I’d have to vote for the original Outer Limits as the best, if only for the unforgettably creepy atmosphere so many of the episodes had. The combination of SF and film noir is a strange one, but it worked very well in many episodes. Also, a lot of shows were morality plays, with archetypal characters (the obsessed scientist, the jealous wife, etc.), and that added another bit of surrealism to it. Plus there was the great theme music – I even have the CD, geek that I am – and that unforgettable Control Voice!
Yes, they had some real stinkers (ever seen the “queen bee” episode?), but so has the new series, and I haven’t seen any new episodes as memorable as the old classics.
Believe it ot not, it’s true. It doesn’t matter that they had name actors. Name actors can suck too - either because they suck, or because they don’t particularly care about doing a good job for a given production - and it wasn’t all name actors.
Even the best episodes of the original that I’ve seen (which were great) often had actors that overacted or underacted.
I was severely disappointed in the original OL when I was finally able to see it. I love the original TZ. I rather consistantly enjoy the new OL. I’d heard great things about the original OL. It…just didn’t live up to the expectations. I enjoy it, and watch it when I manage to catch it, but it gets a lot more praise than it deserves. The best episodes are better than the best of the new series, but the worst are similarly worse, and stand out just as much. The newer series average isn’t really any better than the original’s, but the worst stinkers don’t hit the same level of pain, and consistantly hitting the middle of a range is better than the utter inconsistancy of the original, even if the cost is fewer brilliant episides.
I’m not saying they’re necessarily inferior, I’m just saying there’s a kind of factory sameness to some of these show–the camerawork, the music, the supporting actors, the locations, the editing, the writing, the directing.
The new Outer Limits, The X-Files, Poltergeist: The Legacy, The Sentinel…i have trouble telling which one I’m seeing unitl I check the listings.
So the new Outer Limits doesn’t have any painfully bad episodes?
Ever see one of their “compilation” episodes? (and there’s been a few).
They arbitrarily slosh together clips from about 6 previous episodes and attempt to make one story from that. Something like “Amanda Plummer goes back in time to prevent a murder but then encounters the ‘Sand Kings’, etc.” It is very forced and none of the players from one episode ever physically meets up with the players from another episode. (Gee I wonder why?) These episodes are BAD !!!
They do, but they don’t reach the same level of awfulness as the worst episodes of the original.
The clip episodes are…lame. The absolute nadir of the new series was a clip show that used clips from the framing story of an earlier clip show.
But a few of the clip shows (including that one) could have been salvaged if they’d just said ‘screw the clips, we’ll do two short stories’. Even the ones that were just lame, with or without clip-padding at least had pretty pictures to watch.
The bad episodes of the original aren’t usually a matter of ‘too little story to fill an hour’, they just weren’t executed well, on the whole.
The old school Outer Limits sounds really really good. I wonder if they will air repeats one day. (In Canada, more specifically.) I’m sure they could put at least one new episode each day, mon-fri. I literally can see three or more different repeated episodes of Star Trek Voyager in one day, so OL shouldn’t be too hard.