This seems like a cop-out to get to bed early.

The week started out with a Twilight Zone episode about an abused wife.  Despite, or maybe because of, two great performances, the episode was just too unpleasant to further think about.

So here we are winding down the week with the same kind of episode.  This one feels even worse since the victim is not only a woman, but 71 years old.

It’s just not something I want to dwell on.

Next . . .

Other Stuff:

• The elderly couple was named Matheson.  Were they named after the writer Richard Matheson?  No genre series could possibly use that name without knowing the connection would be made.  Was this supposed to be a tribute?

A hideous alien, or as he is known on that planet, some guy, is educating his son Ma’al to never eat food from the outside.  Hmmmm . . . thin ice already.

After the lesson, he dons a snappy hoodie with matching ensemble and runs out of the barn.  He is stopped by his brother T’sha.  Cut!

OK, enough with the apostrophes in science fiction!  It is just a really lazy way to convey otherness (although probably moreso in 1998).  Aliens don’t speak English.  We can spell their names any way we want.  Why would we arbitrarily stick in an apostrophe?  No one can agree on how to spell Moammar Khadafy’s name, but no one is sticking an apostrophe in it. ^[1]  A minor point, maybe, but it’s kept me from reading Dune.

Anyway, T’sha warns Ma’al not to go to the ruins of the old city again.  T’sha reminds him (i.e. us) that “the woods are filled with the beings.  Big smelly ones.  With razor teeth and claws like hooks.”  Ma’al says their grandfather told him the beings all died in camps years ago.  What the hell, Ma’al passes a US Interstate sign.  The city of ruins is Seattle.

In Seattle, we see a ragged group of humans.  They don’t have “razor teeth and claws like hooks” but I think the smelly part is accurate.  A woman says now that they have escaped the camps, they will reclaim their birth names.  She was 98801, but is now Rebecca.  Birth names are also reclaimed by David, Isaac, Ruth, Caleb, and Joshua.  Fine names, but I think the writers forgot their Big Book o’ Character Names that day and just picked up a Bible. ^[2]

Rebecca asks a teenage girl what name she would like.  We don’t get an answer (teenagers!), but a flashback informs us that this is a sequel to the fine episode The Camp and that the girl is 98843’s daughter.

Raggedy Alex whines about them being hungry.  Rebecca makes good arguments about not eating the low-hanging fruit they see all around them because it might be poison.  Alex ignores her and eats like a king; well, the king of Appletown anyway.  Others follow his lead but they all get sick.  Serves ’em right.  You’d think David, Isaac, Ruth, Caleb, and Joshua would know better than to eat an apple they were warned about.

They catch Ma’al snooping and chase him back to the farm where he lives.  Once there, they break into the grow-room where the aliens grow food for their family.  They grab some groceries and flee.  Unfortunately, Caleb is killed by a security device (the good kind — it doesn’t dial the police, but it does send a dozen steel blades through the intruder’s body).

The four humans go war with the alien family.  We see the aliens are actually pretty good eggs, and we see what humans will do when they’re hungry.  It is not worth going through point by point, but it is good stuff.

Other Stuff:

• ^[1] OK, a couple of spellings do.
• ^[2] Just joshing.  Where would they find a Bible in Hollywood?

Battle cruiser Tango Bravo 1 — wait, that’s really the name? — has just reached orbit around planet N184.  Did they just run out of names for stuff in the future?  They are there to drop off an undisclosed payload.  As the crew speculates about what it is, they are blasted by laser fire which causes a couple of crew-members to drop their own payloads.  When they return fire, the planet zaps them with a ray which knocks them out.  They awaken in space jail sponging off alien taxpayers, with crystals embedded in their hands.

A voice demands to know who they are.  Captain Kimbro identifies himself and says they are from the Starship Archipelago, so I guess it does have a name.  The others introduce themselves per the Captain’s orders.  Deadeye Dumar — played by the always arrogant and obnoxious Steven Bauer ^[1] — feels compelled to represent humanity by adding, “Bite me.”  His witty ripost earns him a sizzling shock to the hand which could render him celibate for weeks.

