The Good
A terrific show that pushed the boundaries of TV both in a creative and sociological sense.
The Bad
No Extras on a sci fi release of one of the most innovative shows ever on TV? Also, this release is a volume so that means it’s not even a complete season!
While both different and similar to The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Vol. 1: Original Series is a 16 episode episode set, economically placed over two discs (4 episodes on each side). The Outer Limits was a one hour TV show that through tales of science fiction and the macabre managed to hold up a mirror to our society. Opening with the episode “The Galaxy Being,” we see what happens when a radio engineer makes contact with an extraterrestrial. This being isn’t dangerous it is just dangerous on earth which is where it sadly ends up. “O.B.I.T.” was an episode ahead of its time as an investigation of a dead man leads to the discovery of a Big Brother-type plot. Lastly, “The Borderland” showed the vagaries of not being allowed to let go when a man, in the hope of gaining contact with his dead son, gets involved with a world he never knew existed.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
What made The Outer Limits, Vol. 1: Original Series so great is that these shows were commenting on society, the government, bureaucracy and everything else that effects our lives. Sure, the shows were campy and the effects don’t hold up but the stories themselves clearly do.
Features
No Extras came with this DVD.
Video
Full Frame - 1.33:1. The picture here was your garden variety black and white look. This show being from the early ’60s it would be easy to understand if the picture wasn’t as sharp as it should have been. That wasn’t a problem at all and it seems like Fox may have even cleaned up these episodes some. There were times when there were cutaways (mostly exterior shots) shown and those seemed like they were shot with a less than ideal camera. The picture in those scenes looked blown out and almost like they were lensed by someone learning how to use a camera. Aside from that, Fox has done a terrific job bringing these shows to DVD.
Audio
Dolby Digital. English - Mono. Close Captioned. I turned the audio on my set about halfway up and things played fine. Obviously when they were making these shows they probably never thought about DVDs, next generation formats and things of that nature. At times I thought that some of the episodes on this release could have been trimmed up a little bit and the redundant (at times) audio served to remind me of this. While I am a big fan of the sound of old science fiction movies, I guess with 736 minutes of it it sort of got a tad stale.
Package
The front of this slipcase cover presents us with an old fashioned TV and the title of this show. I think Fox and MGM could have done a better job with this but maybe their graphics people were on vacation? The back cover shows off more TVs with more images from the show. There is no description of what The Outer Limits, Vol. 1: Original Series is about, rather they just display some common lines from the show and a listing of the episodes. The two discs that house all the content are stored in two slim cases, which tell us what episodes are on each disc, and they also provide a one line description of each.
Final Word
As much as I really liked The Outer Limits, I have to admit that I think The Twilight Zone is better. It could be because I have been watching The Twilight Zone for a much longer period of time? Or maybe I thought that some of the episodes of this show were a bit longer than they needed to be? Whatever the case I still think that The Outer Limits is awesome. The writing is clever, the shows all seem to try and say something and the effects (for their time) were pretty darn good. I could completely see how a show like this, coming on the TV set and basically taking it over, could be quite jarring. However lets remember, in the 1950s the shows weren’t like what they are today. They were a lot more straightforward in every capacity, and because of that it created a space for a show like The Outer Limits to really show what television could do.
The Outer Limits, Vol. 1: Original Series is a well put together set if you can get passed the fact that it was released without any extras and not as a complete season. Aside from that, this genre show is one to own.
The Outer Limits was released .
