Let’s just get this out of the way right up front:  Incontinent Moon.

There, now we can continue like civilized adults.  Professor Stanley Hurst is grading papers when he notices something strange going on with the moon; it is far too bright. He tries to make a phone call, but is told all long distance circuits are down.

He makes a call to the owner of the local book store, somehow thinking she might have more insight into this phenomena than he does as a professor of physics.  He explains that her store has the largest astronomy section in the town.  Amazingly, this has not qualified her to render an opinion.

He notices that the TV has gone to static when he gets a visit from his neighbor Henry. He reasonably suggests that the super-bright moon implies that something has happened with the sun.  For a professor of physics, Stanley is fairly dense not to have thought of this immediately.

Stanley is taking it pretty well.  He calculates that they have about 5 hours before the shock-wave makes it to them.  Henry goes home to pray, because that will make everything OK.

Leslie, the bookstore owner, calls Stanley to thank him for waking her to see the moon. With hours to live, he does the reasonable thing and turns it into a booty call, even though she ain’t no Meg Ryan.  He goes to her place, and they go for a walk in the bright moonlight.

Stanley asks Leslie to marry him, and she says yes.  They go window-shopping for a ring.  He tosses a trash can through the jewelry store window and steals the ring.  She realizes from Stanley’s strange behavior and the bright moon that something has happened.  She then screams at him for not telling her and for monopolizing her last hours alive, making a lot of good points.

She finally accepts his sincerity.  They buy some champagne and head back to her place.  Just as they arrive, the storms start.  When they aren’t instantly incinerated, Stanley starts to think he might have been wrong; maybe it was only a solar flare, and they can survive.

I went back and forth on how I expected it to end, so I was destined to be surprised; or disappointed.  Ultimately, Outer Limits just couldn’t go dark enough to burn the earth to a cinder.  Alien invasions are one thing, but they seem to draw the line at total annihilation.

Another good episode.

Post-Post:

• Based on a short story by Larry Niven.
• Joanna Gleason (Leslie) is the daughter of Monty Hall, and married to Chris Sarandon.
• The physics paper being graded by the professor is “prepared by Darla Nathorst.” Nathorst is credited as Transportation Coordinator on many Outer Limits Episodes, though strangely not this one.
• And he gave her a C — bastard!

Wearing just his suit jacket, Raymond Dalton is stumbling through a blizzard.  He is thrilled to come across a Thomas Kinkade matte painting.

Through the requisite lit window, he sees people having a party.  When he tries to enter the yard, an electrical charge knocks him on his cold as a well digger in Montana’s ass; which is the same reception I usually get.

Luckily, during the credits he has been dragged inside the house and is being attended to by nurse Gina Beaumont (Jessica Steen from Earth 2, which I need to rewatch someday).  For some reason, the first thing she gives the freezing man is ice-water.

Exhibit #1 why this is a dream.

She is promptly chewed out by both the doctor and the leader of the group for lowering the barrier and allowing Dalton in.  Leader Sanford Valle (M. Emmet Walsh) welcomes him to the titular refuge. He says an oil company drilled a little too deep and released a bacteria that polymerized the water like Ice-Nine.

This caused water to freeze at 40 degrees rather than 32 and to not melt until it hits 90 degrees.  Seems like the melting and freezing point should be the same, but I ain’t no expert on polymerized water.  That led to Florida being the tundra they see out the window.

As always in isolated groups of weirdos, dinner is a Downton Abby level of affair. Everyone dresses and acts like they don’t do this same thing every night with the same people.  Dalton meets Valle’s wimpy son Thomas and his floozy wife Justine.  He meets Walsh’s wife Debi who is so hot that it gives away that this just be a dream; or that Walsh has big bucks. Last to join them is dour Sister Angelique who accuses Debi of dressing like a whore.

Exhibit #2 why this is a dream.

Later Justine comes on to Dalton.  He pushes her away after Gina sees them.  Justine then goes then next room down and beds down with her father-in-law. Thomas catches his wife in bed with Walsh and points a gun at him, but Walsh has a derringer and shoots Thomas first.  Dalton attacks Walsh and suddenly finds himself transported downstairs.

When he awakens, Thomas and the doctor have changed bodies, Justine is Gina, Debi is Justine, Angelique is now Walsh’s babe, and Gina is now Sister Angelique.  Got that?  It is revealed that Walsh is controlling the changes, but he doesn’t understand why Dalton is immune.

After the next change, Gina is Walsh’s new squeeze.  Dalton attacks Walsh and ends up waking up in a lab.  He sees that all the other people in the house are cryoginacally frozen in tubes.

Exhibit #3 why this is a dream.

Dalton was thawed out because his brain tumor was now operable.  While on the outside, he does research on the other house-members.  He lawyers-up and gets them to re-freeze him so he can use the information to break Walsh’s hold over the others.

Another good episode.  Walsh is always a hoot and I’m a Jessica Steen fan from way back.

. . . or Interstellar if it were 2 hours shorter — space, wormhole, water-landing, time dilation, stranded astronaut, great ideas, a little boring.

Lt. Christopher Lindy (destined to be known as Unlucky Lindy) crashes into the sea of an unnamed planet.  He ejects into the water along with a female astronaut.  She lasts about 10 seconds longer than the woman (hey, she had a name — Stewart) on board the ship in Planet of the Apes (hey, I never realized it didn’t have a name), as she is dragged down to her death by an unseen sea creature.

There is a great reveal as something huge breaks the surface.  At first, it looks like a huge gaping mouth, but it expands into large inflatable life boat.  Lindy climbs aboard and installs Direct TV.  Although, in retrospect, it might may have been a radio dish.

