ZZZZZ
Directed by John Brahm; written by Meyer Dolinsky (additional material by Joseph Stefano). Cast: Phillip Abbott (Ben Fields); Joanna Frank (Regina); Marsha Hunt (Francesca Fields); Booth Coleman (Dr. Warren). Broadcast January 27, 1964. Story: In search of a lab assistant, prize-winning entomologist Ben Fields settles on the uniquely qualified Regina, who all but lands in his lap. Searching for a human mate to prolong her species' life span, mutant queen bee Regina settles on Ben, whom she considers a prize. Mrs. Fields, seeking only a happy marriage, is altogether unsettled by the set-up.

To bee, or not to bee....

Sorry about that. What I was getting at is how difficult it is to justify the inclusion of "ZZZZZ" in a serious critique of The Outer Limits. It's anything but a seminal episode, and so many other episodes (like "The Sixth Finger" or "The Man Who Was Never Born") warrant exposition where this one often elicits—and usually gets—only derision. Yet "ZZZZZ" is far from the worst first-season episode (that honor arguably belongs to the execrable "The Special One") and it never approaches the banality of most of the second-season offerings; despite its many contrivances and the patent ridiculousness of its premise, its lowly reputation is in many ways undeserved. "ZZZZZ" may not be top-notch Outer Limits, but it does have some interesting and intriguing things to say about the chaotic, ever-hopeful human heart. In that respect, it's a classical (if not classic) episode that deserves attention regardless of its flaws.

Flaws are something that "ZZZZZ" has in abundance, to be sure, foremost of them being the essentially conflicted nature of its story. As David J. Schow has reported, Meyer Dolinsky and Joseph Stefano were in disagreement over the motivation of the episode's characters virtually from the start: Dolinsky favored a more ambiguous approach in which Ben Fields is seriously tempted by Regina, while Stefano preferred a more customarily moralistic tone wherein Ben is committed to his marriage at all costs. With Stefano's considerable input (you can detect his style in such lines as "a disorderly man is usually guilty of something far more chaotic than disorder"), the resulting film is a sort of nebulous hybrid of both points of view. It's little surprise that the two approaches don't graft together particularly well. The sexual tension at work in Dolinsky's screenplay is all but absent from the final film, and the unfortunate effect is that Ben comes across as an oblivious, asexual dimwit while Regina appears to be little more than a simple-minded sexual predator. Hardly the stuff of ground-breaking adult drama (let alone an engaging insect takeover story), and watching Ben absent-mindedly rebuff Regina's repeated advances makes one wonder why he keeps her around at all; she's shrill and idiotic, and her presence clearly distresses Francesca, whom Ben plainly loves. (A cursory link is established between Regina and the Fields' deceased child, but it's quietly dropped after a single scene.) The near-surgical extraction of any palpable lust from "ZZZZZ" leaves little of the potential dynamism in Dolinsky's story intact, and the film's human relationships are uncharacteristically infeasible and stiff.

This central defect hardly helps to obscure the episode's other, more practical shortcomings. The science-fiction motif in "ZZZZZ" is uninspired and half-baked at best, and such devices as the "language analyzer" seem patently absurd in the context of the weakly developed domestic triangle. Similar devices in other episodes (like the voice translator in "The Zanti Misfits" or the O.B.I.T. machine) succeed in part because they help to more sharply focus the terror and dread that drive these stories; here, in the absence of any strong thematic motivation, the implausibility of the analyzer—and the notion of a bee/human symbiosis, for that matter—is impossible to overlook. The high-pitched insect voices that emanate from the analyzer only add to the silliness, as do the unconvincing "transformation" scenes involving Regina and a superimposed photograph of a bee. (The metamorphosis that occurs at the start of the episode is just as poorly realized, but it manages to be cheaply surreal in a way that eludes the film's other effects sequences.) It's difficult to understand why Project Unlimited couldn't come up with more imaginative creature effects (the episode's budget notwithstanding), but perhaps the fault lies less with technical implementation and more with listless direction. The quiet, understated gravity of John Brahm's directorial style, which works as beautifully for "The Bellero Shield" as it does for the many Twilight Zone and Thriller episodes he directed, creates an inappropriately mannered atmosphere in "ZZZZZ," and only serves to call attention to the curious lack of emotional tension between the principle characters. Given the material and its unfortunate, meddled-with condition, one can hardly fault Brahm for his lack of enthusiasm; still, a more dynamic approach might have worked wonders (just imagine what Byron Haskin could've made of the wicked Regina and her flimsy ploy). At the very least, it might have distracted viewers from the painfully insubstantial plot and drawn attention to the film's more successful elements.

How does "ZZZZZ" manage to succeed, despite the odds? First, by clearly distinguishing the orderly, rational insect society from the chaotic, emotional human one; and second, by shifting the balance of order and chaos from one species to the next several times during the course of the episode. This mutable distinction gives "ZZZZZ" a depth and ambiguity it might have otherwise lacked, and it's tempting to give Stefano all the credit. But Dolinsky exhibits as keen an understanding of human frailty as Stefano in his other episodes, "The Architects of Fear" and "O.B.I.T.", and it is in this sense that "ZZZZZ" is a true, artistically salvageable collaboration between the two writers.

