Categories
Classic Season 1 Outer Limits

O.B.I.T.

The Outer LimitsA murder at a top-secret Defense Department facility attracts the attention of Senator Orville, who arrives to personally conduct the investigation. During the course of his inquiry, Senator Orville learns of the highly classified O.B.I.T. (Outer Band Individuated Teletracer) surveillance device, which the facility’s personnel claim can observe any person, at any time, in any location within 500 miles; the device has been used to gather intelligence, but Senator Orville is worried that it may be finding another use as a means of determining the loyalty of those observed. The murder victim was operating O.B.I.T. at the time of his death. The Senator demands that all records related to O.B.I.T.’s origins be sent to him immediately, and wants to see Dr. Scott, one of the researchers on the O.B.I.T. project, but the officer in charge of the facility warns the Senator that carrying the investigation any further would work against the interests of national security. Senator Orville calls Dr. Scott in despite that warning, and learns that Scott knows that O.B.I.T. has another function – that of eliminating the people it observes. Scott is also aware of another deeply disturbing fact: there’s one person in the facility who can’t be seen by O.B.I.T. under normal circumstances – and that person has his own O.B.I.T. device.

Download this episode via Amazon's Unboxwritten by Meyer Dolinsky
directed by Gerd Oswald
music by Dominic Frontiere

Cast: Peter Breck (Senator Orville), Jeff Corey (Byron Lomax), Joanne Gilbert (Barbara Scott), Alan Baxter (Colonel Grover), Harry Townes (Dr. Clifford Scott), Sam Reese (Clyde Wyatt), Konstantin Shayne (Professor), Jason Wingreen (O.B.I.T. Operator), Lindsay Workman (Dr. Anderson), Robert Beneveds (Armand Younger), William Douglas (O.B.I.T. Creature)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 1 Outer Limits

The Human Factor

The Outer LimitsAn engineer at an isolated military outpost in Greenland is ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment when he begins repeatedly talking about an alien presence on the base – and his desire to destroy it by destroying the base itself. Using a device he has secretly been developing, psychiatrist Dr. Hamilton can join his mind to that of Major Brothers, peering into the disturbed man’s thoughts, but one of the frequent earthquakes in this region induces a large power surge, accidentally swapping the two men’s minds. Now in the body of Dr. Hamilton, Brothers is now free to carry out his threat with almost no interference. Trapped in Brothers’ body, Hamilton is powerless to stop him unless he can convince his assistant that he is who he says he is.

Download this episode via Amazon's Unboxwritten by David Duncan
directed by Abner Biberman
music by Dominic Frontiere

The Outer LimitsCast: Gary Merrill (Dr. Hamilton), Harry Guardino (Major Brothers), Sally Kellerman (Ingrid), Joe de Santis (Colonel Campbell), Shirley O’Hara (Dr. Soldini), Jane Langley (Nurse), James B. Sikking (Orderly), Ivan Dixon (Major Giles), John Newton (Peterson), Matty Jordan (Sentry), Art Alisi (Sergeant)

Notes: The military base in this episode may have been based on the DEW Line (Distant Early Warning) radar sites built by the United States during the height of the Cold War, which included several sites in Greenland and the neighboring Nunavut region of Canada, which includes Baffin Island.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 01 Doctor Who

An Unearthly Child

Doctor WhoIn London, 1963, teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright discuss their most problematic student at Coal Hill School, one Susan Foreman. Susan’s knowledge vastly exceeds that of her instructors in science, but she has also been known to challenge long-standing historical facts…yet she also has some things completely wrong, including one occasion where she notes that British currency isn’t on the decimal system “yet.” Ian and Barbara follow Susan discreetly when she walks home one night, and the teachers are puzzled when home seems to be a junkyard. When they follow her into the junkyard, Susan has disappeared, and the only place she could have gone is a police call box which is emitting a strange hum. Moments later, an elderly man appears, apparently determined to enter the police box himself. Ian and Barbara force their way in, along with the old man, and find that the police box is actually a time-space vehicle, bigger on the inside than out. They also discover that neither Susan nor her grandfather, a mysterious and irritable man known only as the Doctor, are human beings. The Doctor, worried that Ian and Barbara will draw unwelcome mass attention to the presence of his ship (called the TARDIS), hastily sets it into motion over everyone’s protests, and when Ian and Barbara next step out of the doors of the TARDIS, they are no longer on Earth as they know it.

Season 1 Regular Cast: William Hartnell (The Doctor), William Russell (Ian Chesterton), Jacqueline Hill (Barbara Wright), Carole Ann Ford (Susan Foreman)

written by Anthony Coburn
directed by Waris Hussein
music by Norman Kay

Guest Cast: Derek Newark (Za), Althea Charlton (Hur), Jeremy Young (Kal), Howard Lang (Horg), Eileen Way (Old Mother)

Broadcast from November 23 through December 14, 1963

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green