewhere ("The Bellero Shield" and Meyer Dolinsky's flawed "ZZZZZ," for instance). Even more egregious is the theme of human choice introduced near the film's climax. It feels perfunctory and tacked on, and nothing in the first 40 minutes of the episode (with the possible exception of Andrea's decision to leave her husband) warrants Simon's self-righteous and ill-timed speech on the value of choice as he leaves for the church. This curiously unfelt thematic detour is more intellectually interesting than emotionally engaging, and it detracts from the episode's poignant power.
Stefano's characterizations are unusually weak in "Feasibility" (though perhaps not for a writer unused to the medium), and, with a single exception, the lead performances do little to make up for it. Sam Wanamaker, a likeable actor long blacklisted in Hollywood and perhaps more accustomed to working on the British stage, is unconvincing as the emotionally inflexible Simon. The actor's particular brand of stiffness doesn't lend itself to a character whose ideals are crumbling around him, and his Simon seems unsympathetic in the face of an overwhelming tragedy. While such complexities of character are hardly rare in The Outer Limits, here it feels like a misfire: instead of being incensed and distraught, Wanamaker's Simon seems merely huffy. (In the actor's defense, however, it must be said that Stefano gives him more than his share of unwieldy diatribes, and the burden is very much on Wanamaker to clumsily verbalize the episode's many themes.) David Opatoshu's Ralph Cashman is perplexingly buoyant for the first half of the film, as though the actor were expecting something more lighthearted; his distracted performance adds yet another discordant note to the ensemble. Still, it's uncomfortable to see such a usually fine character actor reduced to shuffling and bellowing by the episode's climax, and Opatoshu's confusion in the role is mitigated. Joyce Van Patten is just plain shrill, but Phyllis Love manages to overcome her professional shortcomings and give Andrea Holm genuine conviction and passion. Andrea's as warm as Simon is unapproachable, and Love, though not a subtle performer, makes us believe that she is utterly engaged in her values in a way that he could never be (though her ideals prove to be as isolating as his). Andrea is one of the series' most progressive and admirable female characters, and Phyllis Love's committed portrayal makes her all the more so.
Perhaps it's unfair to single out problematic writing and acting as the source of the episode's problems, when a stronger director might have made the most of them. Byron Haskin proves himself a peerless technical director and mood-setter here, and he plays up the horror aspects of Luminos quite effectively. From the sickly, not-quite-daylight pall of the Midgard Drive scenes to the steady, unsettling hum on the soundtrack (more likely the work of series sound effects coordinator John Elizalde), Haskin imbues the film with an odd, indefinably "off" feel that is appropriate to the alien setting—most Outer Limits episodes, after all, were pointedly earthbound. Simon's initial venture past the Luminoid barrier is a particularly effective set piece, and Haskin manages to make it a genuinely frightening sequence. Yet his indifference to the performances and the gravity of the story hinder the episode, and gives credence to Robert Culp's assertion (in issue 63-64 of Filmfax) that Haskin was a director who "had no idea how to talk to actors." Pity.
And yet "A Feasibility Study" works on its own terms, and remains an unforgettable if flawed episode—so much so that the makers of cable station Showtime's pallid "new" Outer Limits remade it for their 1997 season, with expectedly mixed results. It's a valuable lesson we learn from the human captives on Luminos, and through them Joseph Stefano teaches us something about commitment, solidarity, and their attendant catastrophes—daily and otherwise.
The Outer Limits (1963 TV series)
The Outer Limits is an American television series that aired on ABC from 1963 to 1965. The series is similar in style to the earlier The Twilight Zone, but with a greater emphasis on science fiction, rather than fantasy stories...
television show. It first aired on 13 April 1964, during the first season. It was remade in 1997 as part of the revived The Outer Limits series with a minor title change. See "Feasibility Study
Feasibility Study (episode)
"Feasibility Study" is an episode of The Outer Limits television show. It was first broadcast on 11 July 1997, during the third season. It is a remake of "A Feasibility Study" , an episode of the original series.-Introduction:...