Meanwhile, back at UNAS (the acronym is often seen, never explained), they receive the SOS and call Chairman Nancy McDonald to initiate a rescue mission — although they have no idea who it is that fell out of the sky or where he fell.

They are able to identify the signal as coming from the Vegan-4 spacecraft (no doubt named because the astronaut was a vegetarian) lost 20 years ago.  McDonald asks if they know who sent the signal, although, since her boyfriend was in the Vegan-4, you might think that would have stuck in her mind.

They are planning a rescue when they determine that the signal is not terrestrial. Vegan-4 went through a wormhole skipping him ahead 20 years, and landing many light years away.  McDonald worries about him being so far away and “all alone”.  But surely she remembers that he went on a long mission in cramped intimate quarters with a female co-worker. Is that the kind of thing a a girlfriend would forget?

Lindy’s spirits are raised by the call from his old squeeze McDonald.  But not so much from the tentacles that begin advancing into his pod.  Looking out into the water he sees swarms of creatures, jellyfish-like with 10 foot tentacles.

UNAS tells him a rescue ship is on the way, but advises him to abandon the pod as its size makes it a more likely a target for the creatures than his warm chewy moving body.  He clears a path with a flare gun and manages to reach land.

The wormhole is too unstable to risk a rescue, so Lindy heroically tells them to abort the mission.  They are only able to send ahead a care package.  Finally, McDonald tells him that 20 years have passed, pointlessly giving him nothing to live for.

Being less communicative than the passengers of Lost, he uses up the rest of his radio batteries playing Someone to Watch over Me on CD.  Only then, in the daylight, he begins to survey his surroundings, and gives a slight smile.  The place is green screen Eden.

Post-Post:

• Still no idea what UNAS stands for.  It was a race on Stargate, and an Egyptian Pharaoh.  The agency shows up again in Season 3.  It’s like the use of ASA instead of NASA in Mars is Heaven.  WTH, is the government trademarking these acronyms?
• BTW, the ship in Planet of the Apes was named Liberty-1 in a 40th anniversary special feature, Immigrant-1 in an early draft of the script, and Air Force One in a series of trading cards.  In the unnecessary 2001 remake, the mothership was The Oberon, but Mark Wahlberg went to the planet in a pod.  In the 2011 reboot, it got a brief mention as The Icarus.  Wow, lets take a closer look at those monikers:
• Liberty-1 — named after Liberty Bell 7?  The only manned Mercury capsule lost, and piloted by an astronaut who died in a horrible capsule fire.
• Immigrant-1 — Oh, shut up.  I can see where the USS Invader or Conqueror might be an issue, but this gives away that we’re never leaving.  How about the USS Explorer?
• Air Force One — Already got one.  Plus, a spaceship doesn’t fly through the air.
• Oberon — King of the Faeries?  Moving on.
• Icarus — Flew to close to the sun and was killed.
• OK, the 1990’s effects are not perfect, but they are pretty great in conveying the awesomeness of the planet.

Wow, ironical considering the frame is slightly off-vertical (with more Dutch Angles to come).

Rusty Dobson’s mother is dropping him off at a boy’s school to build character; and wrist muscles.  They meet with headmaster Peter Donat (Mulder’s father in The X-Files).  He assures Ms. Dobson that Milgram Academy can straighten his ass out. Many of their graduates “have gone on to great careers in the Fortune 500”.  And there is no cheating or deception going on there.

Rusty complains that no one cares what he thinks, and tells his mother that she can’t just “buy a good son like she buys everything else”.  Frankly, kids resenting parents who try to buy their love has always baffled me.

After his mother leaves, he is given a shot which knocks him out.  He awakens in his room with roommate Harrison Taylor.  He tells his roomie that he is going to go over the wall as soon as possible.  Coincidentally, at just that second, there is a commotion down the hall as another student has also decided to go over the wall — in this case, it is a wall surrounding the 3rd floor balcony.  He says his goodbyes to Donat and falls backwards from the roof.  No one makes a move to stop him.

In his first class, Rusty is surprised that the lesson being taught is that it is OK to murder in the support of big business.  After offering a dissenting opinion, he is hauled off to Donat’s office.  He makes a break for it, but finds the doors and windows locked. He makes it to the balcony of death, but opts for the more subdued sliding down drain-pipe as opposed to leaping to his death.  Sadly, only to be stopped by an electronic tether device in his head that inflicts agonizing pain as he tries to break the perimeter of the campus.

In gym class, he meets another student, Charlie Walters, who also isn’t “with The Program.”  Walters instructs Rusty to mimic the others, to pretend to be “with The Program.”  That Charlie is the only one talking in class and is speaking freely in front of 2 dozen other students is not exactly clandestine, but no one seems to notice.

Donat is meeting with a group of Faculty?  Donors?  The Consortium from the X-Files? — that’s sure what they look like.  Donat is assuring them that the current “crop” of boys is awesome.

Rusty figures out that someone from “The Program” is going to assassinate an executive at a local firm.  Sadly, by this time, as in all stories like this, Charlie has gone over to the dark side.  Still, Rusty is able to break out using key-cards stolen from Donat’s office. That plays out about as you would expect.

Was there anything particularly original here?  Nope.  Any surprising twists?  Nope.  Any stunning performances?  Well, Ryan Phillipe was very good as Rusty.  Robert Donat is just death-warmed-over in both this and The X-Files, though.

I am at a loss to say exactly why, but I found this episode to be very enjoyable.  A girl’s school would have been better, but you work with what ya get.

Post-Post:

• Look out!  Dutch Angles!
• I was surprised that the executive being assassinated did not work at Ms. Dobson’s company.  I guess they wouldn’t risk disrupting that revenue stream until Rusty’s tuition check cleared.