Oh Outer Limits, you sly fox. You want to dump a clip show on us, so you schedule it right after an episode with the odious Ron Perlman. What would have been merely a decent outing becomes, relatively, a classic on the order of Trial by Fire. [1]
OL shamelessly tries to have it both ways from the first second. Even before the picture comes up, over the dark screen we hear, “It’s gone crazy!” Then we hear, “What did you do to him?” The patient shows robotic gestures, but then it is referred to as him again. After a security guard shoots him with no injury, it is clear we are dealing with a robot. [2] The robot breaks out of the lab and jumps into a car with a woman just pulling into the parking lot.
The Mac 27 forces Cecilia Fairman to drive to an industrial area that is deserted because in 1998 America had not yet been made great again; not even the part in Vancouver. He drags her into an old building and kudos all around for the head-smack she gives him with a crowbar. It sounds like a small thing, but it was staged beautifully, following through to Celia’s astonished reaction that it did not harm Mac 27.
He chains Celia by the ankle and tells her she will have to repair him. Very coolly and fortuitously, he has a repair kit in a secret compartment like the tinker toys they give you to fix a spare tire now. His repair kit includes a headset that allows him to project visions into her noggin. It apparently shows the future too — the first vision he shows her is a clip from an episode set hundreds of years in the future.
He exposes his chest, which is more than Celia has done for us. Four panels slide away to reveal his damaged “flesh” and mechanical innards. The headset shows her schematics to make the repair, but she says she is just a secretary; although if she used that crazy-ass DOS WordPerfect back then, she had to be sporting a 150 IQ. Celia accidentally crosses some wires which causes Mac 27 to have a flashback. Unlike previous clip shows, there is no effort made to fit the clip organically into the narrative. They literally could have pulled any 2 minutes out of the series.
Back at Innobotics, a pair of incredibly unlikable actors — playing a lab geek and a security thug — detect a signal they can use to locate Mac 27. It would have been nice if this signal were the result of Celia’s “error”, but there just doesn’t seem to be that much effort put into this last episode of the season.
Celia continues her repair job. Mac 27 shows hints of emotion, and so does she. She asks him to show her clips of a simulation where a sexy Virtual Reality companion became emotionally attached to the programmer. OK, they did make an attempt to justify this one and it has the beautiful Natasha Henstridge in it, so objection overruled.
The security thug and a couple of goons show up. In no time, Celia grabs the thug’s gun and blows away all three men! I did not see that coming! There is a lot of talk about emotions, what is life, and slavery. Good stuff, though.
Yada Yada, things get twisty from here, and there is a lot more philosophizing. It is very well done, though. However, the commenters at IMDb are right — this would have been a better episode without the clips. But that would have defeated the purpose. They wanted to fill 42 minutes at a discount, and that’s what they got; in addition to the budget, the quality was discounted..
Despite an excellent performance from Nana Visitor as Celia [3], your time would be better spent watching the episodes the clips were taken from. Valerie 23 and The Camp were very good. Bits of Love and Identity Crisis were also stand-outs. But none of them were Trial by Fire.
PS: I can’t get Nana Visitor’s amazing performance out of my head. I’m anxious to see her in other projects now. But not enough to watch Deep Space 9; let’s not get crazy.
Other Stuff:
- [1] Not really — the episode is sadly undermined by its form.
- [2] When the cops show up it is an it again.
- [3] Her name is Cecilia, but I know a Cecilia that I always call Celia. I never asked her if she liked it either.
- C’mon, in 1998 you named a computer Mac?
Didn’t mention much about Nicholas Lea.. He is a good old boy of small screen science fiction. Liked him especially in Kyle XY and X Files.
Nana Visitor was phenomenal on a very early episode of In the Heat of the Night. If you can’t stand the shame of watching that blatant bad idea of a tv series, then please take my advice and give ds9 a chance. I had to be talked into it, and after recently finishing all 7 seasons, I can honestly say it is better then next generation.