The Outer Limits Sci-Fi Anthology Series Streaming for Free on ABC

Whenever a TV show enjoys a great deal of success, it invites copycats. When Seinfeld became a hit sitcom in the 1990s, its formula inspired Friends. After ThunderCats became a popular Saturday morning cartoon in the 1980s, creators followed up with SilverHawks. Back in the 1960s, when the sci-fi anthology series The Twilight Zone became an early television phenomenon, ABC launched The Outer Limits.

Created by Leslie Stevens, The Outer Limits was ABC’s attempt to replicate CBS’s success with The Twilight Zone. Both shows featured high-concept stories with changing casts and different ideas each week. They relied on impressive writers and wide arrays of actors who later became well known. Both series leaned heavily into science fiction elements with deeper human messages underneath, often laced with irony.

Fortunately, The Outer Limits offered more than a pale imitation of The Twilight Zone. It created memorable imagery and stories in its own right, and viewers can watch those stories for free on Tubi.

You are about to enter another dimension

Every episode of The Twilight Zone opens and closes with narration from its creator, Rod Serling. He consistently tells the audience, “You are about to enter another dimension.” The opening sequence features trippy images like a spiral and a giant blinking eyeball as the camera hurtles through space. In The Outer Limits, announcer Vic Perrin speaks over an oscilloscope introduction to warn the audience, “There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission.” Perrin also ends the opening by saying, “You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to…The Outer Limits.” While The Outer Limits copied The Twilight Zone here, both intros became memorable for 1960s sci-fi fans.

While The Twilight Zone featured heavy-hitter writers like Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson, The Outer Limits had episodes penned by Harlan Ellison and Psycho screenwriter Joseph Stefano.

The stories featured original concepts. In “The Architects of Fear,” scientists fake an alien invasion to get humanity to put aside its differences. “The Man Who Was Never Born” follows a time traveler who ends up in a desolate 22nd-century Earth. “The Sixth Finger” centers on an ordinary man who undergoes an experiment that causes him to rapidly evolve and gain godlike powers. “I, Robot” focuses on an intelligent AI robot charged with murder, sharing source material with the Will Smith movie of the same name. Some of these concepts may seem rudimentary today, but they were breakthroughs in the 1960s and distinct from The Twilight Zone. The show also featured impressive makeup and creature effects for the era.

The Outer Limits benefited from good timing. The Twilight Zone premiered in 1959 and quickly became a hit. The show was so successful that CBS executives expanded its fourth season from a half-hour format to a full hour. Most fans consider that fourth season the show’s weakest. Even CBS realized this, returning to a half-hour format for the fifth season.

The fourth season of The Twilight Zone aired in the first half of 1963. In the fall, The Outer Limits debuted on Monday nights on ABC. The fifth season of The Twilight Zone began just a week later on Friday nights on CBS. The momentary dip in The Twilight Zone quality may have helped boost its imitator, or the success of The Twilight Zone simply proved the audience appetite for the format. Regardless, The Outer Limits achieved strong success in its first season.

For season 2, The Outer Limits shifted to a Saturday time slot, and the ratings dropped. ABC canceled the series midway through its second season. That was not the end of the property, as it returned for a 1990s revival that lasted seven seasons. Meanwhile, multiple attempts to revive The Twilight Zone have not proven nearly as successful.

An interesting irony connects The Outer Limits to later sci-fi history. Although the show was inspired by The Twilight Zone, it gained renewed notoriety in the 1980s when a major blockbuster borrowed from it. After the debut of James Cameron’s The Terminator, Harlan Ellison claimed that the movie plagiarized its concept from an episode of The Outer Limits that he wrote. Like The Terminator, “The Soldier” follows a pair of warring soldiers from the future who battle in the past. Director James Cameron denied the allegations, but the production company, Orion, settled out of court. Ellison received a financial settlement and a credit on all future releases of The Terminator.

That kind of irony would fit right into many a good Twilight Zone episode or Outer Limits story.

The Outer Limits is available for free to stream on YouTube.

Source: Polygon