Sandkings

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.

This is one of those plots that has been done a hundred times. Beau Bridges (along with his old man) appear in a pilot of the much revered new version of "The Outer Limits." "The Sandkings" is about a pile of sand, taken back to Earth after a Mars mission. It contains living organisms, and Bridges's character is on his way to a Nobel Prize if he can continue his research. Unfortunately for him, he gets so obsessed with his effort that he becomes a danger to the people he works with. He chooses to ignore security and gets himself fired. When he betrays his friend/supervisor and steals some of the sand, he sets everything in motion. At first it is scientific. He goes overboard as he watches the little critters evolve and one might say he had a right to consider his research. Eventually, the Sandkings, which he has dubbed them, grow their own cultures; they become civilizations. They are builders and creators within the confines of a glass case Bridges has built for them. Soon, he loses his scientific objectivity and begins to play god with the little creatures. He deprives them of food and this forces them to wage war against their own kind. They build a monument with Bridges' face, Rushmore like, in sand. Of course, there are obstacles. One is the inability to hide what is going on from his family, his wife and little boy. Also, the scientists at the lab come to realize that a fair amount of sand is missing and he is the only possible suspect. There is a sort of maudlin subplot, where Bridges' own father, Lloyd Bridges (remember "Sea Hunt," and "Airplane"), takes on the fictional role. The younger Bridges resents his father for favoritism toward a brother who became a casualty of war. All this plays into the plot and, of course, when the Sandkings go through thirty-some generations, they begin to get fed up with their god. It is pretty entertaining, starting the series on a positive note, but at times it is really heavy handed. There is a scene where Bridges takes a stained glass window (his wife works in glass), and places it on the high wall of his barn/laboratory. He stands in front of it as the light shows through, arms spread in the ultimate Christian pose. But that's OK. It was really a fun series, running some seven years.

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.

When his research project is closed down, Simon Kress rescues a few of its living subjects and transplants them to a recreation of their native Martian environment in his barn. They grow and learn, but then Kress makes an error with disastrous implications.

BBC2 debuted this episode of the new The Outer Limits I think on Sunday the 1st of May 1995. I was familiar with original series from the 1960's, but the new version of this particular episode really impressed me with a hidden or subversive message with the warning to scientists trying to play or replace the power of god through scientific advancement.

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