ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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All Sci-Fi member Pow has contributed quite a few excellent posts in the original five-page thread for The Outer Limits which focused on specific episodes.

I've pasted his text below to start a thread for this one. Here's what Pow posted.
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The Outer Limits: The Official Companion. "Demon With a Glass Hand," October 17, 1964.

Synopsis: Circa 2964, Earth is conquered in 19 days by an alien race called the Kyben. The world's entire population vanishes overnight, after loosing a retaliation in the form of a radioactive plague that will render the Earth uninhabitable by the invaders.

The agent of humankind's salvation is a vigorous, enigmatic, white-clad man named Trent, who escapes into the past — 1964 — through a Kyben "time mirror."

He possesses a prosthetic computer hand that "holds all knowledge," but the Kyben have three lobes — glass fingers — of the device, and they chase Trent into the past because they need the completed hand to tell them where the seventy billion people of Earth have hidden, and how to defeat the plague.

Trent, in turn, needs the lobes to enable the glass hand to reveal more of his own identity and purpose, which are blanks to him.

Winner of the Writer's Guild for Outstanding Script in the category of Television Anthology for the 1964-65 season, "Demon With a Glass Hand" was a definite high point for The Outer Limits.

"Originally, I wrote 'Demon' as a cross-country chase, my homage to North by Northwest," said writer Harlan Ellison.
"The real problem with the plot was physical; it was a chase in a linear fashion. And like a bolt out of the blue, I thought, 'Why can't it be a chase in a vertical fashion?'

All I had to do was figure out a way to keep the characters in a contained space. It was a very important lesson to me: You could make the action more intense by enclosing it, and providing no escape."

The site chosen for the office complex in which Trent is trapped due to a Kyben force bubble surrounding it was Los Angeles' famous Bradbury Building.

"I came to think of that building as a character in the script,"said Ellison.

Harlan wrote the lead female role of Consuelo Losada as a black woman and was told no by the ABC network. He then asked the network if she could be Puerto Rican. Again the answer was no.

Finally, she wound up as some sort of nameless Middle European, and they gave her a blonde wig.

But actress Arline Martel played it as Chicana.

"The Consuelo character was endlessly rewritten," said Robert Culp (Trent), "to bow to pressure to make her less overtly ethnic."

"Ellison wrote the Trent part for Robert Culp, and wouldn't hear of anyone else playing it.

"I would rate 'Demon' pretty high in terms of fidelity to what I wrote," said Ellison.

Sidebar: That last quote by Harlan is high praise indeed for TOL. Harlan has had quite a history of battling networks and producers to have his name removed from a particular television episode he wrote for various SF series because he was so outraged and angry at how his original story had been rewritten.

Voyage tot he Bottom of the Sea, Star Trek, and Logan's Run were all TV series where he fought to have his name removed from the episode because he loathed how it had been altered.

He walked off The Starlost, a TV show he created, because of his disgust over the way the series was being mishandled.

Demon is a compelling hour of TOL, and it is rated as one of the finest episodes ever produced by the show.

And as much as I love this episode, there are questions regarding the story that I have.

*SPOILERS*

Interesting that the invading aliens only required 19 days to subdue the Earth. Now Earth has the technology to create a lifelike android; 70 billion humans have been transcribed onto a coil within the robot's body for safekeeping; and the robot is able to endure (mechanically) centuries before restoring the human population.

Wouldn't all this indicate that Earth is a highly sophisticated planet capable of fighting off the Kyben? I suppose we could simply have two civilizations that possess phenomenal tech, but one is light years ahead of the other for the sake of the plot.

Trent is physically much more powerful and agile than a human. Yet, he has no other offensive/defensive weaponry built into him. He doesn't even carry a hand weapon from his era.

The alien Kybens are required to wear an amulet around their neck which anchors them in time. If this amulet is taken away from them they are ripped from their present timeline and returned ahead into the future from whence they hailed.

Whenever Trent encounters the Kyben he snatches the amulet from their neck and poof they're gone.

Why don't the Kyben better secure their amulet anchors on them? Even under their shirt would be a better spot.

And why don't the Kypen have any high-tech weaponry at all in order to capture Trent?

Why exactly does Trent, who easily passes for a human being, have a robotic hand? It looks cool & all, but couldn't the builders have constructed a lifelike hand?

Seventy billion humans are being carried by Trent on a coil within him. How can the Earth — even in 2964 — possibly support that number of humans on it?

Make no mistake though, this episode is highly imaginative as well as suspenseful, and it features a fine cast.

Robert Culp (The Greatest American Hero), Arline Martel (ST:TOS "Amok Time"), and Abraham Sofaer (ST:TOS episodes "Charlie X," & "Specter of the Gun") as the Kyben leader Arch, are all marvelous in their respective roles.

The set for the Kyben Time Mirror remains impressive and mysterious looking even today.

Unfortunately the Kybens themselves don't fare very well regarding their alien make-up. The actors have heavy white face make-up on their faces, dark rings under their eyes, and what appears to be shower caps for their heads.

It is substandard looking and was even for 1964.

Of course the show was limited by its tight budgets and shooting schedule. Ellison remarked that his Kyben aliens reminded him of raccoons.

This fantastic episode would be a prime example as to why they should remaster the special/visual effects for TOL, as was done for the 1966 Star Trek TV series.

A remastered version could give us the force bubble enveloping the building, a more flexible & complex glass hand, aliens that would truly look alien. These are just some of the improvements visually they could use to enhance this classic episode.

Some consider Demon as the greatest Outer Limits episode ever produced. Many feel that "The City On the Edge of Forever' to be the greatest Star Trek episode ever made.

Both written by the masterful Harlan Ellison.
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Babylon 5 creator/writer/producer J. Michael Straczynski was a close friend of Harlan Ellison.

JMS decided to play a joke on Harlan when they were both attending a SF convention.

He knew Harlan never did any kind of sequels to any of his writings, ever!

So at the convention JMS announced to the audience that they were going to do a sequel to Ellison's Outer Limits episode Demon With a Glass Hand on Babylon 5.

It was to be called Demon On the Run and pick up on the Trent characters many years after The Outer lLmits episode as he arrives on B5.

With a grin, JMS looked over to his friend Harlan who was sitting nearby and enjoyed the look of open mouthed astonishment on Harlan's face.

Thing is it actually sounded like it could've been a very cool sequel if it was for real.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)