Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		3.5

The Outer Limits: Season One Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 20, 2023

There are very few series in the cookie cutter annals of television production that could truly be called innovative, but if there is an offering that at least approaches the realm of the sui generis, it would have to be The Twilight Zone. When Rod Serling's legendary anthology outing debuted in October 1959, it would be around two years until Newton Minnow famously termed the landscape of broadcast television to be a "vast wasteland", but it may have already qualified for that appellation in 1959, being littered largely with westerns, family based situation comedies and variety shows. There had never been anything quite like The Twilight Zone, which often played like a set of Aesop's Fables for the Post-Nuclear Age. The Twilight Zone may have some perceived forebears, but there is absolutely no doubt that it in and of itself gave rise to any number of other series, if not directly, then at least courtesy of what might be termed the cultural zeitgeist of American television viewership. One Step Beyond is sometimes thought to have followed in The Twilight Zone's rather considerable wake, but perhaps surprisingly it actually debuted months before Serling's show, but anthology series like the Boris Karloff hosted Thriller probably owed at least a bit of their existence to the success of the Serling enterprise. In that regard, it's interesting that the two seasons (actually season and a half) of The Outer Limits actually premiered toward the end of The Twilight Zone's original broadcast run, and also kind of interestingly it actually debuted just as The Twilight Zone was ending its brief flirtation with hour long episodes. Fans of The Outer Limits can sometimes get into "doth protest too much" mode when defending the series as not really owing all that much to the Serling legend, and while, yes, The Outer Limits had its own distinctive "flavor", sound and look, it's still hard to imagine The Outer Limits totally divorced from the climate that The Twilight Zone was rather amazingly able to quickly foster.

At least in a "meta" sense, there are certainly tethers between The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, including the fact that both series started with pilots which had a somewhat rocky gestational period. In Serling's case, his script for a one off called The Time Element took quite a while before it was produced for Desilu Playhouse, where its success then rather quickly led to what became The Twilight Zone. In the case of The Outer Limits, a pilot called Please Stand By was shot (it's included as a supplement on The Outer Limits: Season Two), but then creator Leslie Stevens had a prolonged wait on his hands until the series was rebranded The Outer Limits and greenlit to premiere in September of 1963.

If some of the hour long Twilight Zone episodes may have seemed at least somewhat padded and not necessarily as viscerally exciting as some of the half hour ones, The Outer Limits, while occasionally falling into the same trap, tends to develop its stories in the longer format with a fair amount of skill, though the series still tends to offer at times pretty clunky exposition dumps that can stop things in their tracks. The one way that many people tend to differentiate The Twilight Zone from The Outer Limits, namely that the latter show tended to exploit a "monster of the week" conceit which fans call "bears" (i.e., scary creatures), is on display throughout the first season, including in the first broadcast episode, The Galaxy Being, which in fact is a slightly rejiggered version of that aforementioned pilot episode.

Some of the highlights of both this season and the second (half) season on Blu-ray are some really well done commentaries that Kino Lorber has included as supplements, and if experts like David Schow sometime seem to be perhaps unavoidably and therefore uncomfortably aware of how "linked" this show is to The Twilight Zone in many people's minds, Schow and others also make a point of discussing just how distinctive The Outer Limits was, especially in its first season, which employed a rather fascinating group of creatives including Leslie Stevens and Joseph Stefano, as well as benefitting from the contributions of composer Dominic Frontiere (also credited as a "Production Executive") and cinematographer Conrad Hall. Schow and other commentators can't escape the fact that The Outer Limits did tend to "revisit" ideas or at least tropes even in its arguably more innovative first season, where regular "mad scientists" and/or officious military types tended to interact with everything from evolution gone awry to some seriously misbehaving "pet rocks".

If that aforementioned often moralistic tone and a kind of unapologetic gravitas that attended many episodes of The Twilight Zone gave the series at least the perception of substance, The Outer Limits made no bones about style, and the visual virtuosity of the series may be one of its most enduring aspects. Still, as patently silly as some of the "bears" may appear to older, more jaded, eyes, and some premises that border on the ludicrous, The Outer Limits did in its own way deal with a number of provocative subjects, and this first season has several standout episodes, including the now legendary The Sixth Finger. The casts are full of a glut of recognizable faces, many then in relatively early stages of their careers, including David McCallum, Robert Culp and Cliff Robertson, among too many others to name individually.

