Expanding Human

This isn't much of a review as it is a long-burning childhood obsession. From the first time I saw this episode, in elementary school, I became extremely confused with the story because of one aspect of the production that dogged me for years. In my child's mind, I could not distinguish between Andes and Homeir. Some of their facial characteristics are similar, and even more similar if one is not a discerning child, or maybe adult, too.

I am convinced that it was a very poor casting mistake to have paired the two actors in an episode which is actually about the facial transformation of one of the characters.

TO THIS DAY, I have to focus on which is which!

Besides that, this was a very engaging episode!

This is an interesting episode and I really have to "tip my hat" to writer Francis Cockrell, and directer Gerd Oswald for broaching this subject this way.

When "The Outer Limits" ran its two seasons, actual drug experimentation was at its apex. Timothy Leary had conducted his experiments with LSD just two years prior, and had mad his "turn on, tune in, drop out" statement, encouraging society to question authority and attempt to expand their world view.

Cockrell took this to the next level, by having scientists experimenting with these drugs, develop a new one that enhanced intelligence, overall physical strength, as well as expanding human consciousness.

Though other reviewers have stated that Cockrell and Oswald managed to make an entertaining anti-drug message, I don't see it that way. Most good science fiction prepares us for the pinnacles and pitfalls of what is yet to be. This episode followed the longstanding trope and did so in a thought provoking fashion.

I did think that, overall, "Expanding Human" treated the matter with a great deal of respect and seriousness. Just because the final scene seems to deliver an "anti-drug" message, in reality, I feel it delivers a "new frontiers have their risks."

Overall a very good episode.

Skip Homier stars as Dr. Roy Clinton, who works at a University lab that has recently experimented with a new drug formula called CE, or consciousness expansion. It puts one colleague into a suspended animation that is(almost fatally) mistaken for death, but on poor Roy, it turns him into a ruthless(yet intelligent) hulking brute with no conscience yet super strength and delusions of grandeur, as he as already killed two, and it may become more. Keith Andes costars as a friend named Dr. Peter Wayne, and James Doohan as a police detective investigating the case. Mostly dreary and static episode has the right ingredients but comes out flat.

This is an odd little episode of "The Outer Limits"--and very timely. It's as if they've taken the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and adapted it for the 1960s. Now, with the increased popularity of LSD, the show was able to capitalize on it and make an anti-drug message AND entertain at the same time.

The show begins with a weird primordial sort of man breaking in and stealing some chemicals. He's interrupted and brutally kills a guard with the strength of many men. Soon it becomes obvious that this is someone who has transformed himself into a super-intelligent, super-powerful and super-amoral man--and he's bent on killing again and again if needed. The clues lead to a group of men who have been dabbling into the concept of 'consciousness raising' (a term used by scientists like Timothy Leary when discussing the use of LSD).

All in all, a worthwhile episode even if it is a bit obvious in its underlying message as well as the story itself being a bit of a revised version of the old Robert Lewis Stephenson story. It's also worth noting that this show is one of the few of the era that actually showing a person bleeding. It was necessary for the plot but normally deaths were quite bloodless on TV during this era.

Similar concept as season one episode titled The Sixth Finger. Someone trying to speed up evolution and discovering the consequences. Interesting to take that same general concept and take a different approach to it. This episode is a more modern approach while the earlier episode feels like the approach in an earlier time in history.