The aliens tell them to take an hour to pick a spokesman, which seems pretty generous “or else you will meet the same fate as the last unfortunate creatures to trespass in this sector.”  The warning picture they show is too confusing to be effective.  There is a stereotypical alien, but what is that other thing?  Is it his entrails being pulled out?  Is it a chestburster?  Is it a baby?  An alien bagpipe?  Is it significant that one tendril is touching the alien’s noggin?  This is an alien, after all — how do we now this isn’t just what they look like?  One crew-member objects and his mouth is fused shut; sadly it is not Steven Bauer.

The aliens are at least punctual and a voice asks the prisoners if they have selected a spokesman.  Sadly, they are too dimwitted to say, “Yeah, we chose Lt. Valentine, but you sealed his mouth shut!”  Maybe they would have unsealed his mouth.  Worth a try.  To Bauer’s credit, he offers to talk to the aliens in case they get rough.  Captain Kimbro pulls rank, though, and exits to the conference/torture room.

The aliens torture Kimbro, accusing him of bringing a bomb to their planet.  He claims it is “a tool of scientific research.”  They say he better “tell us the truth by the time our second sun rises or you will watch your crew die.”  This would be more effective if he knew the local time, when sunset was, and how long a day was here.

He stumbles back into the cell.  He tells them the aliens want to know what the device is.  He says he told them “the truth.  I don’t even know what the damn thing is.”  Well, that’s not exactly true — he told them it was a research tool, not a bomb.  Anyhoo.

The aliens send water bottles to the cell.  Bauer asks what they will do about Valentine who still has no mouth.  Dr. Chomsky says, “We’ll just have to hydrate him through his skin.”  She then begins rubbing water on his cheeks.  What?  A medical doctor thinks you can hydrate through the skin?  Is she confusing it with moisturizing?

They next summon Valentine for questioning.  Being smarter than the crew, the aliens re-open his Tang-hole.  They then make Valentine see his smarter, braver, deader, and more handsome heroic brother who died saving his platoon.  His brother tells him he can save the lives of the crew by talking.

Back in the cell, Major Neguchi finds the alien’s surveillance equipment.  When he touches it, the aliens fuse his eyes shut.  The aliens then send down some food and just to taunt Neguchi, some porn.  Kimbro finally admits the aliens made him see an old friend who might have died from his negligence.

It comes out that Neguchi also guilt-ridden about the deaths of some pilots under his command at an air show.  His cockiness led them to try a dangerous loop that killed two of his pilots . . . and four people were injured on the ground . . . including a six year old girl . . . who was blinded.  We all love a good story about kids being blinded, but the lack of a similar irony for Valentine’s sealed mouth makes this a little clunky.

Out of nowhere, Bauer decides the only civilian in the crew, Kristin O’Keefe is not telling all she knows.  Turns out he is correct, though.  She says the device is indeed a bomb that could blow a hold 5 miles wide through the planet.

The aliens take Dr. Chomski and accuse her of experimenting on children.  She screams, “They were terminally ill!”  They make her see some of the dead kids who say, “Why did you hurt us?” and “We didn’t want to die.”  The voice tells the crew-members in the cell that Dr. Chomski will not be returning because “her body expired.”

Again, this is a little clunky.  It is not clear that Kimbro and Valentine are bad guys.  Neguchi was just misguided (he mis-guided his pilots right into the ground).  But Chomsky really is evil.  I thought maybe she was offering new medicine and procedures that had not been FDA approved to kids with no other hope.  But those kids did not seem grateful at all.  And her reaction to them was horror, not pain at not being able to help them.  Even her death is ambiguous.  The aliens say they tried to revive her.  Did she have a heart attack?  Did they torture her extree-hard because she really was evil?

They next summon Neguchi to the torture chamber.  They restore his eyes just so he can see Dr. Chomski’s dead body floating in some kind of solution.  She seems to have the same damage as the alien in the warning.  Although, the shot is so quick, it is still impossible to see just what that damage is.  And, BTW, the alien in the warning was naked.  Just sayin’, Showtime.

Finally Bauer is called into the chamber.  After being tortured, Mr. tough-guy rats out O’Keefe as having the codes to disarm the device.

I’ll stop there.  In spite of a couple of of good performances, and because of a few terrible ones, this was a bit of a chore to watch.  However, the ending took this episode from a 2.5 to a 4.5, and at such speed I literally got a chill.

