Dr. Link is working on his robot Adam.  Alone . . . at night . . . in a dark lab . . . all the standard markers for an Outer Limits cutting-edge research facility lab.  Whatever the doctor is doing, the robot suddenly takes offense and throws him against the wall, killing him.

Adam flees the scene of the crime — he thinks he’s people!  And is found by a uniform cop who pulls a gun on him, demonstrating that he might not be detective material.  The cop might be wearing Kevlar, but Adam is Kevlar.  As Adam approaches, the cop begins firing, managing to nail himself with a ricochet.  This is pretty stupid, but on the other hand, it is nice to see a TV show acknowledge that ricochets are dangerous for a change.

Cynthia Preston — The picture is actually from her appearance in The X-Files where she was so cute that I remembered her 20 years later.

Dr. Link’s hot daughter Mina comes to visit Adam in jail.  She grew up with him as a brother and wants to see him tried as a sentient being. To assist, her she recruits civil rights attorney Leonard Nimoy who is retired, playing mere 2-D chess in the park.

Nimoy reluctantly accepts.  The irony is that if he can convince the court that Adam is sentient, and therefore should not be dismantled, it also follows that he must then stand trial for Dr. Link’s murder.

The rest of the episode is an extended courtroom scene.  But given the subject and Nimoy’s excellent performance, it is all riveting.  Barbara Tyson is also very good as the prosecutor.  Unfortunately, Cynthia Preston as Mina is not not quite up to it.  Especially when she is testifying, it is not a joke to say she sounds . . . robotic.  I defy anyone to close their eyes and listen to her and not think “robot.”  Just re-watching, it is so unlike the rest of her performance that I think it must have been a choice by her or the director. Overall, another very good episode.

Post-Post:

• Dr. Link’s lab was in Rossom Hall Robotics. That sounded familiar — it was the Rossum Corporation behind the titular Dollhouse.  Both are presumably references to R.U.R., Rossum’s Universal Robots, a company in the 1920 play by that name which introduced the word “robot” into the English language.  Or “robe-it” as Rod Serling used to say on TZ.
• The episode is based on a 1939 short story by Otto Bender.  Asimov’s better known re-use of the title was forced on him by a publisher.  But he can’t avoid blame for the muttonchops.
• Similar story to Star Trek TNG’s The Measure of a Man.
• In a stunning coincidence, this episode was directed by Leonard Nimoy’s son.
• Hulu sucks.

Marlee Matlin, stretching her acting chops by playing a deaf woman, is “hearing” things despite the failure of her implants . . . no, hearing implants.

The next day, teaching her class of deaf kids, she begins hearing things again.  She frantically begins filling the chalkboard zeroes and ones and X’s.

She is taken to the hospital where she meets Larry Drake.  After playing a retarded mentally-challenged man on LA Law for years, here he is a NASA engineer who fortuitously happens to be working as a janitor in the hospital.  Now that’s stretching your chops.

He identifies her writings as binary code despite the inclusion of lots of X’s.  He runs the code through his computer, and tells her it is a message.  Just as in Contact, it is a Primer for the rest of the message.

After Marlee inputs more code into a handheld device he gives her, he prints out pages that cover an entire wall.  Tracing through the X’s produces the space-porn from the Pioneer 10 spacecraft.  Alongside a picture of the alien.  The big, big alien.

Marlee’s husband gets home from a trip and is not thrilled to see his wife working with Larry on this project.  He also isn’t thrilled that they have put $900 on his credit card for capacitors and other electronic equipment that aliens have asked for.  I don’t know why capacitors were singled out unless the charge was from  Capacitors R Us; or that’s the only electrical component the writer had heard of thanks to Dr. Emmet Brown’s ground-breaking work on the flux capacitor.

She is upset that her husband doesn’t believe her, so goes to Larry’s place where they set up the equipment on his roof as per the alien’s instructions.  While getting an aspirin, she notices that he takes the same anti-psychotic drug they tried to give her.

Marlee’s husband finally tracks them down and tries to stop them.  However, they are able to answer the alien’s plea by firing a blast from the space laser into the alien’s solar sail, enabling them to divert the craft from crashing into the sun.

So-so story, but well performed.

Post-Post:

• This is the 4th episode written by Brad Wright this season.
• Larry Drake says the message is a palimpsest, but I don’t think he (or Brad Wright) knows what that means.
• The husband was just kind of annoying here, but was great as Pusher in a couple of X-Files episodes.
• Larry Drake was last seen in And All Through the House.
• They seem a lot happier in the original Pioneer rendition:

“You idiot, I told you no one else would be naked.”

Alyssa Milano, majoring in Virgin Studies at college, is fooling around with her boyfriend Jay.  Naturally, he wants to go further, but she is committed to remaining chaste until marriage.  She should dump him when he says, “I think this whole abstinence thing could be a good thing,” because he is clearly psychotic.

