Fun and Games

A guy and girl fight for life, when playing a game on another planet.

1966 Star Trek stole a lot from this hour, in fact after spending time on these IMDb reviews of The Outer Limits it would seem Trek took one hell of a lot from The Outer Limits.

I wonder how many of those "Trekkers" know that Trek was often going Where The Outer Limits Had Gone Before???

Fun And Games is a good looking hour but I would say Trek did it best. It would seem nearly all Outer Limits aliens have the same voice??? Thankfully he sounds cool to me but it would have helped if Lost In Space's Ron Gans helped with the voice-over work sometimes.

This episode of "The Outer Limits" appears to have inspired a couple "Star Trek" episodes a few years later, "The Arena" and "The Gamesters of Triskelion". Two humans (Nick Adams and Nancy Malone) are teleported across the galaxy to a sick planet--a planet where they pit folks from other planets in gladiatorial combat. And, if they lose, they won't just lose their lives but the planet will be exterminated. Nice way for these folks to get their kicks. Even weirder is that Adams really doesn't seem to care! As for Malone, she DOES care and does her best to try to convince him to fight.

While this is a very good plot, it turns out MUCH better than the description because the emcee of this evil show is so amazingly evil and entertaining. While you don't really see him, his melodious voice truly enjoys tormenting the competitors. His constant laughter and insight into the characters (like a psychologist who is psychic--dissecting the human combatants in order to exploit their weaknesses) is quite chilling and makes a very good story so much better. There's only one minor weakness in this one--and it's inherent in many episodes of the show due to low budgets. The monsters are amazingly silly and cheap looking. Still, it's a top episode regardless.

By the way, there is a cold irony to this one--when the planet faces destruction, Adams' character says that's fine with him. In real life, he was dead only four years later.

Nick Adams and Nancy Malone star as Mike Benson and Laura Hanley, two strangers in an apartment building(he on the run from the police, she an innocent inhabitant) who are selected by an advanced alien race whose unseen leader tells them that they are going to play a life and death gladiatorial game on the planet Andera, which is part of their reality entertainment. The stakes are the fates of the Earth and their opponents called Calco, whose ape-like inhabitants will show them no mercy. How can these two unlikely combatants defeat these creatures and save their world? Exciting(and influential) episode with two fine lead actors, though there are some undeniably silly elements as well.

An Alien thrill seeker pitches two aliens against two humans, Mike and Laurs in a battle of life and death, the prize, to save their planet from annihilation.

Not a favourite episode of mine, but I get why people may like it. The idea of a powerful alien puppet master is a good one, I loved the scenario and the alien world. It has some tension, some good build up, but a pretty ambiguous, slightly weak ending.

What I struggled with a little bit, the rubber masks, it's not something I've been too aware of in the past, but the alien aggressors just look too DIY on a small budget. I won't criticise the production team for ambition though.

I have to give huge credit to both Nick Adams and Nancy Malone, the pair really do elevate the episode with some top notch acting, I can't in all good conscience say I think it's one of the best scripts of all, I think it has some quite sizeable flaws, but these two really do pull it off.

Maybe this one's a bit of a grower, but after my first viewing I'd class it as an above average episode.

6/10.

Other reviewers accuse Star Trek of ripping off this episode for the first season episode "Arena." In fact, as pointed out in the Connections session, the plot of this episode is taken from the 1944 Fredric Brown story "Arena" which Star Trek adapted more faithfully but with a different conclusion to the battle. One big difference is that "Star Trek" properly credited Fredric Brown. The Outer Limits did not.