Ron Rifkin made a career of playing edgy, smart, and arrogant characters. Here he is a major geneticist who is working on some coding in the DNA that affects future generations. he has sort of created evolution. He has developed a kind of serum (it's interesting that some of the stuff that has these qualities can be reduced to a little bottle of brown liquid) that will accelerate this gene. He has no way of knowing what the effects will be. Because his university does not cotton to his experiments, he knows they will never allow him to use it on human subjects, he decides to inject himself. The only visible change is a big one, a series of huge welts begin to form on his hands and then on his back. They form a kind of map resembling a diagram of plate tectonics, which he recognizes. Meanwhile, he is enlisting the help of a group of hand-picked students, who have strong physical and mental attributes. At one point in an injection of gratuitous sexuality, the kids are asked to disrobe. A couple of them find this disgusting and leave. We have a little moment of titillation and then move on. It is done in the name of having a body free of blemishes (one person is dismissed for having an appendectomy scar). There is a subplot of his estrangement with his son (the good doctor, driven by his obsessive behavior has driven his family away) and his girlfriend. Ultimately, they all end up in a woods and are confronted by a battery of soldiers, guns drawn. Here is where everything is revealed. The thing that diminishes this is a lack of logic for what transpires (we could use a little explanation) and the ridiculous process of paring down the candidates. I haven't seen all the Outer Limits episodes cries out for a sequel. I wonder if this ever happened.
