The Sandkings
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| “The Sandkings” | |||||||
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| The Outer Limits episode | |||||||
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| Episode no. | Season 1 Episode 1 |
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| Written by | Melinda M. Snodgrass (Based on the work by George R. R. Martin) | ||||||
| Directed by | Stuart Gillard | ||||||
| Guest stars | Beau Bridges as Dr. Simon Kress Helen Shaver as Cathy Kress Dylan Bridges as Josh Kress Kim Coates as Dave Stockley Lloyd Bridges as Colonel Kress Patricia Harras as Debbie |
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| Production no. | 1 | ||||||
| Original airdate | 26 March 1995 | ||||||
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| List of The Outer Limits episodes | |||||||
"The Sandkings" is the first episode of the revived 1960s science-fiction television series The Outer Limits, based on the short story Sandkings by George R. R. Martin. first published in Omni Magazine August, 1979. The episode premiered on 26 March 1995 on Sci-Fi Channel and features three generations of the Bridges family, which was used to promote the new series. In the episode, a scientist steals some specimens of Martian life from his workplace laboratory to continue his research at home.
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[edit] Opening narration
"Some of man's greatest achievements have been motivated by a driving need for love and acceptance. What happens when that need for recognition, becomes a desire to be revered, and then worshipped... like a god?"
[edit] Plot
Dr. Simon Kress' (Beau Bridges) research for the government on Martian life is aborted because one of his specimens almost escapes into the natural environment. However, Kress doesn't agree with the abandonment of the project and decides to continue his experiments in his barn. He steals some sand containing Martian eggs from his lab and creates a make-shift incubator to hatch more of the Martian lifeforms.
In the meantime, Kress deals with growing discord with his wife (Helen Shaver) over financial troubles and his obsession with work and the stress of concealing the stolen Martian lifeforms from his former supervisors at the government lab. Kress comes to believe that he is a god to his sandkings when they build sand structures that resemble his face (the face is looking across, unlike the Face on Mars, which is looking up.). He begins to mistreat them and eventually the sandkings turn on Kress. In the end, Kress attempts to destroy all the sandkings but fails. In the ending of the episode, a colony of sandkings is shown surviving in the wilderness.
[edit] Aftermath
During the final episode of season one, "The Voice of Reason", clips from this episode are used to support an argument that the Earth is undergoing a number of different alien invasions. Later in the episode, two alien conspirators acknowledge, in private conversation, that the sandkings could become a serious problem in about thirty years assuming that they could survive in a methane-based atmosphere, which the aliens intended to gradually transform from the earth's human-friendly one.
In the sixth season episode "Final Appeal", we discover that it took "the better part of a decade" to eradicate the sandking plague.
[edit] Closing narration
- "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."