The Outer Limits: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Outer Limits: Season One is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber with AVC encoded 1080p transfers in 1.34:1. Kino Lorber doesn't really provide any technical information on the provenance of whatever elements were used, but this is by and large a very nice looking set of presentations that preserves this series' often almost German Expressionist proclivities in terms of camera angles, framings and especially lighting. Even a cursory look at some of the screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review should provide ample proof of how visually striking The Outer Limits could be, and this set offers some really commendable contrast in particular that helps to elevate the often very evocative lighting. Detail levels are generally very good to excellent throughout, especially in moments (and there are many) that tend to feature extreme close-ups of faces. As some of the commentaries get into, there can also be things like memorable uses of deep focus, which help to preserve some surprising amounts of fine detail even well into the frame. There are some variances on display, as should probably be expected, with some outdoor location work in particular occasionally showing slight degradation of the image and/or minor damage. The series did also use stock footage in a number of episodes, and that can look especially ragged at times.

The Outer Limits: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Outer Limits: Season One features nicely expressive DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono tracks on all episodes. One of the standouts of this first season is what might almost be termed the bizarre grandeur of Dominic Frontiere's incredibly memorable score, and that sounds nicely full bodied. Some may know that second season composer Harry Lubin kind of ironically recycled his theme from One Step Beyond for the half season that The Outer Limits mustered in 1964 and 1965, but his efforts simply don't compare (in my not so humble opinion) to Frontiere's achievement. Frontiere wasn't above recylcing himself, and fans of The Invaders may recognize a cue or two. Dialogue as well as Vic Perrin's immortal "Control Voice" all sound fine, if a bit on the boxy side at times. Optional English subtitles are available.

The Outer Limits: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Disc One

• The Galaxy Being - Audio Commentary by Film Historian David J. Schow


• The Hundred Days of the Dragon - Audio Commentary by Film Historian Reba Wissner


• The Architects of Fear - Audio Commentary by Film Historian Gary Gerani


• The Sixth Finger - Audio Commentary by Film Historian David J. Schow

Disc Two

• The Man Who Was Never Born - Audio Commentary by Film Historian Gary Gerani


• O.B.I.T. - Audio Commentary by Film Historian Craig Beam


• Corpus Earthling - Audio Commentary by Film Historian Craig Beam


• Nightmare - Audio Commentary by Film Historian David J. Schow

Disc Three

• The Zanti Misfits - Audio Commentary by Film Historian Tim Lucas


• The Zanti Misfits - Audio Commentary by Film Historians Gary Gerani & Steve Mitchell


• The Mice - Audio Commentary by Film Historian Reba Wissner

Disc Four

• Controlled Experiment - Audio Commentary by Film Historian Reba Wissner


• Don't Open Till Doomsday - Audio Commentary by Film Historian Reba Wissner


• Zzzzz - Audio Commentary by Film Historian Tim Lucas


• The Invisibles - Audio Commentary by Film Historian Tim Lucas


• The Bellero Shield - Audio Commentary by Film Historian Tim Lucas

Disc Five

• Specimen: Unknown - Audio Commentary by Film Historian Craig Beam


• The Mutant - Audio Commentary by Film Historian David J. Schow

Disc Six

• The Guests - Audio Commentary by Film Historians Gary Gerani and David J. Schow


• Fun and Games - Audio Commentary by Film Historian David J. Schow


• The Special One - Audio Commentary by Film Historians Gary Gerani and Michael Hyatt


• A Feasibility Study - Audio Commentary by Film Historian David J. Schow


• Production and Decay of Strange Particles - Audio Commentary by Film Historian Tim Lucas

Disc Seven

• The Forms of Things Unkown - Audio Commentary by Film Historian Tim Lucas

The Outer Limits: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

One of my earliest viewing memories was catching a rerun of The Guests on a Saturday afternoon growing up and being completely enthralled and terrified by it, and it delighted me no end when The Simpsons famously skewered it years later. Rewatching the entire first season now for the first time in many years reminded me of how incredibly stylized so many of the episodes were, despite sometimes preposterous plots and not always completely artful writing. This set features generally solid technical merits and some outstanding commentaries. Recommended.