The Sandkings

"The Sandkings"
The Outer Limits episode
Episode no. Season 1
Episode 1
Directed by Stuart Gillard
Written by Melinda M. Snodgrass (Based on the work by George R. R. Martin)
Production code 1
Original air date 26 March 1995
Guest actors

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

"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 Showtime and features three generations of the Bridges family, which was used to promote the new series. At 92:38 minutes, "The Sandkings" is twice the normal length of other episodes in the series.

The episode was highly acclaimed, garnering five Gemini Award nominations. One of these was in the category of Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Dramatic Program or Mini-Series for Beau Bridges' leading role as Simon Kress, which also garnered nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series and the CableACE Award for Best Actor in a Dramatic Series.

Introduction

A scientist steals specimens of Martian life from his subterranean workplace laboratory to illegally continue research on an aborted, classified government project at home.

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 worshiped...like a god? ”

Plot

Dr. Simon Kress' (Beau Bridges) research for the government on Martian life is aborted because one of his specimens escaped his lab and almost made it to the surface. 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 makeshift incubator to hatch more of the Martian lifeforms.

The sandkings evolve into two distinct groups, a white group and a red group, and settle on opposite sides of their glass enclosure. Kress comes to believe that he is a god to his sandkings when the white group builds a sand structure that resemble his face. He smashes the sand structure of the red group who didn't do the same, one of them getting loose and stinging him. He kills his former supervisor by tossing him into the enclosure, where the sandkings then devour him. Later, he finds himself in the basement with the red sandkings, who have made a nest with the face of his former supervisor he fed to them. He breaks a gas pipe to cause an explosion in an attempt to kill all of the sandkings. In the ending of the episode, a colony of sandkings is shown surviving in the wilderness.

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. ”

Aftermath

The Sandkings thrived after their escape from Kress' home laboratory. Fragments from the episode are included in the final episode of season one, "The Voice of Reason". There, clips from "The Sandkings" 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 the Sandkings plague has been eradicated, which took "the better part of a decade" to complete.

Differences from the original story

Awards nominations

See also

External links