Keith, that's exactly why I passed on that ep. Too vivid, even for my twisted brain.
The ep I wanted to see was the one at 1 pm Eastern, with MacKenzie Phillips and Colin Mochrie of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?", about a UFO nut and a security guard who come into possession of what appears to be a fragment of a UFO that crashed. You can see the twist coming from light-years off (one of them is part of the cover-up), and it still gets you every time. I saw the ep that's on now, with the military droid on the run, last month, so I'm passing on it for Graham Kerr. (Ultra Old School, am I. [?][?]) On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 10:39 AM, Keith Johnson <[email protected]>wrote: > > > 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. > > > -- "If all the world's a stage and we are merely players, who the bloody hell wrote the script?" -- Charles E Grant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQUxw9aUVik
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