The Outer Limits: O.B.I.T.

This is a spine-chilling Orwell-like tale of conspiracy about who's reading thoughts of who that also deals with the hot subject matter of the invasion of privacy by the ("Peeping Tom") machines. Another theme, that is raised, is the addiction of the screen—in a contemporary perspective, it is the visceral and pathological attraction of the TV set or the computer monitor. After the pilot ("The Galaxy Being") which highlights a 3-D monitor to communicate, here's a security computer's screen that is subverted by an alien (or foreign) power in order to control behavior patterns and correct them—O.B.I.T. may also be interpreted as the morbid abbreviation of "obituary" which indicates the true leaning of the machine. The intrusion of the screen is present in other episodes: "Tourist Attractions", "Moonstone", "Fun and Games", "Production and Decay of Strange Particles", "The Chameleon". Jeff Corey interprets a cool and dry lyrical alien invader named Byron (Cf. director Haskin) Lomax (aka Big Brother) that turns out angry and resentful over the prejudiced human race: "The machines are everywhere! Oh, you'll find them all. You're a zealous people! And you'll make a great show of smashing a few of them, but for every one you destroy, hundreds of others will be built. And they'll demoralize you, break your spirits, create such rips and tensions in your society that no one will be able to repair them! Oh, you're a savage... despairing planet. And when we come here to live, you friendless, demoralized flotsam will fall without even a single shot being fired. Senator, enjoy the few years left you. There is no answer. You're all the same. Dark, persuasive. You demand—insist on knowing every private thought and hunger of everyone. Your family's, your neighbor's, everyone, but yourselves." —the first OL actor that will join in John Frankenheimer's "Seconds" and play a part as good and sharp as this one. His right-hand man (actor-writer Jason Wingreen) working as a liaison agent ("Something far more worrisome than Scott has come up. A nightwatchman at the Center, Armand Younger."), who lives in a sordid "Film noir" type of hotel room in order to operate an O.B.I.T. device, has the same features: the spy suit, the rounded spectacles, the v-shaped hairy hand. Peter Breck's Official of the State performance is tough and terse and so called "insane" Harry Townes delivers the best dialogue during the rest home scene: "As long as I'm insane, I'm safe."—by sheer coincidence, Peter Breck was the star of Samuel Fuller's 1963 psycho-thriller "Shock Corridor" where he played a journalist who faked madness to investigate inside an asylum. Best Meyer Dolinsky's script (which also deals with the power of illusion), tight cinematography all the way (watch the final scene with the lightings and shot angle composition) with montage effects (watch the short cuts of the extreme close-ups of Byron Lomax), great "eyeball" art direction (props: the spectacles and the computer screen; the lighting: the snoot beams; the make-up: the alien cyclop, which wears a transparent plastic outfit)—this "eyeball" detail in the context of the episode represents a closed form: the globe, the Earth, and by extention, the symbol of the total power—, odd haunting mechanical sound effects from the O.B.I.T. device fashioned by John Elizalde and John Caper, Jr., for this claustrophobic court room episode. The "Stoney Burke" bit, heard during the plane footage, is from: "The Weapons Man" but there're many subsequent cues from the same series. Notes: William O. Douglas, Jr. plays the cyclop Helosian. Jason Wingreen returns in "The Special One" and "Expanding Human"; Konstantin Shayne makes his last cameo in "The Duplicate Man".