"
Opening narration
- The planet Luminos: A minor planet, sultry and simmering. Incapacitated. Earth scientists have concluded that there could be no life on Luminos, that it is too close to its own sun, and that its inhabitants would be victimized by their own blighting atmosphere. But there is life on Luminos — life that should resemble ours, but doesn't. Desperate life, suffering a great and terrible need. The Luminoids have begun to search the universe in an effort to gratify that need. They seek a planet on which life is healthy, vibrant, strong, and mobile. They need such people to do their work, to labor and slave for them, to manufacture their splendored dreams. The Luminoids need slaves, and they have chosen the planet off which their slaves will be abducted. Not too many at first, a neighborhood-full, perhaps. A neighborhood like mine or yours. Those who will be abducted sleep in dreamy ignorance, unaware that they are about to become the subjects of a grotesque and sophisticated experiment... a feasibility study.
Although many episodes explore all types of scientific experiments gone wrong, at the heart of each is a very human story. Feasibilty Study is the best example of this. The inhabitants of a six-block suburban area awaken one Sunday on the planet Luminos.Six square blocks of a major city is removed from earth overnight and taken to the planet Luminos. There, the inhabitants of this neighborhood soon learn they are no longer on earth but are prisoners to be experimented on by the Liminoids.
If the experiment is successful, all of humanity on earth will be brought into slavery. Rather than allow that to happen, this small group of people make the ultimate sacrifice. They deliberately allow themselves to be infected with a disease that already plagues the Luminoids. By doing so, the human race is spared from eternal slavery. The feasibility study ends with those still on earth totally unaware of the sacrifice that was made for them. This episode was so well regarded, it was remade when the series was resurrected in the mid 90s.
In the shadow of shows like, "The Twilight Zone" there is a tendency to remember "The Outer Limits" as a failed series. I believe it was anything but that. Stories like "A Feasibility Study" show the quality "The Outer Limits" was capable of. In the hands of Joseph Stefano the series should have been a huge hit and would have had it not been robbed of its chance in the 60s by nervous network executives who did not understand the show or its audience. The 32 episodes of the first season and a few from the second stand today as true gems of science fiction at its best. There will always be critics of the show, but who can argue with author Stephen King who once called "The Outer Limits" the best program of its type ever to run on network television.
Plot
Residents in a city suburb awake one sunday morning to find their neighborhood has been transported to another planet the previous night. The intention of the aliens is to study the feasibility of enslaving the entire human race to do manual labor on their planet Luminos. But the aliens must overcome humanity's susceptibility to its diseases, and the willpower of mankind's resistance to slavery.Comments:
The space footages from the prologue of Act I are wonderful—actually they're recycled from "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Invasion from Mars". Too bad, the badminton spaceship (one of the cheapest spaceship ever conceived without forgetting the one from "The Zanti Misfits"), which teleport the Midgard Drive's population—a means of transport use many times in the season—ruins the poetic pace. Another classic episode with a good abduction start ("They need million of us as labors to work for them, to manufacture their dreams...", said Dr. Holm; I wonder if it is not a metaphor of the fate of most Big Studios' employees) with one fascinating scene (the discovery of the Luminoid society by Dr. Holm, depicted in a foggy and ethereal surroundings—the realm is also showned with fixed pictures a la "Borderland"—where the leader reminds "Moonstone" with his "Stop" order) that I don't like for many reasons: an irritating jeopardized suburbanite couple-oriented one with soap-opera dialogues ("She thinks our marriage is the beginning of our mental and spiritual deterioration.
What gives the episode its lingering power is Stefano's convincing portrayal of a human society incapacitated by its inability to find a collective purpose. Each of the characters in "Feasibility" is narrowly devoted to principles that serve only to isolate them from one another: for Simon, it's his unquestioning and unyielding religious faith, while Andrea adheres to a naïve idealism that is too untried to be genuine activism; Ralph Cashman appears only to live for his work, to which he dutifully marches even on a dreary Sunday morning. Even Rhea, Ralph's aimless wife, seems blindly focused on her role as homemaker and (routinely abandoned) wife. In this sense it's significant that Simon and Andrea's marriage (which she defines as "the beginning of [her] mental and spiritual deterioration") has eroded into separation on the very day of Midgard Drive's abduction—its separation from Earth. It's clear that the desperate individualism on display leads only to a permanent, dissatisfied isolation from which there is little chance of return.
