Not That Good, Not That Bad

This episode is neither as bad nor as good as other reviewers hype it up to be. It's a decent middle-of-the-road OL. Highly padded (by virtue of the overlong teaser, which is repeated verbatim in the episode), suffering from really cheap effects, but a decent enough story competently enough presented.

It's the Andromeda Strain, with space barnacles in place of a killer virus. The barnacles grow anywhere, reproduce like kudzu, and exhale a highly toxic gas in the process. The astronauts who discover them don't realize until too late that they are bringing a deadly organism back with them, and the government has one helluva problem on its hands.

The performances are good, and so is the suspense. The effects are pretty cheesy. The production team was badly strapped when this one was shot, but they did a creditable job of making-do in spite of it.

Not a front-runner episode in anyone's book, but enjoyable enough if you like this kind of thing.

Derivative, but Good

Yes, it is impossible not to notice the resemblance to other sci-fi potboilers, like "Triffids", and "Spacemaster X-7", but remember that those were the trendsetters of sci-fi back then, like "Alien", and "Star Wars" is now.