# Anyone have found memories of the 90s Outer Limits? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 21, 2015, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163 "2015-04-21T06:01:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163/1 "2015-04-21T06:01:11Z")
I’ll admit to liking the show, it ran for longer and generally seemed better to my young self than the Twilight Zone revivals. I liked how a lot of episodes were basically scifi short stories, and I even liked some of the twist endings like: This one had several twists, a woman lives in a prison camp overseen by stern nazi types, which are revealed to be androids. Then it turns out most of the androids are not working but are kept as an illusion of force, she finds this out when she is recruited to repair some of the few functioning bots. Eventually she uses her knowledge to organize a coup, and then finds out humanity was enslaved by aliens centuries before. They get outside the wall to find…nothing, the aliens are long gone. Or: Aliens are attacking earth and a dozen people are set in in hardened bunkers with dead man switches, should the aliens win and contact with their superior be cut off they are to blow the nukes. Contact is lost but no one can bring themselves to set it off, slowly they all go dark. Until the guy is the only one left, he is just about to set it off in despair when he hears digging noises and the superior suddenly contacts him after all this time to say humanity won, don’t set it off, we’re digging down to you. He is elated, cut to the superiors body being animated by a alien tentacle in front of the camera, and a ruined city and earth outside! Yea I’ a sucker for pulp scifi and twist endings, sue me! ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163/2 "2015-04-21T06:04:21Z")
yeah the first one was kind of cool… i remember it ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163/3 "2015-04-21T06:52:40Z")
I liked the one with Wil Wheaton and the T2 guy. ---
**Author:** ![Garula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ea666f/32.png) [@Garula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garula)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 8:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163/4 "2015-04-21T08:31:27Z")
I believe I only ever saw one Outer Limits episode, and it was the one in the second spoiler. ---
**Author:** ![Gerald\_II](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Gerald\_II](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gerald_II)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163/5 "2015-04-21T08:45:00Z")
I remember coming across it in the 90s. I watched The Twilight Zone as a kid but I don’t think I saw the 80s version. Anyway, I think the first episode I saw was the evangelical one featuring Gary Busey. I didn’t know what I was watching at first but I was intrigued by the commercial bumpers that featured strange imagery like hands opening up to reveal an eye or the nude women standing up from a still lake. After that first episode I tried to watch it when it was on. Probably one of the best anthology shows. The narrator was excellent, and the intro was fantastic. Probably second only to the original TZ. ---
**Author:** ![RiCu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e19adc/32.png) [@RiCu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RiCu)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163/6 "2015-04-21T08:57:55Z")
Thanks for the reminder! Really good memories of the show, not only some great sci-fi, but also as a source of some very soft nudity (invaluable to me as a young teenager in the mid 90s)! I’ve just ordered the season 1 DVDs from Amazon. ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163/7 "2015-04-21T10:30:53Z")
Loved it, and I’m not ashamed to admit it! I think my fave was the “teleport” episode one. It’s the one with the teleport machine that would beam you off to distant worlds. And the whole teleport facility was ran by alien dinosaurs. That episode should be mandatory viewing for anyone who wants to start or participate in a “Would you use a Star Trek transporter?” thread. It pretty much touches on all the bases in those types of threads. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163/8 "2015-04-21T16:00:57Z")
Good series…with cheesy 1960s special effects. i like the one about the space alien that stopped time- the people who lived in the 1920s house never aged-but as soon as they stepped outside they did. Meanwhile, the alien lived inside a box-camera type thing-crazy plot. ---
**Author:** ![GaryM](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garym/32/241_2.png) [@GaryM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GaryM)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163/9 "2015-04-21T16:02:59Z")
I liked to one with the old lady in the cabin fighting off alian invaders, who turn out to be USA astronauts. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163/10 "2015-04-21T17:08:32Z")