The Fashion of Dreaming: A Critical Guide to The Outer Limits
The Mutant
Directed by Alan Crosland, Jr.; written by Allan Balter and Robert Mintz (story by Jerome Thomas). Cast: Warren Oates (Reese Fowler); Larry Pennell (Dr. Evan Marshall); Betsy Jones-Moreland (Dr. Julie Griffith); Walter Burke (Dr. Riner); Robert Sampson (Lt. Chandler); Herman Rudin (Dr. Lacosta). Broadcast March 16, 1964. Story:A United Space Agency psychiatrist visits colony planet prototype Annex I to investigate strange reports. Resident radiation casualty Reese Fowler makes it abundantly clear: the experiment has failed.
Make no mistake: "The Mutant" is a wildly inconsistent episode, careening between brilliance and bombast so readily that it must be considered a troublesome entry. Yet, as further testament to the multiple strengths of the show's first season, this installment projects pure Outer Limits force and stands repeated viewings—indeed, it gains from them, as the fractured elements hindering its best features begin to unite and make sense thematically. At the peak of the questionably-composed pile that makes up "The Mutant" stands the mutant himself, Warren Oates, in one of the most affecting, skilled performances ever filmed for television. He is a man named Reese Fowler....
Less a man than a radioactive tyrant—physically and psychologically scarred by the decimating "R.I." (radio-isotope) rain which renders Annex I an utter catastrophe as an Earth settlement. Fowler, losing a battle with destructive impulses increasingly beyond his rational control, is one of the series most awesomely frightening monsters: at once recognizably human and shockingly freakish, his massively swollen eyes, bald head, deadly touch and sadistic glee inspire repellent dread. Yet he is human, struggling with a need for contact beyond domination; this is heartbreakingly conveyed in a climactic scene in which Fowler, unable to tolerate darkness (it physically hurts him), attempts to coax Marshall and Julie out of their cave hideout with a plaintive, pathetically childlike "come out...". It is an Outer Limits moment, magnified by the dignity of Oates's performance as he imparts Fowler's barely masked awareness that the half-truth conceit from which he operates (that he is a mutation, not a monster) is a sham— what he truly is, or is becoming, is no less horrendous than his appearance. He is a sad antagonist, as pitiable as he is terrifying.
Too bad about the romance subplot. Pennell's and Jones-Moreland's characters, it seems, once had a thing going; Julie couldn't take Marshall's constant need to analyze, and bolted into the arms of Annex I leader "Griff" (Hollywood vet Richard Derr, seen very briefly in flashback). The thematic links with the primary plot require some detection, but they are present: connecting notions of privacy and secrecy; needing to know (and knowing too much, either through Fowler's lethal telepathy or Marshall's analytic impulse) contrasted with the allowance of a relationship, a thought, hope or dream to merely be (as both Julie and Lt. Chandler require in order to figuratively and literally survive); the metaphor of constant, revealing daylight contrasted with the respite of veiling darkness. The romance figures in, but as played, it doesn't work— especially on first viewing, as it drains power from the story proper. Beyond the episode's chilling first quarter, dominated by Fowler and Chandler (Sampson is the only other actor up to Oates's level), the thrust of text and subtext is interrupted ad nauseum by hammy scenes meant to convey the wounded longing between Marshall and Julie—the music swells, Kenneth Peach goes in for (pretty dreadful) maximum close-ups, and the flow of meaning and menace stops dead, straining time and again to restart. The Outer Limits could do romance well, as classic episodes "The Man Who Was Never Born" and "The Architects of Fear" so ably prove; here, it is at best distracting and ill-conceived. Other limitations abound: the bewildered histrionics of butch Pennell (yes, The Beverly Hillbillies' Dash Riprock) and occasional Corman diva Jones-Moreland; the accurate but careless insertion of references to two works of literature dealing with tyranny and disintegration (Orwell's 1984 and Conrad's Heart of Darkness); a barely justified use of a retooled Zanti, complete with signature buzz and shriek; and the written-by-committee feel of the script (the credited writers comprise fewer than half of those involved). All would have benefitted from director Crosland utilizing his skills as a film editor, his "regular" Hollywood job (on, among many others, 1955's Marty, and something called Blowing Wild from 1953).
