Pushing the Limits

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If The Twilight Zone rarely used make-up to present that alien, then the deformed, mutated, monstrous and totally inhuman body was central to the storytelling of Joseph Stefano and Leslie Stevens's science fi ction series, The Outer Limits. However, like The Twilight Zone, these alien creatures were not simply monstrous others but frequently acted to relativise established defi nitions of normality. If they were visually different, to the human, these differences were defi ned as alternative rather than inferior.

As the show's creators put it, they wanted to present the audience with ‘new worlds beyond reality; sights and sounds never before experienced; adventures of the innermost mind, the farthest galaxies, and all that lies between' (quoted in Schow 1998: 2). As a result, the aliens were not just painted men in jumpsuits; rather, the production team showed great imagination in the make-up and costuming departments as the producers tried to imagine creatures completely different from their human counterparts, creatures such as Empyrians, Ebonites, Zanti, Helosians and Kyben.

Such diversity worked to displace humanity from the centre of the Universe.

The aliens were not simply humanoids or monstrous others, and their sheer diversity as creatures presented humanity as simply one species among many. Furthermore, many of the episodes concerned the threat of science going wrong or with humans destroying themselves with nuclear warfare, radiation poisoning and genetic mutation all of which were fears directly relevant to its period, which was one of the Cold War and the nuclear arms race (Boyer 1994: 354). In this context, the alien was not simply a fi gure of suspicion and fear, but was often a potential saviour so long as humans could learn to live with a being that looked so different from themselves.

The pilot episode ‘The Galaxy Being' (1963), originally titled ‘Please Stand By', emphasised the eerie nature of the Control Voice's now famous opening monologue and showed how the series would come to view the human and alien body throughout the fi rst season visually distinctive yet perhaps ideologically linked. Lowly radio station owner and inventor Allan Maxwell (Cliff Robertson) struggles to prove to his wife that the time that he has spent on research have not been wasted, although others see his search for alien life in the galaxy as an infantile project. Instead of using his radio equipment solely to provide advertising and entertainment, Maxwell would rather use it in an attempt to contact extraterrestrial life.

When his wife asks him, ‘What makes you think you can discover anything? Who are you?', Maxwell replies, ‘Nobody

.Nobody at all. But the secrets of the universe don't mind.' His response to the wife's antagonistic question serves to accentuate the alienation felt by Maxwell as he struggles to continue his work. Becoming more and more of a loner, the inventor would rather spend time with his machinery than go out with his wife, and his desire is rewarded when an alien replies to Maxwell's communications. The eponymous Galaxy Being, a resident from the Andromeda system, appears to Maxwell as a strange yet friendly fi gure.

The dark brown costuming of the creature was enhanced by reversing the negative so that the original wetsuit became bright white in the actual fi nished version on screen.

As well as using traditional make-up effects to create this alien creature, staff working on the suit added slippery rubber and stuck on large-pupiled eyes to accentuate the exotic nature of the being (Schow 1998: 37). Combined with the technical wizardry of simple negative reversal, the Galaxy Being had two layers of alienating features: not only did the costume make the alien imposing to humans but so did his radioactive glow. Signifi cantly, Maxwell's fi rst words to the alien are ‘Who are you?' effectively repeating his wife's original question to him but with a different meaning.

Furthermore, like Maxwell, the Galaxy Being is a loner. Both are solitary beings that are willing to risk isolation from their respective cultures in pursuit of a passion for the unknown, a passion that is only matched by their ingenuity in using radio waves to cross the galactic expanse. The Galaxy Being tells Maxwell that he was not allowed to use his equipment to explore space, just as Maxwell was often criticised for draining the radio station's power to pursue his quest.

The two beings, although physically alien to one another, are kinsmen in spirit: both are struggling to discover something beyond their own experience and escape the limitations of their respective societiesThe contrast between bodies is obviated by the similarities between their social surroundings.

Only when the Galaxy Being is mistaken for an aggressor toward the end of the episode is there a potential for death and destruction, but here it is the humans who are the real threat, and they are presented as small-minded beings that use violence when confronted with the unfamiliar. Perhaps more signifi cantly, unlike the differences between altered human and alien bodies in The Twilight Zone, the similarities between Maxwell and the Galaxy Being's philosophy serve to illustrate the polemical tone of the Control Voice at the end of the episode: The planet Earth is a speck of dust, remote and alone in the void.

