Specimen: Unknown

"Specimen: Unknown"
The Outer Limits episode
Episode no. Season 1
Episode 22
Directed by Gerd Oswald
Written by Stephen Lord
Cinematography by Conrad Hall
Production code 10
Original air date February 24, 1964
Guest stars
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List of The Outer Limits episodes

"Specimen: Unknown" is an episode of the original The Outer Limits television show. It first aired on 24 February 1964, during the first season.

Contents

Introduction

The crew of the Adonis research space station discover an unusual object attached to the station wall, and bring it inside to study it.

Opening narration

For centuries, Man has looked to the skies and sought to uncover the mysteries of the universe. The telescope brought into focus the caves and caverns on the Moon and the channels and rivers of Mars, but it was limited, and Man's insistent hunger for knowledge and experience would not be satisfied until he broke the massive chains of gravity and set foot himself on a planet other than his own. Project Dionysus was his first venture into space — a testament to his technical ingenuity and courage, a green light to a hundred other projects which would take him still further. This is Project Anubis, a laboratory orbiting a thousand miles above the Earth, a tiny, far-flung world connected only by radio and memory, and inhabited by a handful of men dedicated to removing the unknown for future space travelers. At ten minutes after six on January 8th, Lieutenant Rupert Howard stumbled upon something clinging to the wall of the space-lock that appeared alive. He called them "space barnacles" for temporary identification. They were not.

Plot

A member of a team of astronaut-researchers finds a strange organism on the outside of the spaceship. Exposed to light and air inside it develops into a beautiful flower - but it has a deadly scent, and an aggressive growth habit. When the astronauts seek to return to Earth for help, they bring the invasive new species with them. The creatures begin to spread across the earth until they are destroyed by a rain-storm.

Closing narration

There are many things up there, evil and hungry, awesome and splendid. And gentle things, too. Merciful things like rain.

Production

Interiors were shot on Stage#4 at KTTV, the exterior shots were filmed in the Tarzan forest portion of M.G.M. Backlot#3, the shooting notes specify "extra foliage" to hide the World War II barges from the 'Combat!' series in the lake over the hillside from where the full sized Adonis shuttle exterior Mockup, built by art director Jack Poplin and his team, is situated, nose first into the ground. Projects Unlimited made 150 prop plants for these scenes, some of which were working models which fired aerosol mist and spores (in fact Puffed Wheat breakfast cereal) these props were sculpted by Johnny Neopolitano. The Mock up of the Adonis shuttle was painted black and re-used in the 'Twilight Zone' episode 'Probe 7, Over and Out'. (source - The Outer Limits:The Official Companion, pages 111 & 115)

The model of the Adonis space station was a leftover prop from the Ziv/UA TV series 'Men into Space'. (source - The Outer Limits:The Official Companion, page 114.)

When the episode was assembled it ran only 45 minutes, to extend the film, shots of the Adonis model hanging in space were lengthened and in the first part of the show they cut to the model shot as often as possible. Tediously slow-slow motion was given to the shots of Mike Doweling's EVA to repair the Adonis shuttle which gave it a few more extra seconds. Leslie Stevens quickly wrote a prologue (Directed by 1st AD Robert Justman) which featured Lt. Rupert Lawrence Howard (played by Dabney Coleman) previously only mentioned in the past tense by the other characters and Joseph Stefano wrote an unusually long Control Voice Speech which spelled out the history of the space programme, even giving the exact time and date of the prologue. The opening "teaser" showcasing the 'bear' lasts nearly three minutes, all of which got the episode to the required running time. Originally the episode opened with the burial in space of Lt. Rupert Howard and the plants were not revealed to be menacing until they killed a lab rabbit much later in the show, now they are seen killing Lt.Howard in the prologue, suspense disspelled by the need for padding. (source - The Outer Limits:The Official Companion, pages 114/115.)

This was the highest Nielsen rated episode in the first season.

Cast

External links