ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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All Sci-Fi member Pow is the author of the fine post below, which I copied from the five-page thread for The Outer Limits and pasted below to start a new thread for this one.
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The Outer Limits: The Official Companion by David J. Schow and Jeffrey Frentzen.

"Nightmare," Broadcast 2 December 1963
Written by Joseph Stefano
Original title: "Ebon Struck First"
Directed by John Erman

A war between worlds had long been dreaded. Throughout recent history, Man, convinced that life on other planets would be as anxious and belligerent as life on his own, has gravely predicted that some dreadful form of combat would inevitably take place between our world and that of someone else.

And Man was right.

To the eternal credit of the peoples of this planet Earth, history shall be able to proclaim loudly and justly that in this war between Unified Earth and the planet Ebon, Ebon struck first.

Ebon: Its form of life unknown; its way of life unpredictable. To the fighting troops of Earth, a black question mark at the end of a dark, foreboding journey.
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A six-man multinational strike force led by Col. Stone is captured and made prisoners of war by the Ebonites, satanic, bat-winged, gargoyle-like aliens who wield control wands that can manipulate the five human senses.

The "exploratory interviews" of the humans by the Ebonites now begins.

Arguably Outer Limits' best-written show, "Nightmare" is a tour de force of ensemble acting and illustrates just how resourceful the program's cast and crew could be when squeezed by the limitations of time and budget. Assistant Director Robert Justman hung a lot of black velvet, to transform the set into a featureless kind of limbo area, heightening the impression that the whole show is an experimental stage drama.

Writer Joseph Stefano: "I had some very strong problems with the government situation at that time. Space was not bad; space agencies were not bad. But I had little faith (and virtually no trust) in the people in charge of the Space Age. 'Nightmare' wasn't written out of cynicism, but out of deep suspicion. If you think of that in terms of 1963 or '64, it's shocking and disturbing. Now, of course, nobody's surprised. It took a few years for the government to prove I was right."
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Thoughts: Sad but true. The majority of Americans felt in the 1950s and 1960s that ours was an honorable and just nation who would never do any wrong to other nations, or to our own citizens. If you said the least thing negative about America to an American you had a fight on your hand. Factual history has blown that image out of the water.
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TOL Companion: Stefano suggests that for all its deadliness, soldiering is still a childish game.

Despite its staginess, "Nightmare" is surprisingly intellectual TV drama, and the series' most potent view of phobia and conspiracy.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)