Ben and Francesca's emotional attachment to one another is enough to convince Regina and the bees that humans are a haphazard species ripe for genetic compromise; she puts it succinctly when she tells her minions that humans "live by what they think, not by what they know." It's true that the couple is well-matched and genuinely loving, and their touching relationship is reminiscent of Allen and Yvette Leighton's in "Architects". Yet in other ways the Fields' marriage is as orderly and regimented as the activity in the bees' hive. Francesca is as staid and repressed as Ben is narrow and unimaginative, and it's clear that the passion has drained from their marriage and left in it's wake a comfortable but stifled and uninvigorating friendship. The two are ripe for the sort of intrusion Regina and the bees represent, and in a way they deserve it: Ben, after all, spends his days intrusively listening in on the bees as Francesca dutifully and unquestioningly serves his every need (almost). Regina, on the other hand, exhibits a vibrant sensuality and playful impulsiveness that embody the passion that's missing—or that's been misplaced—from the Fields' relationship. In spite of her professed commitment to order, Regina's liveliness upsets the order of the marriage, and seriously unnerves both Francesca and Ben at the same time that it attracts them; at one point, Ben even suggests that Francesca buy Regina "some starched uniforms" for her work in the lab. His desire to "starch" her vivacity (not to mention her monumental bosom) recalls an earlier scene in which Regina (in orderly mode) straightens a plaque on the laboratory wall as she compliments Ben on his "organized mind." She wants to shape Ben to fit her needs as much as he wants to obscure his desire for her.

This halting dance between Regina and Ben—and between order and chaos—comes to a head when Francesca spies Regina seductively licking a flower in the Fields' garden at night. Francesca's repulsion (ostensibly at glimpsing Regina in her bee form) and the implicit, open-ended sexuality of Regina's act helps set the Fields' tragic downfall into motion. The intrusion of chaotic passion into their lives ultimately does them in, just as Regina's reliance on order destroys her when she fails to account for Ben's sloppy, emotional rage after Francesca's death. It's a situation from which none of the characters can emerge intact, and it leads to one of The Outer Limits' bleakest resolutions ever. But while Dolinsky manages to capture the confused jumble of emotions attendant with infidelity in "ZZZZZ" (and the equally jumbled ambivalence of married life), the episode barely scratches the surface of its tricky themes: no real infidelity occurs, and we never feel that Francesca's fate is in any way justified. (It doesn't help that her death scene, which should have been terrifying, is ineptly shot.) Ben's climactic outburst at Regina is equally confounding. His vociferous defense of marriage—and, implicitly, of all human endeavors of the heart—is indignant and unyielding, and implies something even more orderly and certain than the bees' rigid society. It's at odds with Ben's previously neglectful and distracted behavior, and with the powerful ambiguity that the episode manages to build.

The cast of "ZZZZZ" does what it can with the addled material. Phillip Abbott captures Ben's drone-like obsequiousness quite nicely, and seems unusually qualified to play the scattered scientist type so common in second-rate Outer Limits episodes. Marsha Hunt perfectly expresses Francesca's quiet discomfort, but she is made to be too dowdy for the role; an element of long-buried but still discernable sensuality would've added another layer of ambivalence to the episode, something it sorely needs. Joanna Frank is alluring and exotic as the human queen bee, but her performance suffers from a flippancy that erodes any sense of authority on Regina's part; she hardly seems capable of ruling a gathering of mayflies, let alone a smooth-running bee colony. The actress complained of a serious lack of direction from John Brahm, and if that's the case she does a fine job of compensating: Frank is never actually embarrassing to watch, and she gives Regina a spoiled, mercurial haughtiness that is entertaining to behold.

In many ways, "ZZZZZ" is a confused, lackluster Outer Limits budget-saver that fails to strike any deep chords; small wonder that even the most forgiving series fan will scoff at the idea of a rewarding second viewing. Yet amid the confusion, authors Dolinsky and Stefano deftly explore the ambiguous distinction between chaotic love and dutiful order, and raise the intriguing possibility that, like humans and bees, the two aren't as different as we might like to believe.

—MH

It Crawled Out of the Woodwork
Directed by Gerd Oswald; written by Joseph Stefano. Cast: Scott Marlowe (Jory Peters); Michael Forest (Stuart Peters); Ed Asner (Detective Thomas Siroleo); Kent Smith (Dr. Block); Barbara Luna (Gaby Christian); Joan Lamden (Stephanie Linden). Broadcast December 9, 1963. Story: Physicist Stuart Peters goes west to accept a position at NORCO, a mysterious and isolated research facility. His younger brother Jory tags along, as does their long-standing, unspoken resentment of one another. A messianic zombie, a reluctant young woman and a sentient energy mass enter their lives to force the issue.

