Human Trials

This series would be better off if they expunged all its clip show episodes. They are just crap and tarnish the show. They don't even make sense if you've seen the episodes clips are pulled from.

Star Trek: The Next Generation made exactly one clip episode, it was awful, and Trek has wisely never done it again.

OL never learned that lesson.

IMHO, this isn't a frivolous complaint, it damages a great series, most especially with fans that might want to be dedicated. It's not the worst crime ever, but if you want to recommend the show to a buddy, you have to explain these.

I revised this review after checking out the latest Twilight Zone revival, which to me didn't work at all. And I remembered watching the 1980s revival and didn't like it either. I can't fully explain why, but neither came close to capturing the original TZ.

But-- this Outer Limits revival nails it! Flaws aside, to me it is by far the closest in spirit to the original TZ. And by that, I mean the stories and tone.

Something I did not like about this series was the producers creating a new episode and than cutting and pasting scenes from other episodes into the new episode and wasting our time and patience having to endure a resultant poor story-line. This is just a cheap and lazy way to save production costs and not having to do and creative thinking and writing. This fine series was marred by this type of garbage.

Four military people are auditioning for the possibility of going on a secret mission. They must pass test to get there which involves being put in a dream state where they are asked to make decisions that will demonstrate their resolve and their loyalty. Two of the men despise each other and are in perpetual conflict. This time it wasn't enough to use random scenes from previous episodes in the last episode; this time they used two separate episodes. As is usual, while the men are in the dream state, they become characters from previous episodes, completely out of context. Why these guys are willing to do what they do and experience what they experience is never made clear to us. They are told on several occasions that they may not survive these tests. Yet on they go. The conclusion is utterly unsatisfying and extremely cynical. With a group of creative people, a new series could be born, but it would take some true effort to do so.

***WARNING*** This is a clip-show. The habit of this otherwise fine reboot of the 1960s series was marred by the producer's habit of making the final episode of each season (including this, the series finale) a clip-show.

Like most of the breed, this show is a waste of time. This concept was invented by science fiction writer A. E. Van Vogt (he called them "fix-ups").. Van Vogt used the technique to string together unrelated short stories into novels. Granted, he did a better job of it than the TV hacks, but the seams STILL showed.

All this TV nonsense goes back to my own childhood and Desi Arnaz. Seems you were not allowed to say words like "pregnant," "constipated," "hell," "damn" and a host of others on TV. You couldn't show a toilet either. A pregnant woman? You'll go straight to hell!

When Lucille Ball got pregnant (sorry--"expecting" or "with child") and started to show, she was NOT allowed to appear on camera. Desi invented the clip-show to keep the show on the air. This just gets dumber when you understand that Lucy and Desi owned the studio (Desilu). Desi also cooked up the rerun, to plug some other holes. Episodes would typically start with the other characters sitting around and someone saying, "Remember the time Lucy..." and we're off to the races.

This is a lame attempt on the part of the producers and writer to plug a hole. If these people could really write, they wouldn't waste their time writing TV full time.

Clip-shows really stink!