There are powers in the universe inscrutable and profound. Fear cannot save us. Rage cannot help us. We must see the stranger in a new light the light of understanding. And to achieve this, we must begin to understand ourselves and each other. (quoted in Schow 1998: 7)

As the series began its second and fi nal season, it was felt by some that too much time was being spent on the ‘usual monster bullshit . . . funny rubber masks, and basically silly ideas' (Harlan Ellison quoted in Schow 1998: 249). With such sentiments being expressed by key writers working on new scripts, there was a clear shift in narrative emphasis in the later episodes.

From the sense of general human insignifi cance seen in ‘The Galaxy Being', stories from the second season started to expound upon humanity's more positive traits: the main one being humanity's endless thirst for knowledge. Instead of being portrayed as an immature, savage and technologically backward race, humans were forgiven for these indiscretions because their overall raison d'être was a noble one if innocent people and aliens were harmed in the process of gathering knowledge, then it was a small price to pay. The episode ‘Demon with a Glass Hand' (1964) typifi es.

The Outer Limits' more utilitarian mantra. In this story Robert Culp plays Trent, the last human alive, on the run through time from a humanoid species called the Kyben. In stark contrast to the bug-eyed monsters typical of the fi rst season, the only physical feature that distinguishes the Kyben from the human is their thick black eye make-up. Dressed in dark sweat pants and tops, with a gold medallion around the neck, they look more like burglers or bank robbers than an intergalactic army.

Indeed, the episode's writer, Harlan Ellison, whilst critical of the series' over-the-top alien costumes criticised the make-up and wardrobe, asking, ‘And why the black circles around the Kyben's eyes? Some of them look like human beings; some of them look like weirdos with cheesecloth over their faces' (quoted in Schow 1998: 287). The shock twist at the end of this story is that Trent is actually a robot that has been created by humans of the future to protect humanity from the Kyben.

His body houses a copper wire that contains the essence of every human in electrical form; the entire knowledge of the human species is contained in his metal body.

His glass hand holds the key to unlocking this power but he must remain the lone guardian of humanity for eons, until suffi cient time has passed and it is safe for humanity to return to the Earth. Trent's .body becomes the embodiment of technical achievement, through which humanity is able to outwit the Kyben and use an artifi cial body to contain their real human form.

The closing monologue intimates that although Trent looks human, and even literally contains the essence of humanity within himself, he cannot feel love or pain and therefore he must wait out his years in isolation. While he looks human, he is unable to experience human emotion, and it is the technological appendages to his body the copper wire and the glass hand that embody humanity. Television began to supersede fi lm as the dominant form of mass media in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but science fi ction remained popular.

As an icon of science fi ction itself, J. P. Telotte (2008b: 37) notes that ‘Before becoming a fi xture in American homes and a purveyor of its own brand of science fi ction', television was more familiar to audiences who grew up watching classics such as Metropolis, Things to Come and Modern Times.

These fi lms represented the new medium ‘optimistically, as a kind of ultimate communication device, but also more darkly, as a means of surveillance, a tool of deception, even a potentially deadly force' (37-38). Television was clearly trying to attract a different kind of audience perceived as a more adult audience and therefore fi lm had to change in order to cope with the drop-off in box offi ce receipts.

Television not only competed as the dominant media form, it also ‘changed the shape and physical dimensions of domestic settings' such as the home living room (Gray 2002: 104). According to Lynn Spigel, the 1950s domestic space took on qualities previously associated with the movie theatre as new televisions became the centre of individual and family entertainment.

There was no need to go to the cinema when ‘the ideal home theatre was precisely "the room" that one need never leave, a perfectly controlled environment of mechanized pleasures' (Spigel 1992: 108). David Marc and Robert J. Thompson (2005: 76) state that ‘By 1960 TV use had soared to some fi ve daily hours per household', and as a result other forms of media, such as radio and the cinema, ‘had to redefi ne themselves to fi t the new communications regime'.

At the same time that Hollywood was facing this competition from television, the studio system was breaking up and undergoing signifi cant changes in how movies were funded, produced and distributed. According to Leonard Quart and Albert Auster (2002: 102), ‘the industry was a chronic invalid, with the studios losing a combined aggregate of $500 million between 1969 and 1972'.

This period in the history of Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s is termed New Hollywood and was characterised by the rise of auteur fi lmmakers and ‘the media conglomeration of the fi lm industry' (Wyatt 1994: 8). As will be discussed in the following chapter, New Hollywood's infl uences on science fi ction fi lm would have huge repercussions for the genre for many years to come. Both fi lm and television's production of the genre changed thematically as the cultural landscape evolved from the ideological consensus of the.

Cold War and developed into a more fragmented and rebellious reaction to America's political establishment fuelled by increasing civil unrest, calls for social and economic change and opposition to the country's mounting involvement in international affairs and overseas confl ict.