After he leaves, a space dildo bursts through the roof of her apartment and embeds itself in the floor.  As Alyssa takes a closer look, an entity bursts from the space dildo and gives her an alien facial.

Jay’s friend Karl approaches him in the library and grills him about Hannah’s virginity. She has tracked Jay down in the library and begins climbing all over him.  He is still trying to be supportive of her crazy ideas, so she abandons him, finds Karl in the stacks, and starts making out with him.

That night, Alyssa goes to his room and strips for him.  Soon he is inside her.  I mean, really inside — like his entire body is absorbed into her.  Well, that actually is a football player, but the death of Karl and intro of the Quarterback are so blurred, they might as well have been the same character.  In fact, the QB does not even rate a name in the credits.

Jay rides to Alyssa’s apartment on his scooter, possibly explaining why she never put out for him.  He sees the QB’s car outside and demands to know where he is.  The part of Alyssa that is still human fears for his safety tells Jay to beat it.  Well, she actually tells him, “go away,” but I think there is a lot of “beating it” in his future.

Jay waits for Alyssa to leave and goes into her apartment.  He finds the space dildo still embedded in the floor and takes it to his professor, the frequently annoying Saul Rubinek.  Despite the sexual theme of the episode, Rubinek is thankfully not involved in those shenanigans, sparing us the squirm-inducing awkwardness in Gotcha!.

Meanwhile, Alyssa is now picking up dudes on the street and banging them to death. She even finds the time to seduce Karl’s girlfriend.  Sadly, that does not get past the kiss because Karl’s girlfriend is not much interested; at least, not as much as me.

Rubinek miraculously finds other instances of space dildos crashing to earth.  Their appearances seem to always be linked to the disappearances of horny young men.  So apparently the previous space dildos were homophobic haters.

Alyssa continues absorbing dudes until she is shot by a cop in an alley in absorption interruptus.  As the shots ventilate her, light streams out and the dude being absorbed is cut off at the waist and left in agonizing pain before dying.  Thank God, as she is absorbing all these guys, it is not effecting her hot size 2 body.

She is taken to the hospital where her wounds spontaneously heal before the operation.  The surgical team flees the room, and Alyssa tries to seduce the surgeon, but he is more scared than turned on.  Possibly because they have managed to outfit Alyssa in the only hospital gown ever made that actually closes in the back.

Jay cracks the code of why Alyssa did not kill him, Karl’s girlfriend or the surgeon — the alien possessing her requires pheromones only given off during arousal to absorb the victim’s energy.  He enters the Operating Room and locks the door.

Somehow, the purity of the two virgins having the sex drives the alien from her body rather than energizing it like a double shot of espresso.  With the alien gone, she is free to bask in the after-glow of world-saving sex, and dream about her life with Jay.  At least until police charge her with multiple homicides.

That encounter with Karl’s girlfriend might have been good preparation for her next 20 years to life.

Post:

• Mark Sobel also directed The Choice.
• Alyssa’s character’s name Hannah Valesic left me craving pickles.
• Hulu sucks.

Sci-Fi stories are like westerns.  Put a wagon out in the desert and you are half way to a decent western.  Put some people on a spaceship, and you’re halfway home with me.

It is day 315 of the Mars III Mission.  The math suggests that they have been on the surface for about 100 days.  Thanks to some brilliant scheduling, they are exploring a cave a few hours before liftoff rather than say, going over the pre-launch checklist, resting up for the most important procedure of the flight, or spelling their names in the regolith.

Their dedication pays off, at least in the short run, as they find some writing in the cave.  Nearby, they discover a pod.  Following in the tradition of brainiacs from Alien to Prometheus, their first instinct is to take the pod back on the ship.  Short of putting their lips on it, there could be no worse idea.  Nothing good ever comes in pods —  it’s always evil murderous aliens; or peas.

The pod emits a burst of light and gas, knocking the 3 astronauts unconscious.  They wake up an hour later but are due to lift off in a few hours so can’t explore or document the find.

All is well for the next seven months as they are en route to earth, only 3 days from home.  As they are watching football, there is an Apollo 13-esque explosion.  They lose communications with NASA (which is now apparently fully staffed by one oriental woman), and also lose half the oxygen.  Pete Claridge (Michael Dorn) finds some goo on a bulkhead and takes a sample.  It turns out to organic and multiplying.

Ed Barkley goes below to check on the equipment as the temperature soars to the 120’s.  Claridge says he is looking forward to getting back to his lakeside cabin, and gets a skeptical look from Al Wells, which plot-wise makes no sense.  We find out later that Claridge is an alien — why would the alien know everything about his host, but make up a cabin?

As the temperature gets unbearable, Wells goes nuts from the heat and turns the cooling back on almost killing Barkley.  Claridge — the crew doctor — decides to draw some blood from Wells to be sure he is OK.  And by “draw” I mean “inject” and by “blood” I mean “alien juice.”  When Barkley comes back up to the cabin, Wells is hiding a wound on his arm that is oozing green slime.