Thankfully, even surprisingly, these shortcomings don't destroy "The Mutant." The episode never approaches the ruin of "Tourist Attraction" or "The Special One." This is due in part to the sophisticated (if routinely undermined) quality of the subtext; primarily, though, it is due to Oates's genuinely moving interpretation of Reese Fowler, a man losing his mind and humanity to cruelly random forces. In many roles throughout his career, Kentucky-born Oates often conveyed basic human character and capabilities, while impressively communicating the experience of entanglement in terrifying complexity, and dealing with such circumstance in sometimes crazy, sometimes scary, always fated and strangely sensible ways. His Outer Limits mutant is an emblem of both the actor-as-character, and of the series—impressively, in a non-emblematic episode. Mr. Fowler and Mr. Oates are plainly unforgettable. Rest in peace.
—DCH
A Feasibility Study
Directed by Byron Haskin; written by Joseph Stefano. Cast: Sam Wanamaker (Dr. Simon Holm); Phyllis Love (Andrea Holm); David Opatoshu (Ralph Cashman); Joyce Van Patten (Rhea Cashman); Ben Wright/Robert Justman (The Authority); Glenn Cannon (Teenager). Broadcast April 13, 1964. Story: The inhabitants of a six-block suburban area awaken one Sunday on the planet Luminos. They discover that if they survive the humid, viral climate, the immobile Luminoids will abduct Earth's remaining population for enslavement. Are the human test subjects up to the challenge of making this plan infeasible?
"So, what's the catastrophe this morning?"
So goes the opening line in "A Feasibility Study," the first of Joseph Stefano's Outer Limits screenplays to see production. It's a fitting introduction to the style he was to employ during his tenure as the show's producer and primary author. By posing a disarmingly simple question with unexpectedly disturbing implications, Stefano makes it clear that his creative concerns lay less with scientific riddles and clever social parables than with the ongoing struggle between a fractured, divisive human race and an impeccably organized, (mostly) alien evil. What is the catastrophe of the day? For Joseph Stefano, the only possible answer to this provocative and potent question—if not to the catastrophe itself—lay squarely in The Outer Limits.
For all this, "A Feasibility Study" is a bit of a rough start for Stefano as television writer. Like all memorable works of cinema, The Outer Limits lived and died by its writing, and it's undeniable that the show was fortunate to have as daring and visionary a talent as Stefano as its primary architect. Still, the pressures of a weekly broadcast schedule ensured that even his reach sometimes exceeded his grasp. While his characteristic, seemingly paradoxical mix of charitable humanism and knowing cynicism helped to make the series what it was, Stefano was occasionally unable to find the right balance between the two extremes. On those occasions, his cynicism was as likely to become embittered and overwhelming (as in "The Bellero Shield") as his humanism was to slip into easy sentimentality. The latter is certainly true of "Feasibility," in which a dense melange of lofty ideas never quite manages to gel into a cohesive whole. Nevertheless, the episode remains interesting and powerful, and succeeds virtually on the strength of its author's convictions; as with many of The Outer Limits' more problematic episodes, "Feasibility" proves that it at least has something to reach for.
What gives the episode its lingering power is Stefano's convincing portrayal of a human society incapacitated by its inability to find a collective purpose. Each of the characters in "Feasibility" is narrowly devoted to principles that serve only to isolate them from one another: for Simon, it's his unquestioning and unyielding religious faith, while Andrea adheres to a naïve idealism that is too untried to be genuine activism; Ralph Cashman appears only to live for his work, to which he dutifully marches even on a dreary Sunday morning. Even Rhea, Ralph's aimless wife, seems blindly focused on her role as homemaker and (routinely abandoned) wife. In this sense it's significant that Simon and Andrea's marriage (which she defines as "the beginning of [her] mental and spiritual deterioration") has eroded into separation on the very day of Midgard Drive's abduction—its separation from Earth. It's clear that the desperate individualism on display leads only to a permanent, dissatisfied isolation from which there is little chance of return.
