The Special One

Mr. Zeno is an alien that takes on human appearance and is dedicated to locating children with a high IQ to indoctrinate them and use them as the vanguard of an upcoming invasion of Earth. The background of this story is to show how adults can manipulate children to the point of turning them into soldiers for their own benefit. Richard Ney composes the disturbing and disturbing Dr. Zeno, the atmosphere is quite somber as most of the action takes place at night and in the room of Kenny, the chosen child. The final scene is fantastic and the moral very sobering. One of my favorite episodes.

"The Special One" stands the test of time.

It is also a prophetic episode for the 21st century, with a chilling warning that is ingeniously presented as a captivating science fiction story, featuring terrific acting, direction, and effects (however primitive they may seem by modern standards).

As with all Outer Limits episodes, the moral of the story is provided at the end. "The mold of a man stems from the mind of a child. Educators and emperors have known this from time immemorial. So have tyrants." No less a tyrant than Adolph Hitler expressed the same idea when he said, "He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future."

The episode is prophetic because it warns about the dangers of allowing indoctrinators (with values antithetical and alien to traditional American values) to program the nation's youth, particularly to accomplish the long-term mission of destroying the existing civilization and replacing it with a new world order.

Unfortunately, this warning wasn't heeded and the US educational system has already been infiltrated by Marxist ideology at all levels. The infiltration has been so complete that today there are few genuine "professors," "colleges," or "universities." The colleges and universities have been replaced by what I call "Leftist Indoctrination Entities" (also called "LIEs"). And the professors have been replaced by Marxist demagogues.

Thus, hatred, intolerance, and violence are common amongst today's youth, as that is what is encouraged by today's LIEs. Blind obedience to the Marxist Totalitarian State is what they're after.

The message of "The Special One" is still a hopeful one, however, because good parents can still raise their children to hold strong traditional values, enabling them to resist the influence of enemy "aliens" that seek to destroy those values.

Guess what. Once again a force from outer space is setting things up for an invasion. This time they are targeting bright kids and teaching them to produce what is necessary to allow this to take place. We are treated immediately to the powers of these aliens as a man who disagrees with what is being done to his son, is driven to suicide by telekinesis of some sort. Moving from Los Angeles to the east coast, they hone in on a young boy who lives in a nice apartment in what may be New York. Mr. Xeno, who looks like a big time lawyer, begins to instruct the young man in all manner of chemistry, mathematics, and physics. Apparently, this is taking place all over the world and these kids will become cannon fodder for the aliens who need them to change the earth's climate to one favorable to their needs. The story focuses on the father, who is torn between what is best for his son (an incredible education) and the secretive nature of the process. Xeno. shows up at all hours, spending time with the kid in his room (Holy possible child abuse, Batman!). They are developing machines that are amazing. The kid can even walk through walls (just like our Mr. Xeno). They also are able to lay a layer of frost on the contents of the room. Finally, the father has had enough, but when he goes to the authorities, he sounds like a nut. It all comes down to when the alien force must do away with him as they have done with other parents before. This is quite an intriguing episode. By the way, the mother (who is utterly dense and tiresome) is played by Marion Ross from "Happy Days."

Gerd Oswald directed two of the best first season Star Trek episodes, "the conscience of the king" and "the alternative factor", and he directed this, we can see why he was hired to direct Star Trek, twice.

His directorial style from "the alternative factor" is represented here, three years earlier.

As a matter of fact it was not surprising that Gene Roddenberry tapped the crew of the outer limits and staffed star trek with them, least of all Robert H Justman who was practically Gene's right hand man for the original series and for the next generation its first year.

One of the reasons I like this episode a lot is because rather than having a teaser which is merely a random scene from the show shown at the very beginning of the episode, they actually have a teaser that leads in to the story and carries on after the short "outer limits oscilloscope display" at the beginning.

This is similar to "the invisible boy", the semi-official "sequel" to "forbidden planet"- A boy is made smarter by the machinations of an external agency. In "the invisible boy" this external agency is a supercomputer which looks like a bigger bubblehead for Robbie the robot, in this episode, it is what looks like a man, but he is not a man.

