ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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David McCallum rocks the roll of an unhappy coal mine worker who yearns for a better life.

Edward Mulhare (Our Man Flint) has created an amazing machine which can accelerate evolution and advance a human subject's physiology by thousands of years!

This is a brilliant "Frankenstein story", in which the scientist creates a monster who is thousands of years more advanced than his own brilliant creator!

My only complaint is that David McCallum's "superhuman" make-up goes too far. The face becomes a comic book villain, and his large pointed ears give him an "evil elfish" look!





But otherwise, this episode is intelligent and skillfully done. Kudos to The Outer Limits crew.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

"Where are we going? Life, the timeless, mysterious gift, is still evolving. What wonders --- or terrors --- does evolution hold in store for us in the next ten thousand years? In a million? In six million? Perhaps the answer lies in this old house in this old and misty valley . . . "

" 'The Sixth Finger' was the first, and possibly the only script I read through and immediately said film it," said Joseph Stefano. "Now, you can't know what that means, when I felt the need to rewrite every script that came in."

Ellis St. Joseph drew the seminal idea for his script for "The Sixth Finger" from George Bernard Shaw's Back to Methuselah: "I wanted to depict Shaw's deadly serious feelings toward evolution, and extend them into my belief that man will evolve past the physical stage and into a creature of pure, formless intellect." St. Joseph framed these concepts in the Emlyn Williams play, The Corn is Green, whose protagonist, Morgan Evans, is a backward Welsh miner who craves education. He falls under the guidance of a schoolteacher who ultimately sends him off to Oxford with a scholarship. The science fiction needs of The Outer Limits were served by recent developments in genetic research.

Deleted from the script was more of the scene in which Mathers tries to stop Gwyllm when he declares, "The whole town must be utterly destroyed. An example must be made."
MATHERS: You're wrong! We may seem stupid to you, primitive; we may have our shortcomings, but we are what you once were. It would be murder.

GWYLLM: Your so-called civilization wiped out the savages that stood in its way! The man of the future must do the same with the man of today, before their brutality and ignorance can unleash universal destruction. Isn't that what you wanted, Professor?

Gwyllm's observations (below) on the human condition make this scene one of Outer Limits' most captivating moments.

GWYLLM: Amazing, isn't it, the things that endure the ravages of time and taste? This simple prelude, for instance. Bach will quite probably outlive us all. . . . Man produces little that is lasting --- truly lasting. It's understandable. Fear, conformity, immorality; these are heavy burdens. Great drainers of creative energy. And when we are drained of creative energy we do not create. We procreate; we do not create.

Gwyllm's physical evolution was the most elaborate prosthetic makeup job ever devised for The Outer Limits. John Chambers (who would win the first-ever Academy Award for makeup in 1968 for his revolutionary Planet of the Apes designs) was the designer.

The Welsh community backdrop was provided by English Towne Street on the MGM lot, and Mrs. Ive's boardinghouse was a Victorian mansion on Lot # 2known as the Vinegar Tree House. The stock footage establishing the Welsh village was lifted from the John Ford classic movie How Green Was My Valley (1941).

Janos Prohaska returned to The Outer Limits to paly Darwin, using hsi own stage-tour chimp costume. "Janos was a delight," said episode director James Goldstone (Star Trek: TOS second pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before"). "He had tremendous energy, and a sort of puckishness. With the suit on, he became an ape."

"An experiment too soon, too swift, and yet may we still hope to discover a method by which, in one generation, the whole human race could be rendered intelligent, beyond hatred, or revenge, or the desire for power? Is that not after all the ultimate goal of evolution?"

[Bud Brewster]

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This is indeed an intelligent and thought provoking episode, Mike!

The quoted comments you provided above point out a very controversial aspect of evolution.

The assumption some folks seem to make is that mankind is destined to develop and improve, as if evolution is a pre-programmed series of physical changes — even to the point where we'll abandon our physical forms and become beings of pure energy!

Unfortunately, this is not supported by Darwin's theory.

Evolution only improves a species when its environment forces changes which it needs to survive. In fact, evolutionist agree that mankind's current ability to deal with this physical needs with the technology he's developed has separated him completely from the pressures which used to influence our development.

In short, we've stopped evolving because society takes care of all our needs — and thus we no longer have to adapt to the demands which challenged our primitive ancestors .

With that in mind, mankind is now more likely to de-evolve in the years to come! Our technical devices relieve us of the need to solve problems, and our comfortable environment prevents us from having to endure physical hardships.

As I've described in other posts on All Sci-Fi, mankind is slowly becoming the feeble dependents of our hi-tech caretakers.

I think that eventually our AI machines will take over and determine that we're just useless dependents on them. When that happens, the human race will be discarded completely.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[WadeVC]

One of my favorite episodes, and one that I think is extremely intelligently written.

As Bud noted, the make-up in the final stage of evolution was a little over the top, but overall, the episode itself is one that is thought-provoking.