This leaves the Midgardians ripe for exploitation by the sterile Luminoids, who embody the emptiness the earthlings so perilously court. Luminos is an apt metaphorical representation of a world without purpose: its stagnate, austere landscape is listlessly dominated by creatures who revel only in pure, bullying intellect (a Stefano theme also on display in "The Guests" and "Don't Open Till Doomsday"), yet who are wholly incapacitated by their spiritual malaise. The Luminoids have become as physically immobile as their human captives are emotionally rigid, and are as indistinct as their hostile surroundings. While the Midgardians at least seek fulfillment on an emotional plane, however haphazardly and tenuously, the Luminoids can only aim for the insidious and vicarious satisfaction of slavery and oppression.
Those are her words", said Dr. Holm or even worst: "My father used to say: 'Ralphy, marry a dumb girl or marry a smart girl, but keep away from the intelligent ones.' " and the recursive: "Really Ralph" and "Come and eat" by Rhea Cashman)—Ralph Cashman begins his day with the forewarning words: "So what's the catastrophy this morning?" and his wife Rhea deals with a possible atomic rain ("I bet it's radio-active.") and an "uncanny" noise (the sound, again!). Then, Cashman crawls like a snake in the mist and talks like a wounded animal ("Rhea... Rhea!"). And later on, newspaper Andrea Holm epitomizes the episode well-enough with her private uncomplished life: "Simon, love isn't supposed to weaken... (...) It's slavery. It's a kind of slavery!" In a way, the Luminoids, by putting Andrea in a sterilized glass tube, grant her wish to be independant and by not giving any children to her husband—, the existencial teenager Luminoid who encounters Dr. Holm, the incoherence of two disappearances (Ralph Cashman and the motor engine), the overall flat photography of John M. Nickolaus, Jr. (the close-up of the Luminoid's lava hand is similare to the Ebonite one in "Nightmare") and the preachy TZ ending with its community handshakes. Stefano's first script violates the prime characters' concept which is all about superior or maverick minds on the razor's edge which reach out the Olymp of discovery/accomplishment/enlightement/perfection. This episode subverts story elements from Byron Haskin's 1953 "The War of the Worlds": the Church setting as the last hope, the bacteriological fatality (this time, the plague is inoculated by the earthlings to fight back the alien proslavers). The theme of contamination/contagion is tackled via the mass suicide outcome—speaking of self sacrifice through suicide, this is the last one from that season, after "The Man wth the Power" and "Moonstone". Oddly enough, the Luminoid leader asserts that there are "doomed and immobile": isn't that, after all, Stefano's most characters line? As in "The Mutant", the hand element is recursive, a Midas-like plague touch ("At the threat of our touch, you will obey!", said the Luminoid Authority). Most of the sound effects (as the Church's bell) are recycled in Leslie Stevens' Incubus; notice that all communications are dead (see the saturated sound of the car's radio and the telephone—in fact, Luminoids' voices). Stefano's wide culture is blatant in the choice of the residential blocks' name: Midgard Drive; Midgard, in the Scandinavian mythology, is the domain of the men but surrounded by a stockade. TV Analogy: one episode of "The Twilight Zone" titled "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" has the same type of setting (see the detail of the street post) where people also undergo a test. Notes: Ben Wright is the voice of the Luminoid Authority even though First AD Robert Justman wears the
Midgardians at least seek fulfillment on an emotional plane, however haphazardly and tenuously, the Luminoids can only aim for the insidious and vicarious satisfaction of slavery and oppression.