People who are writing reviews for the show in the year 2020 are neglecting the fact that this show was made in 1963. There was no CGI. They had to use photographic effects and prosthetics. A lot of times this was in the form of superimposition, an image superimposed over the top of another image. You will see where this is used in this episode.

A lot of these shows used your standard manual animation like they used on cartoons: this was done in "forbidden planet" when they showed the "Monster from the ID" in the force field of the ship. In this episode, it is used to convey a type of transportation, and I have to say for a special photographic effect created in the year 1963, this practically beats anything that I have seen in the transformers movies. Although I like CGI, usually.

People are judging this television show on the basis of the Poodoo made in this decade, this cannot be done. You cannot compare this show to any show that is on television today.

For one thing, each episode is 51 minutes long, and for the first season of the Outer limits, they were fairly strict about keeping every episode within that allotment of time. Modern shows are rarely longer than 40 minutes per episode. Number of episodes per show: In 1963 sometimes there were 40 episodes per season. Unless a show is unceremoniously canceled out of the blue like this show was halfway through its second season.

And, there were only three networks back then, Fox network didn't even exist.

Due to the superfluity of all kinds of new "channels" available to the person who's got several hundred dollars per month to purchase subscription to each provider of amusement, and the amount of shows that need to be made for every single one of these so-called channels, a show in the 2020 rarely gets more than 10 episodes per season, and starting in this year it has been 8 episodes per season, down from 10 last year. Which was down from 14 the year before, which was down from 22 earlier in the 2000's. Down from 26 for the 80's and 90's. So this basically shows us of a trend where we get less entertainment for our money than we used to get back in the days when television was free and being broadcast through the airwaves.

These are Internet stations, there should be no time limit and there should be more episodes per season and there should be longer episodes. But, corporate greed of course prevents us from having nice things.

The solution to the conundrum this episode is also very similar to the way "the invisible boy" was solved: and I cannot say any more.

Because although characters in this episode have discovered some kind of skulduggery afoot, who are they going to tell about it and who will believe them? There are no police, there are no FBI, there are no government officials, and there are no military solutions for this. The solution has to come from an area completely left field, and in this episode it works beautifully because of the way that they presented the solution: and we didn't expect this. Oh, I am certain that a few of us myself included had something knocking on the back of the hindbrain suggesting what if it was this or this happening? And maybe we guessed it correctly, but there was no way we could have guessed everything that was going to happen, this was where the virtual rug was pulled out from underneath us.

I have to say, I have been watching this show 2 to 5 episodes per day for the last week, and every single episode of this show is like this: we think one thing is going on, but it's actually something completely unexpected. Maguffins, as Hitchcock called them. This was probably the best television show of the 1960s, and I enjoy these stories much more than even the twilight zone or the twilight zone's one hour episodes which were also very good.

If you watch this show and want to comment about it in these modern days, you have to think about how television was in the 60s, you have to forget about what television has become, because it is not the same thing.

Ironically, The mother in this episode is Marion Ross otherwise known as Marion Cunningham from Happy days.

The introduction to this episode was fantastic--starry and thrilling to watch. I also loved the teleportation--very effective despite a very small budget. The only problem is that it let you know then and there that Mr. Xeno was a BAD man---a very, very bad man indeed! In hindsight, I think it might have worked better had this only been revealed later in the show--to give it suspense. Still, it's one of the best episodes of the series.

Mr. Xeno then arrives at the home of a couple (MacDonald Carey and Marion Ross) and introduced himself as a special tutor sent by the government to work with their genius son. They agree but after some time, the father is a bit concerned--weird sounds are emanating from his kid's room and Mr. Xeno just seems to 'pop in' with no notice. Later, however, the father realizes Xeno is not human. The problem is, no one believes him, his son has now been pitted against him and there is some evil brewing. What's next? See this one for yourself.

All in all, there isn't much to dislike about this one. Fine acting, exceptional writing and a story that keeps you on edge--this is one to see.

UPDATE: I just saw an old episode of "Tales of Tomorrow" (available through the public domain at archive.org) that was VERY much like "The Special One"! In fact, it would appear to have inspired this "Outer Limits" episode. Try watching "Many Happy Returns"--you'll see what I mean that it seems to have inspired this show a decade later.