Other Stuff:

• ^[1] At least based on the episode of Breaking Bad I coincidentally saw him in today.
• I don’t want to get spoilery with the ending, but does no one care that Chomski was Dr. Mengele?  All is forgiven?
• The summary on IMDb manages to be both incorrect and a complete spoiler.
• The aliens were Ebonites.  Not very woke.

Natalie is running an archaeological dig in Alaska with three dudes who are not her husband, but I think he has nothing to worry about with this crew.  As she sinks an explosive charge to map the underground caverns, her hubby Curtis drives up with supplies.  She has spotted a capstone.  Being a Hollywood ^[1] archaeologist, her first act is to destroy the ancient site.  Although, to be fair, she fell through the roof.  It’s not like she purposely knocked over a giant statue, destroyed a wall of intricate carvings, and stole an ark.

In the chamber, they find an alien preserved in amber.  Emmet thinks they need to bring in a bigger crew, but Natalie has had people steal her discoveries before even though her name was written right on the bag, and refuses.  She holds an eye-dropper of acid over the amber and squeezes out a few drops.  The amber sizzles and smoke puffs out of the site.  She repeats the test with the same results, then says, “Negative, no reaction to hydrochloric or carbolic acid.”   Well, it did sizzle and smoke; was she looking for fireworks?  I’m starting to feel sorry for Curtis.

Curtis tries to cut into the amber, but his mind is taken over by the alien.  From the alien’s POV, he sees primitive villagers and tribesmen being tossed about by the alien.  Curtis passes out and the group sees the amber rise like a great souffle, then fall like a lousy souffle.  An alien skeleton is revealed.

Twenty minutes in, this thing is a bit of a slog.  Lisa Zane as Natalie brings exactly the same adequateness as she did in The Nurse, but nothing more than that.  Her husband is a mystery.  He is also an archaeologist, but seems to be a slack-ass who just tags along with Natalie on her digs.  She jumps on him for wanting a cushy teaching job.  However, I understand her frustration — they have just discovered a bleeping dead alien, and the guy could still not be less enthusiastic.  Even with this historic find, he still wants to go back to the states.  Even their argument is boring.

Robert Picardo plays Emmet.  He’s a fun character actor, but I had the sudden realization that he always plays Robert Picardo.  Aside from some stubble, his Emmet is often indistinguishable from his holographic doctor on Star Trek: Voyager.  The other two crew-members are non-entities; like Harry Kim on Star Trek: Voyager.

Meh, it goes on.  Curtis and Natalie try to help the alien, and then it helps them.  The bad guys die, the good guys win.

Other Stuff:

• ^[1] By Hollywood, I mean Vancouver.

“Hey, it’s April 1st.  I saw this cartoon about a cow who rang the farmer’s doorbell then ran away.   You should totally try that, Frank!” **

The episode begins with a nice switcheroo.  We see a farm with cows wandering around, mooing about their day.  The camera then pans down through through untold yards of earth, the first couple feet of which are probably cow-shit.  We arrive in a underground hallway immediately identifiable as a secret government installation by the stark design and florescent lighting. ^[1]  Mr. Brown tells the visiting brass that his test subjects are “just like you and me, except that they have this special skill — this ability to move things with their minds.”  Yeah, except for that.  And also except that they look like Harry Hamlin and Nicole de Boer.

Mr. Brown takes them to lab 507.  Four people are sitting at a round electronic console which helps channel their telekinetic abilities.  Brown orders them to crush a cement block sitting on the console.  They make the block explode, which is amazing because: 1) they used only the power of their minds, 2) they created a fiery explosion from a dry cement block, and 3) the blast two feet from their faces did not land a speck of dust on them.  Based on their success, the military gives them the job to assassinate some blockhead in Serbia.

Well, wait a darn minute — when I dropped out of modelling school to take a job with a secret military outfit working in a cold-war bunker funded by the Pentagon covertly located 200 feet underground to move stuff with my mind, I didn’t expect this.  Mr. Brown tries to convince Harry and Nicole that this Serbian is a really bad guy.  The other two subjects, Roger and Louise, clearly did not get by on their looks.  No disrespect, I just mean they were smart enough to see where this experiment was heading.