I watched _The Outer Limits_ regularly when it first came one (at least, the first season) and I had never seen anything like it (_The Twilight Zone_ was on past my bedtime). It was the show everyone talked about the next day at school. Some of my favorites were “The Galaxy Being,” “The Sixth Finger,” “O.B.I.T” (very relevant today), “It Crawled Out of the Woodwork,” “The Zanti Misfits” (loved the cynicism), “Controlled Experiment” (their foray into humor), “Specimen: Unknown” (I suppose the twist is a big obvious these days, but it wasn’t in 1964), “The Forms of Things Unknown,” “Soldier,” “Demon with a Glass Hand,” and “Cold Hands, Warm Heart.” It still think it was overall superior to _The Twilight Zone._ I do remember watching “The Sixth Finger” about 25 years later with my daughter. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed the first time around (the girlfriend was really the bad guy), and I also saw how much my daughter was having the same feelings I had the first time I saw it. **GaryM** – That’s a _Twilight Zone_ episode. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163/11 "2015-04-21T17:19:35Z")
I think some people here didn’t notice that the thread title indicates it’s the _1990s_ incarnation of the show. I didn’t see a lot of episodes, but they did a decent adaptation of Larry Niven’s _Inconstant Moon_, which is the only decent adaptation of Niven’s work I’ve seen. They also did a remake of Otto (“Eando” – but Otto was the one who wrote it) Binder’s _I, Robot_, which had been adapted for the 1960s Outer Limits. Leonard Nimoy had a major part in both versions, and Adam Link looked more believable in the remake. ---
**Author:** ![Barking\_Dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Barking\_Dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barking_Dog)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163/12 "2015-04-21T17:32:57Z")
No, and I’ve been looking f_cking_ everywhere.\* ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163/13 "2015-04-21T18:44:20Z")
> [@Barking\_Dog](#): > > No, and I’ve been looking f_cking_ everywhere.\* That was the episode with Alyssa Milano… ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163/14 "2015-04-21T19:36:45Z")
Is that the show that had this episode: A computer programmer is woken up in the future, where society can remove tumors by reaching into a body, and other people can use telepathy to travel the stars, and they woke him up because there was a meteor heading toward Earth so they revived him because he knew how to program a planetary defense laser (or something), and they had abandoned that barbaric technology because of the wars that destroyed society. Turns out Just as he’s programmed it to fire, the meteor changes direction. They were making him think it was a meteor, but in fact it was a returning ship with ancestors of people from his own time, and they wanted it destroyed because they didn’t want those warring people returning. It blows up, and then they use telepathy to have him travel the stars some more, which he was fine with. ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163/15 "2015-04-21T20:46:23Z")
I remember one episode called “A Stitch in Time”. A time traveler kills serial killers before they start killing. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163/16 "2015-04-21T21:17:35Z")
Every time I see an episode, I ask out loud “is this the one where they bomb Earth by mistake?” ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163/17 "2015-04-21T21:18:55Z")
> [@E-DUB](#): > > I remember one episode called “A Stitch in Time”. A time traveler kills serial killers before they start killing. Amanda Plummer and Michele Forbes. Cool ep. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163/18 "2015-04-21T23:02:41Z")
Ah. I liked a few of the 90s show – “Inconstant Moon” was a high point – but it was hard for me to catch it around here. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163/19 "2015-04-21T23:12:30Z")
> [@E-DUB](#): > > I remember one episode called “A Stitch in Time”. A time traveler kills serial killers before they start killing. My favorite episode and the one I came in to mention. (From memory- so expect some errors) “Jonathan Shaker?” “Yes? What do you want?” “On December 11 of 2003, you were executed by the state. I hereby carry out this just and legal verdict.” “I don’t understand.” “Only one of us has to.” I loved the 90’s OL. In general, the acting and writing were terrific. For example, in the aforementioned Alyssa Milano episode “Wouldn’t a meteor traveling at that speed destroy the whole house?” “(shrug) I don’t know. I’m a biologist, not a physicist.” There were some episodes I did NOT like. Fer example, most of the episodes made as sequels to other episodes stunk. The sequel to the android episode mentioned in the op was terrible. ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163/20 "2015-04-21T23:14:41Z")
I certainly enjoyed some of it. Mostly, I felt like they took the content of a 20-minute Twilight Zone episode and stretched it to fit a 40-minute format, which means they didn’t add a lot of real content, just a lot of extra air time. You could edit most of those episodes to run in half the time without losing anything important. Still… better than most of what was on in the 90’s. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-have-found-memories-of-the-90s-outer-limits/718163.md?page=2)