To achieve this, they use their captives' traits and habits against them: by restricting only their physical freedom and allowing them to "marry, worship and think" as they had on Earth, the Luminoids present an undeniably attractive offer to the Midgardians—and, presumably, to the human species at large. For such enslavement solidifies (quite literally) the individualistic isolationism displayed by Simon, Andrea, Ralph and Rhea, and makes it not only a viable option but a virtual necessity. Rebellion is averted by the humans' overwhelming fear of "contamination"—not only from the Luminoids' sluggish contagion, but also from the intensity of their own long-suppressed solidarity. And yet, Stefano asks, what is contamination if not a kind of solidarity itself? Under the circumstances the two seem inextricably linked, and infection provides the human subjects with a commonalty they can finally appreciate, if not understand. Cashman and Andrea, both afflicted with the Luminoid virus, offer the Midgardians deliverance from their dual enslavement, and for Stefano the certainty of lingering death matters less than the humans' willingness to accept their fate collectively and with collective dignity.
Routinely interpreted as The Outer Limits' take on religion, "A Feasibility Study" actually skirts the spiritual questions raised by Simon's faith rather early on. Simon Holm may be the only openly spiritual character to grace a first-season episode, but his ill-defined faith is more refuge than comfort. The church that figures so prominently in his life, and in the episode's climax, exists largely as a reminder of the hollowness of human values that serve only the individual, and as such is little different from the elusive office Ralph Cashman is bound for as the film opens. Only in the end does the church take on any symbolic significance, and only through the admittedly desperate sacrifice of the Midgardians. While the implication may be that only collective values can make human institutions like religion, work and activism ring true, there's a characteristically ambiguous catch: the Luminoids are the embodiment of the solipsistic philosophical narrowness the episode cautions against, but they also inhabit an efficient society that's based on undeniably collective principles, however bankrupt. As so often in The Outer Limits, the choice that offers salvation also threatens damnation....
Despite the undeniable force of Stefano's story, "Feasibility" simply takes on too many issues to be entirely successful. The Luminoids' enslavement of the humans is echoed on a personal scale by the stifling nature of Simon's conventional expectations of Andrea. Yet this theme is taken nowhere beyond a few trite arguments, and is responsible for what has to be the worst line Stefano wrote for the series: "Marriage has become insignificant in this big, troubled world of ours. Maybe that's why the world's in such big trouble." Oh. While the episode makes much of the waning power of marriage as a unifying force, Stefano and The Outer Limits both explored these themes more frankly elsewhere ("The Bellero Shield" and Meyer Dolinsky's flawed "ZZZZZ," for instance). Even more egregious is the theme of human choice introduced near the film's climax. It feels perfunctory and tacked on, and nothing in the first 40 minutes of the episode (with the possible exception of Andrea's decision to leave her husband) warrants Simon's self-righteous and ill-timed speech on the value of choice as he leaves for the church. This curiously unfelt thematic detour is more intellectually interesting than emotionally engaging, and it detracts from the episode's poignant power.
Stefano's characterizations are unusually weak in "Feasibility" (though perhaps not for a writer unused to the medium), and, with a single exception, the lead performances do little to make up for it. Sam Wanamaker, a likeable actor long blacklisted in Hollywood and perhaps more accustomed to working on the British stage, is unconvincing as the emotionally inflexible Simon. The actor's particular brand of stiffness doesn't lend itself to a character whose ideals are crumbling around him, and his Simon seems unsympathetic in the face of an overwhelming tragedy. While such complexities of character are hardly rare in The Outer Limits, here it feels like a misfire: instead of being incensed and distraught, Wanamaker's Simon seems merely huffy. (In the actor's defense, however, it must be said that Stefano gives him more than his share of unwieldy diatribes, and the burden is very much on Wanamaker to clumsily verbalize the episode's many themes.) David Opatoshu's Ralph Cashman is perplexingly buoyant for the first half of the film, as though the actor were expecting something more lighthearted; his distracted performance adds yet another discordant note to the ensemble. Still, it's uncomfortable to see such a usually fine character actor reduced to shuffling and bellowing by the episode's climax, and Opatoshu's confusion in the role is mitigated. Joyce Van Patten is just plain shrill, but Phyllis Love manages to overcome her professional shortcomings and give Andrea Holm genuine conviction and passion. Andrea's as warm as Simon is unapproachable, and Love, though not a subtle performer, makes us believe that she is utterly engaged in her values in a way that he could never be (though her ideals prove to be as isolating as his). Andrea is one of the series' most progressive and admirable female characters, and Phyllis Love's committed portrayal makes her all the more so.