Nicole wants to go home, but Mr. Brown will not allow her to leave.  He suggests she and Harry just take the elevator up for a walk “to get some fresh air.”  Although that seems unlikely, as they are still situated under that cow farm.  Actually, Harry is more pragmatic than Nicole.  Not only does he accept that this assassination could prevent thousands of deaths, he also didn’t wear his good shoes for their walk.

Nicole reveals that she only got into this because of her brother Dougie is a druggie (did they do that on purpose?).  He was in jail and Mr. Brown said if Nicole joined the project, he could get Dougie released at the public’s risk, and a bottomless pension also at the public’s expense.  Harry had some shady business dealings that forced him the join the project.

Well, well, well, the idealistic Nicole decides keeping her brother out of jail is worth the cold-blooded murder of a foreigner (and an American to be named later who Dougie will probably kill).  The group assembles, and by executive order takes aim at some commie.  They warm up by creating a breeze where he is dining al fresco, then shattering his tea-cup.  Then they give him a heart-attack.  And it must be a bad one because the actor hams it up like Fred Sanford or Ralph Kramden.

Nicole begins having side effects.  She gets nosebleeds, emits static electricity, and seems to involuntarily mind-throw a pot of hot coffee at Roger.  When Louise is found dead, Brown suspects Nicole.  Just then some roaring beast begins pounding on the vault-like door.  It is so ferocious that when it claws at the 6-inch thick steel door, we see the scratch-outlines on the inside — C’mon!  When it tries to pound its way in, the group runs out the other exit — like all super-secret, secure areas, it has a back door.  When they are safe, Brown tells them all to calm down.  As they do so, the sounds from the titular monster subside.  Temporarily.

The group hides in the generator room hoping the electrical field will protect them from the monster created by their thoughts.  Not so much, as the monster finally appears as a large angry cloud.  It scoops up Roger and kills him.  Nicole has sudden new-found respect for the 2nd Amendment and screams for Mr. Brown to shoot it . . .  shoot the cloud, I say.  She wants him to kill the gaseous energy field . . . by shooting it.  Meh, worth a try.  He shoots at it, and the army also shows up to shoot at it, but they are all killed.  Harry and Nicole try to escape, but are cornered.

And then Outer Limits fools me.  Nicole begs Harry to kill her.  It is apparently her mind creating the entity and she doesn’t know how to stop it.  Even Mr. Brown had said she had to be killed.  As she begs Harry to turn the gun on her, the typical OL response would be for him to tell Nicole he loves her and let love vanquish the monster just as mere calmness had subdued it earlier.

But, naw, he shoots her.  Just f***ing blows her away.  But the monster does not disappear.  Harry delivers a line that I always love hearing in any horror / sc-fi situation like this, “You’ve got to be kidding me!”   Just a hoot — why don’t we hear that more?

Much as I love to be surprised, I’m not sure the ending they went with makes sense.  He sadly admits to the shockingly not-dead Mr. Brown, “I’m the one who made it happen, and I let her think that she was the problem.  But I hated this more than she did.  I hated myself for being a part of it.  I hated all the killing I had done in the past . . . I am the monster, goo-goo-ga-joob.”

Soooooo . . . Harry 1) knew he was the monster, and 2) hated the killing.  Ergo, he 1) shot someone he knew was not the monster, and 2) killed her.  And the “You’ve got to be kidding me!” line becomes nonsensical since he said it only to himself.

He ultimately does the right thing, but I think he could have done it before the death of a  really cute girl . . . and, I guess, the other four people in the project and countless soldiers.  Or, at least, after the other four people in the project and countless soldiers, but before the cutie.

Still, another fine episode.  The special effects are pretty bad, but I never deduct points for that.  Harry Hamlin was as good as I’ve ever seen him.  Everyone else also performed well.  Except the commie having the heart-attack . . . Lizbeth! ^[2]

April Fools!  Will try to start again in May.

** Cow ringing doorbell.

Other Stuff:

• ^[1] To be fair, it appears to be the base of a civilian contractor.
• ^[2] Apologies to the estate of Redd Foxx.  His portrayal of cardiac arrest was much more accurate than the one here.