Production and Decay of Strange Particles

Usually The Outer Limits often offers a science fiction subject, always in a easy language that allowed to the audience a total understanding what it refers, instead "Production and Decay of Strange Particle" the writers developed a hard tech-jargon that puzzle over the viewers in such unusual lines, including isotope, plasma, anti-matter, subatomic, quantum physics and so on, looks like a scientist exposing his master's degree with those mid-blogging language.

All start at high advanced complex of nuclear reactor that allows all kind of experiments on nuclear field spearheaded by nuclear physics Dr. Marshall (George Macready) where he got a skilled scientist staff in research, the plot is fuzzy about the source of the material on nuclear fission inside the reactor, it somehow starts a chain reaction if it reaches at high heat could be explode all complex, even such reactor having bars to equalize the temperature.

Turn out that the scientists even using radiation suit with mechanical hands dealing with the matter inside the reactor becomes them into a energy bodies, meanwhile Dr. Marshall tries out find a way to overturn the growing process aiming for to save the complex about to explode where will affect the place nearby at least within a mile radius.

This episode somewhat didn't gets fire properly, even with a fine casting especially Leonard Nimoy on small role, they had to use a massive stock footage to fill out some sequences, overrall an average presentation.

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First watch: 2023 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7.

George Macready stars as Dr. Marshall, head of the BroadbBridge nuclear facility that one day has a tragic accident occur, as a fresh infusion of irradiated subatomic particles in a cyclotron comes into contact with an isotope that somehow causes an inter-dimensional crack to open, enabling an unknown but inimical form of super energy to emerge, taking over every worker it comes into contact with, leaving the protective suit empty of a man, but instead housing the energy. How can Dr. Marshall stop this emergency from escaping into the wider world, and having the crack turn into a door? Leonard Nimoy costars in a small role. Aptly titled episode may not make much scientific sense(though that is cleverly set up in the story) but remains fascinating viewing. Deserves credit for sheer ambition and narrative audacity.

During the first season of "The Outer Limits", at least four different episodes had to do with power! This makes this fourth show of its type a bit dull--though I suspect this is still a pretty weak episode regardless.

The show begins at some sort of nuclear power research station. They are experimenting with some weird material that fell from space--which, as we all know, is NOT a good idea. Soon, the material begins to go out of control--releasing tons of dangerous radiation and actually turning workers into electrical-nuclear zombies! Can the boss (George Macready) stop this all from consuming the planet? Aside from seeing Leonard Nimoy in a small part, there isn't a lot to distinguish this one. Not a bad episode but also too familiar and not especially effective.

The director Buzz Kulik, who worked on many episodes of "Twilight Zone", once said that if a blind man could have described what you were seeing on the screen, then you failed as story teller since TV is a visual medium first.

This is an excellent, if flawed, example of OL trying to do just that. Stevens' other episode "The Borderland" shows the same aspect. They were going for striking visuals to tell the story, so you get a lot of eerie shots of radiation suits being animated by radiation beings who have leaked into our universe from another dimension. The science is laughable, but they were just using a bit of it to set everything up. The goal was to generate tolerable terror, not defend a PhD thesis.

The best OL episodes provide some backstory with respect to why the monster is here and what it is doing, and that is not ever really revealed here. Sometimes people just mess with something and something weird pops out. And this happens a lot with OL characters who are trying to delve into the awe and mystery of the universe.

I used to watch The Outer Limits with my dad when I was a small child back in the early 1960s. Most of the time it scared the hell out of me. And this particular episode, "Production and Decay of Strange Particles" was no exception. Two things about this episode always stood out for me: (1) The scientists in radiation suits who were suddenly taken over by glowing electric-arc beings, which I found extremely creepy, and (2) the nuclear explosion (and implosion) at the end.

In recent years I learned that this episode is considered by many Outer Limits aficionados to be one of the weakest in the series, if not the worst ... and I found this puzzling, since the episode stuck out so strongly in my memories of childhood. So when this particular episode was broadcast recently on our local "My-Z" channel, I decided to watch it with a more mature and critical eye.

First of all, some context: "Production and Decay of Strange Particles" was made at a time when physicists were really starting to peer beyond the Newtonian world and into the realm of subatomic particles and quantum theory. The episode makes mention of "quasi-stellar" objects, which had only been discovered a scant few years earlier. Scientists were beginning to confront the fact that the Universe was a far stranger place than hitherto imagined, that there might be other realities beyond our own ... so naturally the producers of The Outer Limits decided to speculate about what might happen if high-energy particle physicists cracked that doorway between such realities just a bit too wide.

Watching this episode reminded me of how people have raised nightmare scenarios about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and how it might create a miniature black hole that would suck up the Earth. I was also reminded of a fascinating hard sci-fi novel by John Cramer called "Einstein's Bridge" in which an experiment at such a facility allows a hive-like civilization from another Universe to invade our own world. These fears are, in a way, prefigured in this old episode of The Outer Limits, and it is the hard physics here that makes the episode a refreshing change from the usual weird creatures and spaceships.

Unfortunately, this episode is SEVERELY hampered by melodrama, enough nonsensical techno-jargon to choke a horse, a slender plot and script that have to be padded quite a lot to expand the episode to 50 minutes, and worst of all, some shameless scenery-chewing by George Macready as the tormented Dr. Marshall.