Damn Your Eyes!.. Uh, Too Late!

I first saw this episode in syndication (on a future UPN-50 station) before "The Avengers", in the early-'70s, as a little boy. It scared me. It was a perfect example of "Can't Bear to Look, but Can't Look Away"-kind of thing. This is the inspiration of my future episode-issue of "Dementia-12" comic-book, "Life Sentence, Without Parole".

Perfect paranoia/intense-fear-instilled episode where a space expedition scientist gets caught in a radioactive downpour and becomes MUTATED --having no hair and huge, "Jack Kirby-esque" bug-eyes-- blames the other expedition scientists for his misfortune & threatens them with his ability to mind-read & "kill with a touch" of his bare hands --of which they become scattered atoms. I appreciate this episode more now, but I'm still too "chicken" to own it. Oh, by the way, you other folks out there may recognize Warren Oates as "Sgt. Hulka --the Big Toe" from "Stripes".

Anyone See My Visine?

Like a lot of OL's weaker episodes, this one starts out great and then muddles. The script and the characters aren't too well developed, and a lot of potentially interesting story angles aren't sufficiently gone into once they've begun.

Warren Oates is fine in the title role of Reese Fowler, a man who has suffered an accident at a distant planetary outpost that makes his physical proximity to others a lethal threat and also enables him to read minds. Fowler can't bear loneliness, but his fellow crewmembers can't take him back to Earth with them in the close confines of their ship, once they realize the planet they are working to make habitable for colonists is too hostile to support human life for any appreciable length of time. Fowler snaps, holding them all prisoner with him until they can find some cure for his condition - but there isn't one. And his colleagues can't escape him, because he knows their every thought and can kill with a touch.

Fowler is a great, tragically doomed character, and the tension of his colleagues is well-acted. Their ultimate plan to escape him - equally tragically doomed to failure - is quite clever, and manages to create some viable suspense. The finale is believable enough, but too sudden to be dramatically satisfying. The mutant makeup is unquestionably "eye-catching," so to speak, but frankly ludicrous, and too much exposure of it on camera undercuts the drama of the piece.

This is overall a flawed episode, but worth a look for the performances.