There's an "Outer Limits" (the newer series) marathon on SyFy now. The good
thing is, because the show's airing was so inconsistent back in the day, I can
always find an ep or two I've never seen, seen only partially, or seen only one
time. There were some really good shows in that series. The ep on now, however,
is one I have trouble watching. It stars Joel Grey as a grief-stricken
scientist whose only son died. He secrets funds and parts from the lab where he
works to build a robotic son as a substitute, complete with true
self-awareness. The problem is, he has to hide this project, both from the lab
whose resources he's pilfering, and of course from the world at large, which
would treat his "son" as a freak--or menace. What makes this oft-used scifi
trope effective in this show is the combination of touching sadness and faint
fear the show engenders. For example, the robot boy is obviously not real: his
movements are jerky, his eyes are two balls devoid of sockets or real lids, his
mouth is just teeth with no lips. His overall skeleton--only the upper body at
first--is metallic, with a small amount of skinlike material on his lower jaw.
In short, he looks much like the Terminator skeleton with a bit more human
characteristics added. That alone wouldn't be disturbing, but the child actor
who voices the robot is so genuine, so emotive, so "real", that hearing that
voice come out of a near-expressionless face is quite disturbing. The "Uncanny
Valley" effect is really working here. Adding to the growing sense of unease
about the child is that when he's angry or hurt, one then sees it not just as a
angry child, but a potentially deadly robot whose features are already frankly
frightening. It's the Frankenstein's Monster effect again: he may be a child,
and act like a child, but he's in a frightening body that can do harm, and his
childlike tantrums can turn deadly.
The scene that always disturbs me the most is when the dad comes home to find
his son with the family cat. "Shhh", the son says, "he feel asleep, and I'm
petting him. He's so pretty...." The camera pans down to show the lifeless body
of the cat, literally shredded to bloody ribbons by the unfeeling metallic
hands of the son. He didn't mean to kill the cat, but had no concept of death,
his strength, nor an ability to feel. There's something extremely creepy about
this robot child have human innocence, but the body and face of a monster,
which makes his anguished outburst over realizing he'd killed the cat both
poignant and frightening at the same time. You actually feel for the child, but
fear the thing in which he's house. Again, like Frankenstein's Monster. One of
the better "Outer Limits" I've ever seen, but I can't sit through it more than
once.
