The Probe

Production Order #17

Broadcast Order #17

Original Airdate: 01/16/65

Starring Mark Richman, Peggy Ann Garner, Ron Hayes.

Written by Seeleg Lester, story by Sam Neuman.
Directed by Felix E. Feist.

A flight crew ditches their aircraft after flying into the eye of a hurricane. They finds themselves in their life raft on board an unmanned Venus space probe. If they can avoid being eaten by Turdo's Venusian cousins, they might just figure out the key to a way out of this puzzle.

JS: Take away "The Galaxy Being" and you've got Mark Richman book-ending the series with episodes of similar caliber. Unfortunately, that is not a good thing.

PE: What a long strange trip it's been. We begin our final journey with a harrowing flight into the eye of a hurricane. Not a trip I'd like to take in a model airplane. I would have liked to have seen the crash that left the crew unbattered and unbleeding. Instead we get a "kill the action" scene later where three of the stars stand around and recount the awe and mystery of the crash landing into the sea. May I remind those of you out there who have never experienced being lost at sea that the safest thing to do when you're in a raft in the middle of the Pacific is to remain seated and not stand straight up.

JS: For anyone who did not appreciate the preceding episode's air force stock footage extravaganza, now you can see the alternative. I kept waiting for the 'pilot's' hand holding the wing of the model plane to enter the shot. I loved how that despite the wild ride the puppeteer had the plane on, the crew seemed to be enjoying the smoothest ride into a hurricane of their lives.

PE: Cobley seems genuinely perplexed that the raft is actually not on water but in a pup tent. "I can't understand it," he shrugs as if trying to figure out why his car won't start. But the artificial fog being pumped into the tent finally gets his attention: "Jeeee-Hoshaphat!"

JS: I want to know what happened to the "Jumpin..."?

PE: L-OL dialogue (after the crew has been "misted,"):

Rome: Okay, it's gone

Coberly: What's gone?

Rome: Whatever it was. It doesn't seem to have any effect though, does it?

Amanda (excitedly): Except I'm dry! Isn't that funny?

(a general chorus of "Yep, that's funny" and "Hey, I'm dry too!")

Amanda: What was it?

Coberly: A fog. A mist of some kind.

Rome (obviously stunned): With a drying action.

JS: And thus begins the, "I've got a crazy theory, and by golly, it happens to be true" development of the plot.

PE: I love the part when Dexter climbs in the raft to investigate the "cold light," realizes it's producing ice and then stays in the ray until he becomes a popsicle. That's what I'd do. The others stand to the side and shout warnings rather than coming to the aid of the dope.

JS: Think of the potential savings and increased production value had they hung onto the Chill Charlie prop.

PE: Cobley's exchange with Dexter is a hoot:

Rome: Dex, can you move your fingers now?

Dexter: They're st-st-st-starting to tingle. And my toes! (shouts) And my ears hurt!

Cobley: Another second or two in there and you woulda just froze to death.

Dexter: What made it do it? What made it freeze up so fast?

Cobley (points to the tower): That first light beam.

Dexter: Whole light?

Cobley: That wasn't all. You shoulda seen that second light beam come down and slice that raft in two like a knife (gestures cutting with a knife). And another light beam lift...lifted up that pipe and put it up in that hole there!

I wasn't sure if Cobley was explaining this to Dex or to us.

JS: I hope Dex, because I didn't buy it.

PE: And as we see the giant fake rubber vomit "scurry" across the floor towards Dex, there's my favorite rip-off music cue "The Children of the Hydra's Teeth." I can almost anticipate when this bit of music will come up now. Same goes for that rotten harp theme. Interesting that when the Vomit absorbed Dex, he spit out his jacket but not the rest of his clothes.

JS: The jacket clearly wasn't his size. I feel sorry for the poor bastard who had to climb into that ridiculous cousin-of-Turdo bear suit.

PE: L-OL dialogue abounds!

When we first get to see the "Incredible Shrinking Man" lab, a discussion between Rome, Cobley, and Amanda goes something like this:

Cobley (pointing at the piece of raft we all saw cut like a knife and sucked through the big hole near the ceiling): How did it get here? (Here I had to rewatch the scene where Cobley actually explains to Dex what happened to the raft in the first place just in case I was missing something)

Rome (obviously a hell of a lot smarter than Cobley): Maybe through the center post there (points up to where there might be a big sucking hole near the ceiling). Where the machinery is. And those light beams.

Amanda: But what for?

Rome: I think maybe to test it (how he deduced this, I'm still trying to figger out)

Amanda: To test it for what? Who's doing the testing? Where is everybody?

Rome (now pay attention here): The results of the testing...would be sent back...to where everybody might be!

Cobley (puts his hand on Rome's shoulder): Jeff, have you got some kind of theory about all this?

Rome: I'm getting one.

JS: I'm getting one, too. I think that if this Venus probe was exploded over the Eastern Seaboard and it rained down radioactive particles... we might just have the makings of a zombie apocalypse.

