episode #15 - The Mice

Air Date: 1/6/64
writers: Bill S. Ballinger, Joseph Stefano / story by Lou Morheim; Director: Alan Crosland Jr.

Like the previous Tourist Attraction, this has some intriguing concepts but doesn't add up to much by the end. Henry Silva, who played a dictator in that other episode, returns here as a convict who agrees to volunteer for an experiment in teleportation (like the Star Trek transporter or the tech from The Fly films); the difference here is that the attempt will be made to transport a person 10 light years to another planet. When I first watched this, I thought this was some new tech developed by humans, but it's actually a kind of exchange program with an alien race, who provided the blueprints.
The aliens are supposedly beings which absorb nutrients through photosynthesis, which would make them some type of plant people, but the hook of the story is that this may not be the case; it's not that much of a shocking revelation (so what, was my response). The presentation of the alien is uneven; at some points there are attempts to make it move & gesture in alien fashion; in other scenes, it's obviously a man in a suit. This was a prime sample of Outer Limits mixed messages - the attempt to present an intelligent story, mixed with cheap 'monster-on-the-loose' stuff.

This uneven mixture is further evidenced by the opening narration, which has this truly poetic, literate style and promises a lyrical story:

In dreams, some of us walk the stars. In dreams, some of us ride the whelming brine of space, where every port is a shining one, and none are beyond our reach. Some of us, in dreams, cannot reach beyond the walls of our own little sleep.

But, almost none of this tone is carried through in the episode itself, except for a few moments of Silva explaining his character's somewhat tragic backstory. BoG's Score: 6 out of 10
Outer Trivia:
Dabney Coleman, who had a big career in films & TV starting in the late seventies, has a supporting role in this episode as one of the scientists who has an.. alien encounter.