When Barkley spots this, Wells transforms into an alien.  Barkley forces him  into the airlock with a fire extinguisher. When Claridge re-enters the cabin, Wells has transformed into a human again and pleads with him to stop Barkley from opening the hatch.  Before Claridge can stop him, he blasts alien Al Wells out into space.

After they lose another power cell, Barkley goes below deck where he finds a space suit with Claridge’s body in it.  The alien Claridge catches him and fesses up saying they didn’t have time to eject that body.

His species is from far away and went to Mars hoping to be discovered. Barkley makes it clear he does not intend to allow that ship to return to earth.  Claridge seems like a pretty benevolent alient, and dangles the cure for cancer in front of Barkley.

They begin working together to save the ship, but when they get communications back, Claridge’s family is on-screen to greet him.  He pulls off his act very well, but Barkley can’t allow him back on earth.

Once alien Claridge sees what Barkley intends to do, he gets very self-righteous.  He says their species is millions of years old, therefore it is their right to take puny human lives to ensure their survival.  Barkley alters the angle of re-entry and they explode.

They get a  little too cute building paranoia at the expense of logic, but it ends up being another good episode.

Post-Post:

• Director Tibor Tobaks’ work was last seen in Blood Brothers.  Other credits include Mansquito, Ice Spiders and Mega Snake.
• Grant Rosenberg also wrote the previous episode.
• Claridge is played by Worf from Star Trek TNG.  He does a great job here and I was surprised he had never done anything outside of Star Trek.  Until I checked his IMDb page and saw he has a huge resume; even including the original Rocky where he played Apollo Creed’s bodyguard.
• OK, whales also come in pods, and they’re cool.  But they also come in gams, which are hot.
• They are returning to Earth from Mars.  It is hard for me to envision a route wherein the sun would be at their backs:

Good news: Director Mario Azzopardi worked on 21 Outer Limits episodes, so he should have this down pat.  Bad news:  This was the first.

The secret of my nanobots is to make them look like tanks.

John-Boy Walton is giving a presentation of his revolutionary nano-technology which will clean everything from polluted rivers, to cancerous livers, to grass stains on your kid’s clothes.  By attacking problems at the molecular lever, he can cure everything from cancer to dandruff.  When asked if he is playing God, he responds, “Let’s just say God created a flaw in man — I think I can do better.”  So you know he’s screwed.

John-Boy’s friend Andy shows up in the lab and tells him that he is going to marry his sister — John-Boy’s, not his own.  30 seconds later, he finds out that he has pelvic cancer.  Chemo and surgery are not promising options.  So naturally Andy breaks into John-Boy’s lab; because a sociologist would totally know how to navigate the equipment and administer the nanobots.

Three days later, his cancer is almost completely gone.  And he gives his fiancee a real pounding.  Like Spiderman, his vision has even been corrected.  He tells John-Boy that he injected the nanobots; John-Boy is furious and wants to deactivate them.  Andy will not allow that, so they begin testing the effects on him.

After the sex gets too rough, Andy’s fiancee walks out; but not in a straight line.  The next morning, he rushes to the lab and shows John-Boy that the nanobots have started constructing gills on his neck, having interpreted his inability to breathe underwater as a “defect.”  Andy finally agrees to have the nanobots deactivated even though the new ability to breathe through his neck might have won his fiancee back.

The flush-and-deactivate command does not work.  He sends Andy home for a good night’s sleep.  The next morning, John-Boy goes to Andy’s apartment.  He is complaining of a pain on the back of his head.  John-Boy checks it out and discovers that the nanobots have taken Andy’s inability to parallel park without a mirror as another “defect” and have now given him perfect 20/20/20/20 vision like Lolac of Twilo.

John-Boy concludes the only way to kill the nanobots is to electrocute them.  He sends three surges through Andy which have the slight side effect of killing him. John-Boy is able to CPR him back to life.  Over the next few days, the nanobots do more renovation on Andy,  They have covered his chest with jellyfish type stingers and reinforced his chest cavity to make him invulnerable to attack, or from treatment by John-Boy.

Andy stabs himself rather than go through life as a freak.  After he collapses, the nanobots slowly slide the scalpel out of his gut.  He awakens, and realizes they will not let hem die.

Andy asks John-Boy to electrify him again, but really turn it up so he and the nanobots are both fried.  John-Boy takes all the vials of his serum and smashes them on the floor which seems like exactly the wrong thing to do.  But then he turns on all the gas jets and sets fire to his papers.  As he leaves the lab, it explodes in the background.

As Andy’s fiancee is packing, she cuts her finger on a broken picture.  When she goes to get a band-aid, it has already healed.

Another good episode.

Post-Post:

• Writer Grant Rosenberg was responsible for the  Start Trek TNG episode that introduced Brian Bonsall as Worf’s son.  I’m sure it wasn’t his idea, but what a cross to bear.
• Andy and his fiancee in the episode were actually married 5 years later.