PE: A whole lot of wild deductions based on little to no information follows. Rome is either the smartest man ever born or he's full of shit but doesn't want the others to know:

Rome: That mist is a staining solution. The same as we do with microscope slides. This entire set-up is a gigantic testing station created by alien beings from the planet Xenon. Right now they're monitoring our breathing patterns in anticipation of invading Earth because Xenon's women are infertile and can no longer bear children. The bastards! I'm on to them! Here, Cobley, help me detach this bio-convertor. I can fashion a nuclear device and have us back home by supper. POLARITY REVERSE!!

JS: Had you been older than two, it sounds like you could have landed a job writing for Season 2.

PE: I'm finally (after 49 episodes) detecting a pattern: When in doubt (or when in debt) film a show where the cast does nothing much more than walk from one room to the next and talk talk talk. You can vary this formula when needed (example: film an episode where a couple runs from a car to a military base twenty times). And, when in doubt, use hieroglyphics to impress or amuse your audience.

JS: Had they only realized they had stumbled across the Venusian equivalent of an Indian casino. They might have won a few bucks playing Keno.

PE: Peggy Ann Garner has a "deer in the headlights" look about her all through the show. Understandable since she's in a stressful situation but most humans blink their eyes now and then. Her  emotional soliloquy at the climax (wherein she spouts questions to an unseen force) brought to mind the great Hawaiian vacation episode of The Brady Bunch where Marsha questions the Tiki pole about boys at school and acne (At least they got Vincent Price. -JS). Amanda does get to christen our vomit "Mikey." Not a very regal name for an alien being. "I Defeated Mikey, the Vomit from Space" doesn't have the necessary ring to it, does it?

JS: Give the raft to Mikey. He won't eat it. He hates everything. Hey wait—he likes it! Hey Mikey! No really, Mikey... get off the raft... that's disgusting...

PE: Who knew that a scene of Alien Vomit humping the remains of a raft would be an effective shot? I do like the baby Krispy Kreme donut that dislodges from its side. As Amanda says a few times too many "It's fantastic!"

JS: Yes. When Cousin of Turdo isn't enough, we bring you—Turdito, the alien apple fritter!

PE: Richman has the same intense delivery he milked in "The Borderland" but, to be fair, he's given the same kind of crappy dialogue. And lots of it. He does grit his teeth and spout "We need to be understood!!" with fiery abandon.

JS: And oddly enough, his commitment to this role is one of the few points that makes this episode bearable (just like "The Borderland"). Did anyone happen to check his hands this time out? I was disappointed that amongst his monologues, he never quite got around to saying, "To be... or not to be..."

PE: And for sheer suspense, you can't beat when Copley and Rome are debating whether to make a run for the door before "Mikey" can get them, all while "Mikey" is sitting right in front of them. Copley makes an NBA juke to fake out "Mikey," and Rome and Amanda are able to run past. The choreography on this shot alone must have taxed the multi-hundred dollar budget. The rest of the budget was spent on that explosive climax. I'm fairly sure the spfx for the self-destruction of the spaceship was achieved by positioning a camera inside an oven as Projects Limited baked cupcakes.

JS: Again, condolences to the poor sap stuck inside that latex hell.

PE: Best scene would have to be the dry-cleaning of Amanda, Rome and Copley (I would have preferred Amanda in a t-shirt though). Giant beakers rise out of the floor, surrounding the trio (and do they coincidentally walk right to the spots or would the beakers grow around them no matter where they are?), bathing them with jets of water and then drying them with a heavenly mist  ("Not bad," proclaims Amanda, "Not a famous French perfume, but not bad!"). The scene's eccentricity almost cries out "this is all a dream" (yeah, I know, the rest of it is pretty wacky as well) and cements the show for me, as the perfect companion piece to "Cry of Silence." I'd roll this one at one of my wild parties anytime. Absolute proof that Hollywood writers were using psychedelics long before the hippies were.

JS: Now that you mention it, what that scene needed was a little Strawberry Alarm Clock "Incense and Peppermints" with our three principles dancing in their respective tubes.

PE: Purists who still have "Gwyllim for President" posters or "Demon with a Glass Hand" action figures will cry "Oh, the humanity!" at the thought that this was the last trace of The Outer Limits on ABC in 1965. I look at it a different way. Though it was probably not its intent, "The Probe" made me laugh out loud and shout "What the fuck" several times at my TV set. Sometimes entertainment just needs to get your mind off tsunamis and foreclosures, no? I'd say "The Probe" is one of the more entertaining  episodes I've seen this season.

To which, I'm sure, you'd say "'The Probe', my ass!"

JS RATING:

PE RATING:

David J. Schow on "The Probe" (Click on pages to enlarge):

 

From The Outer Limits Companion, Copyright © David J. Schow, 1986, 1998.  All Rights Reserved.  Used by permission and by special arrangement with the author. 

While soaring above the Earth's greenery
Coberly found himself void of Earth scenery.
    Once eluding a fog,
    They played tag with a glob
In a probe-ship straight outta penury.

Its rooms were quite spotless and cleanest
As the probe, it ascended toward Venus.
    The cast declared, as they must,
    "When best eps discussed,
You know, for a fact, they won't mean us."

(Tim Lucas)




Be sure to come back later this morning for our last special Spotlight on "The Probe."


Next Up... Our Series Wrap-Up!