Sandkings

I've read this short story/novella several times and it's always been enthralling. Pacing, characters, setting, everything. Just something that George RR Martin penned decades before Game of Thrones. The TV episode of Outer Limits that is supposedly based on 'Sandkings' is really a sad treatment of a great story. To be honest I haven't seen the episode in years but I can still remember the excitement and anticipation I had waiting for the episode to first air and then the complete disappointment when I actually viewed it and thought to myself "What the heck was that?" The despair and loneliness, the utter horror, the creepiness, the style, basically everything that made the story great was missing from the TV episode. All I can say is, do yourself a favor and read the story before (or instead of) viewing the TV episode. You won't be disappointed.

Also, the story itself is not very long (maybe 35 - 40 pages?) and should be available free online. Check it out.

Science-as-horror entertainment for the entire family. Adults can indulge the gleeful overacting while kids get to experience fright night as they take everything at face value. Casting is marvelous, with Helen Shaver as the mad scientist's blonde wife an especially inspired choice. Years before, she had played the protagonist's love interest in the voodoo-horror flick "The Believers" in which her classically beautiful WASP face was progressively disfigured by ugly boils that turned out to be ... spiders living under the skin! With this subtext under the viewers' belt, the horrifying encounters she has with the "sandkings" carry an added resonance and punch.

Of course the TV show's plot has been greatly altered from the sci-fi short story, no doubt partly due to budget limitations. I didn't mind. Lloyd Bridges is content to play out his part's stereotype to the hilt, but Beau Bridges gives an acting masterclass by additionally injecting some truly disturbing moments into his performance (the bathroom scene, as noted by other reviewers). For a TV drama, the music score is above average.

Recommended for a rainy evening while curled up in front of the fireplace.

Probably the most interesting thing about this episode in this day and age is seeing 3 generations of the Bridges family on screen together - Lloyd, his son Beau, and HIS son Dylan - playing those same positions of grandfather, father, son. Oh, and getting to see a younger Kim Coates.

The story itself is decent enough, too - creatures found in a soil sample from Mars, by Earth scientists, are deemed too dangerous to live but the man who made the initial discovery takes matters into his own hands and hi-jinks ensue - and it's all acted capably by the aforementioned actors and Helen Shaver.

The 'moral' is pretty predictable, but really, it's the journey that we're here for and it's a decent enough journey.

The pilot episode of "The Outer Limits" TV series is an adaptation of G.R.R. Martin's novel from 1979. The series does not have unique story-line, but it is an anthology of short SF / Fantasy / Horror films, and the "Sandkings", with its duration of one and a half hours, has all the qualities of a feature film.

The eggs are found in a sample of a Martian soil and Beau Bridges plays the scientist who manages to restore the race of alien insects and, in an attempt to prove that these beings possess reason, he gradually loses his own. Production is at a satisfactory level for a series of that time, the acting is ok, and the story is interesting and quite tense. It was massively bashed by viewers who read Martin's story, but it kept my attention all the time and definitely lured me to continue with this series.

"Increasingly, modern science pursues powers traditionally reserved for the almighty, but those who encroach upon the province of the gods realize too late that the price for entrance is destruction."

7/10

Good story but Beau bridges is unbelievable. He just looks nasty and sloppy even before he steals the world critters.