Perhaps it's unfair to single out problematic writing and acting as the source of the episode's problems, when a stronger director might have made the most of them. Byron Haskin proves himself a peerless technical director and mood-setter here, and he plays up the horror aspects of Luminos quite effectively. From the sickly, not-quite-daylight pall of the Midgard Drive scenes to the steady, unsettling hum on the soundtrack (more likely the work of series sound effects coordinator John Elizalde), Haskin imbues the film with an odd, indefinably "off" feel that is appropriate to the alien setting—most Outer Limits episodes, after all, were pointedly earthbound. Simon's initial venture past the Luminoid barrier is a particularly effective set piece, and Haskin manages to make it a genuinely frightening sequence. Yet his indifference to the performances and the gravity of the story hinder the episode, and gives credence to Robert Culp's assertion (in issue 63-64 of Filmfax) that Haskin was a director who "had no idea how to talk to actors." Pity.
And yet "A Feasibility Study" works on its own terms, and remains an unforgettable if flawed episode—so much so that the makers of cable station Showtime's pallid "new" Outer Limits remade it for their 1997 season, with expectedly mixed results. It's a valuable lesson we learn from the human captives on Luminos, and through them Joseph Stefano teaches us something about commitment, solidarity, and their attendant catastrophes—daily and otherwise.
Closing narration
" 'Do not enter upon or cross this area. Do not touch or remove possibly radioactive dirt or rocks. If you have any knowledge concerning this disappearance, please contact your nearest police department.' It could have happened to any neighborhood. Had those who lived in this one been less human, less brave, it would have happened to all the neighborhoods of the Earth. Feasibility study ended. Abduction of human race: Infeasible."
Cast
- Sam WanamakerSam WanamakerSamuel Wanamaker was an American film director and actor and is credited as the person most responsible for the modern recreation of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London...
– as Dr. Simon Holm - Phyllis LovePhyllis LovePhyllis Love was an American theater and television actress.-Career:Throughout the 1950s she acted in Broadway productions and the occasional film. She won the Clarence Derwent Award in 1951 for her role in The Rose Tattoo. On television, she appeared principally in guest roles from 1950 until her...
– as Andrea Holm - David OpatoshuDavid OpatoshuDavid Opatoshu was an American film, stage and television actor. He was born as David Opatovsky in New York City, where he was reared and educated. His father was the Yiddish writer, Joseph Opatoshu.-Television:...
– as Ralph Cashman - Joyce Van PattenJoyce Van PattenJoyce Benignia Van Patten is an American stage, film and television actress.-Personal life:Van Patten was born in New York City, the daughter of Josephine Rose , an Italian American magazine advertising executive, and Richard Byron Van Patten, a Dutch American interior decorator.She is the younger...
– as Rhea Cashman - Frank PugliaFrank PugliaFrank Puglia was an Italian film actor. Puglia had small but memorable roles in films including Casablanca and 1942's The Jungle Book. Born in Sicily, the actor started his career as a teen on stage in Italian operas. He emigrated to the U.S...
– as Father Fontana - Glenn CannonGlenn CannonGlenn Cannon is a Hawaii-based actor and educator best known for his roles on Hawaii Five-O and Magnum, P.I. More recently, he has been featured on Lost in a pair of different roles....
– as Teenage Luminoid - Robert H. JustmanRobert H. JustmanRobert Harris "Bob" Justman was an American television producer, director and production manager. He worked on many television series including Lassie, The Life of Riley, Adventures of Superman, The Outer Limits, Then Came Bronson and Mission: Impossible.- Career :Bob Justman was one of the...
– as The Authority, the Luminoid Elder - Ben WrightBen Wright (actor)Ben Wright was an English actor in radio, film and television. He trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.-Radio:...
as the voice of The Authority.
External links
- Detailed episode guide by 'Monsieur Vincent'
- Episode review by Mark and David Holcomb