The Mutant

On a colony in outer space, a crazed mutant crew member (Warren Oates) controls everyone with his incredible psychic powers. He can read their thoughts and kill with a single thought! And, when an investigator is sent from Earth, he is in danger, as the all-power (and VERY bug-eyed) mutant is not about to let him return home with knowledge that the colony is being terrorized!

Rixrex is correct, the plot for "The Mutant" is clearly reworked in the second "Star Trek" pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before". Both involve a normal guy becoming a mutant--a seemingly all-powerful and completely amoral mutant who scares the crap out of the rest of the folks! And, in both cases, there clearly is a need to stop this mutant--lest everyone die when they happen to displease him...and they are surely eventually going to do this! And, now that I think about it, they both are variations on the "Twilight Zone" episode "It's a Good Life"--where an evil child controls everyone--lest he wish them out of existence or worse! This is NOT a bad thing, as the evil mutant idea produced some great episodes of these series--as these three are among the best. It also was used, with a few variations, in the magnificent "Village of the Damned". So why did this work so well? The idea of people becoming vicious all-powerful monsters is so compelling--as it explores the basest instincts within all of us. Heck, using the reasoning in these shows, even Mother Theresa would have become an animal depending on her circumstances. Well worth seeing--well-written and suspenseful.

Larry Pennell stars as Dr. Evan Marshall, a psychiatrist sent to a remote outpost planet called Annex One that had been designated suitable for colonization, but that has since changed, since one of them has died, and it's obvious that the survivors(who are forced to wear thickly tinted goggles from the endless sunlight) are covering up something which turns out to be the botanist Reese Fowler(played by Warren Oates) who was caught outside in the planet's acidic rain that has transformed him into a bug eyed mutant capable of reading thoughts, and acquired the power to kill on touch. Just how can Reese be stopped before all is lost? Oates is good here, though story is sparse, and script too talky.

This is the first Outer Limits episode I ever saw as a little kid, and found it incredibly scary. When I recently picked up a box set of episodes, it was the first one I watched just to see how it held up.

While not nearly as frightening as when I was small, it still had plenty of punch and overall is still very eerie, and wholly chilling. Warren Oates is not recognizable as himself playing the human space-explorer crewman turned mutant with a Napoleon complex, but gives his usual fine performance.

Quite interestingly, the premise was rehashed in a Star Trek episode, Where No Man Has Gone Before, however two years later, with less hideousness and fright but just as much maliciousness by the affected crew member.

The premise of this episode is that a small exploratory team has been sent to a very Earthlike planet. They have been there for some time and a psychologist has been sent to check on their progress and overall mental health. There is only one woman in the group, and all are highly educated. My outlook on the show was almost immediately soured when the woman was dressed in high heels and a calf-length skirt. The idea that such attire would be used by a member of an initial exploratory team was ridiculous. All the men were dressed in very utilitarian work shirts and pants. One member of the group was turned into a Bug-Eyed Monster or BEM that is capable of controlling the thoughts and actions of the other team members. His powers extend to being capable of somehow vaporizing people that have displeased him. The action then becomes a struggle between the BEM or mutant and the other humans that are struggling to survive. Of course, the BEM is defeated, but not without the woman uttering a high-pitched scream when there is danger and whirling away from the sight into the sheltering arms of a man. While I realize that was what was done in those times, it is still a bit overdone. Science fiction allows women to have some backbone.

An unfortunate space traveller gets incredible power on a sun drenched planet when a kind of toxic rain falls on him. He begins to mutate and with that loses his humanity. Unfortunately, for him, he longs to be with people but has a killer inside him. His very touch kills and he enjoys intimidating those around him. As you can imagine, once people get wind of this, they try what the can to survive, as each meets a violent death. There are good performances here, especially by Warren Oates, who plays Reese, the mutant. This has been done in other sci fi efforts, but the eeriness of this makes it a good bet. It all gets down to what a one of a kind personage can do when he has absolute power to destroy.