Manifest Destiny

The first thing you notice about this episode is that it is filmed in first person. That style was a popular gimmick in the mid-90s, and The Outer Limits was late on this fad, not doing it until the year 2000, when the first-person Cops-style gimmick was already old and laughable.

Add to that a horribly hokey cliche and predictable story (don't worry; I don't do spoilers), and you've got a true failure that is very forgettable. I saw this episode when it first aired, and I hadn't thought about it again until I re-watched it just now.

It seems that the writers/producers/whoever in charge decided that since they had a crappy story, they should add the first-person gimmick to add interest. But it did not add interest. The audience isn't invested in the story, and it isn't filmed in a way that grabs your attention. The whole thing is, however, good for a watch party when you want to laugh at one of the most inept TV show episodes ever made!

This is one of those episodes where one needs to focus in on what is and isn't reality. A space ship is sent to investigate a huge station that has brought about the destruction of all flora and fauna on planet, leaving it available for colonization. The rub is that all aboard seem to be dead or at least absent. The factor that isn't fully thought out is that such action may have also destroyed a sentient race. The actions of the investigating team are being recorded. Something is causing paranoia and depression, nee madness on board. So as the crew comes to realize the violence of the adversary (whatever that is), they seemingly become the monster. The issue at hand is what we (or any explorers or colonists) are allowed to do to gain the future. Once the invaders "infected" the indigenous culture, like Cortez and the Indians, a race disappeared, but the invaders brought back the object of reprisals. Watch this a couple of times, especially after you've seen the results.

"Info-dumps" are a hazard of sci-fi and horror storytelling. They're those parts of the story where a character stops to tell another character what's going on because, presumably, the audience hasn't caught on yet because, presumably, it's all to weird for us to decipher.

The problem is, if the authors have done their job well, the audience can already see what's happening, so the info-dump is redundant and brings the story to a halt for no reason.

Yes, this episode has several info-dumps, but most of them are short and, mostly, no one has to break character to deliver them. Since sci-fi fans have learned to tolerate these things, this doesn't really hurt the show until the end, when one of the characters actually points the camera at himself so he can explain the theme of the show to the audience. Ugh.

But, up until then, this episode was pretty effective. The characters are investigating the abandonment of another spacecraft. There's a mystery to be solved, and it's a pretty creepy one, with cryptic messages and several things jumping out of nowhere and then disappearing into the darkness of the crippled ship.

One of characters is documenting the investigation with a video-camera, so the audience literally sees the story through the eyes of someone who is involved in the situation, and learns about the mystery along with that character, in "real time," and is right there with the character as his comrades succumb to the madness that created the mystery.

It's too bad the filmmakers didn't trust that they had shown the audience everything they needed to understand the show, because the final info-dump crippled everything that went before it.

I haven't written any reviews to speak of lately but want to put in a plug for a review written by a member who signs himself as "Sandsquish."

He's spot on with this one. The writing wasn't horrible and the story was decent. I lay any defects at the feet of the producers and the sponsors (in that order, though it used to be the other way around). Producers think viewers are idiots, mostly because THEY don't get it. Sponsors don't like anything they think will demean whatever they're trying to get you to buy. For a common example of this thinking, read about the network reaction to the first "Star Trek" pilot.

This episode, and virtually everything else in TV-land related to speculative fiction, can be classified as "sci-fi."

It is well to remember that when Forrest J Ackerman coined the term "sci-fi" back in the 1950s, he wasn't talking about anything good, and certainly not "science fiction."

Sandsquish's point about the numerous info dumps identifies the major flaw with this episode, and so many other teleplays. The only thing more annoying is the notes in scripts that read, "insert technobabble here." You might watch it once, but you're not going to watch it twice,

In summary, an OK story, poorly told.