Specimen: Unknown

The Outer Limits is doing The Day of The Triffids with a touch of The War of the Worlds with the ending.

Lt Howard, a member of the Adonis research space station, finds a strange mushroom shaped organism. They look rather like space barnacles.

When exposed to the light and air inside the space station, it grows rapidly and flowers. When the plant is studied, the flower emits a noxious gas that eventually kills Lt Howard.

The other astronauts return to Earth, bringing the new plant species with them, not knowing that it caused Howard's death.

After the astronaut arrive on Earth half dead as the plants have multiplied. They quickly spread on the planet with the army not knowing how to stop them.

The story is familiar but the execution is weak. Given the plan spews deadly spores, lets of a noxious gas, no one wears protective suits.

At least the story has danger. The commanding officer and an astronaut's wife having to evade the plants by foot.

A group of five astronauts face a desperate battle for survival, as their base is overrun by deadly spores, which multiply rapidly, and emit a toxic gas.

I don't mean this in a critical way by any means, but the plot is a bit more Doctor Who than Outer Limits, I can understand why fans don't perhaps look too kindly on this one. The plot itself isn't bad, there are some good ideas, but maybe something gets a little lost in translation, it just doesn't quite work.

On the plus side, some of the special effects look pretty good as well, I really did rate the sets and camera work.

I'll applaud it for trying something a little different, a bit of sci fi space horror, when you compare it to other episodes, it just lacks something.

Stephen McNally is perhaps the standout as Colonel MacWilliams, he'd have been very well known to viewers at this point, he'd have completed The Target series a few years before this went out.

6/10.

Somewhat more plausible than the dreadful tardigrade spore drive thingummy, depicted recent incarnations of Star Trek. At least all these actors (all sadly deceased) play out an awful script and lamentable special effects for all its worth. Jeez, these guys were sci-fi pioneers in their day - how time moves on! Just remember that TV screens were small glowing orbs in the corner if the living room when this type of horror was shot for tv broadcasting. Watchers then were probably scared to death watching it :) Watch it for what it is, a Dan Dare esque Hokum where the villains are marauding daffodils that spit - its crazy, its brilliant, enjoy it, crap special effects and lousy dialogue galore - 1 hour of pure delight!

Alien plants cause trouble on earth.

This hour was probably a lot better in 1964, now today I have seen other TV shows like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (Terror) and Star Trek (This Side Of Paradise) pinch the invader plant story and it all seems rather routine now.

But there is no question that the final act of Specimen: Unknown still packs a punch in 2014. In fact the whole hour is still rather cool.

At this stage of the season, The Outer Limits was dishing out great episodes every week! The imagination, scripting, acting, music, location filming is just great.

Richard Jaeckel stars as Captain Mike Dowling, who is a part of a handful of astronauts/scientists on an orbiting space station shaped like a wheel. When one of the crew(played by Dabney Coleman) dies mysteriously after exposure to some unknown space spores which have attached themselves to the side of the ship, the decision is made to land back on Earth with the specimens on board, but unfortunately their container breaks, unleashing the spreading spores first on board the ship, then later on the Earth when it crash lands. Just how can this botanical menace be stopped? Russell Johnson and Gail Kobe costar. Mediocre episode has a padded and thin story, though still manages to be reasonably fun viewing.