A bipedal nuclear storm and a true oddity in an audacious, pent-up tableau, this episode's "bear" is the story's single entity capable of honest self expression. Mythical, not rational: it may dwell in a laboratory, but it's not a creature born of science. Its genesis is displayed but never explained; its absolute power can only be subdued. For the moment. It rests in the pit (Satan?) and brings death, the decisive alteration of energy. It enslaves with fear, this grotesque problem. It isn't science: it lives, to kill, in a lab—but it crawled out of the woodwork.

To parallel this power-starved demon, Joseph Stefano established his perverse "focus on the family" in "Woodwork", offering a tightly-wound fraternal relationship as subtextual fodder for the tale told. The relationship of the protagonists (the brothers Peters) betrays the brittle signs of essential, tenuous engagement—Stefano's microcosm of human attachment: poignance and poison; a pleading, confusing mix of the deeply heartening and the dangerously irritating, a need for closeness so strong that it breeds distance. Jory's dependence on Stuart, his inability to grow beyond the tragedy of parental loss and become something more than a man-child who treats everything "like a magazine in a doctor's office," reflects the necrocentric energy-depletion of Dr. Block's NORCO, embodied by it's barely-contained resident beast.

Forest and Marlowe are impressive and convincing here, suggesting a longstanding relationship that is loving, though hampered by history and habit. Marlowe's Jory, pathetic with his stuffed bunny, annoying in his moodiness, tragic and flailing madly, is finally forced to grow up and act on someone elses behalf (true Stefano, true Outer Limits); sadly, he must lose yet another parental figure to do so. By story's end, he is both wise and damaged beyond his years; no doubt he will be, as Dr. Block noted of brother Stuart, a long time dying. Smith is perfect in the role of Block, with his coffin-dry voice, adopting a sleazy Teutonic bearing and accent; he suggests a Nazi war criminal in hiding, permutating der Führer's evil with nothing short of glee. The perfect company man (perhaps standing in for an ABC programming executive), pushy bottom-liner Block is as lethal as his beloved monster, and remains one of the most flagrant and unrepentant antagonists the series produced. Stefano, a writer equally moralistic and relativistic, offered many difficult villains in his episodes for The Outer Limits—some clearly wicked, others true believers in ultimately vile endeavors; Block is both. And he's a necrophile: a hard man to rationalize (watch for the loving portrait of Block's true God above his desk).

It is the ultimate dead-end job, toiling at NORCO, and work itself takes a drubbing in "Woodwork", where wage-slavery acquires a dreadful dimension. The tightly-reined environment of a large organization is the height of paranoid experience, even in the best of situations; here, the price of voicing job dissatisfaction is the brutal short-circuiting of one's company-installed pacemaker (the episode's funny/scary symbol for complacency). As Jory puts it, in typically arch Stefano dialogue, "I'd rather be dead than caught working at NORCO;" if only Forest's Stuart had felt the same. We leave the disruption caused by the momentarily contained beast and its decadent Old World accomplice (the death focus of European existentialism unabashedly evoked) with a traumatic series of losses to confront. Our nominal heroes can only stumble out of the disaster zone, shocky and ironically energy-depleted. The end of our shared world has been averted, for now, but not without sacrifice: the end of several smaller worlds. As always, knowledge is costly in The Outer Limits.

—DCH

Sometimes art is as difficult to experience as it is to create. Case in point: the demanding, deeply personal "It Crawled Out of the Woodwork," arguably Joseph Stefano's—and perhaps even The Outer Limits'—most confoundingly obscure episode. In a series that embraces and encourages the surreal, the resolutely surrealist "Woodwork" requires patience and tolerance like no other episode. And yet, when viewed with an open mind, it yields the kind of intellectual (though perhaps not visceral) satisfaction that's typical of the show.

At first glance, "Woodwork" seems little more than an muddled amalgamation of unrelated ideas clumsily tied together to fill air time. It wouldn't be the first such episode, although it would be the only one Stefano wrote single-handedly. But the film occurs too early in the production schedule to be a mere "bottle show" (Leslie Stevens' term for quick, budget-saving episodes), or one of the woefully orphaned projects for which Stefano had little time (like "The Special One" or Robert Towne's beautifully flawed "The Chameleon"); "Woodwork," in fact, preceded both "The Invisibles" and "Don't Open Till Doomsday," two of Stefano's series masterworks. The muddle, then, is largely superficial, and the episode is much more complex than a single casual viewing might reveal.

In one sense, "Woodwork" plays as Stefano's homage to co-creator Stevens' tales of depleting absorption into malevolent conformity ("The Galaxy Being" and the sublimely weird "The Production and Decay of Strange Particles"). By this point in the series, Stefano was undoubtedly feeling the pressures of network interference as strongly as Stevens had, and in that respect such an episode was bound to emerge from his acid pen. As such, "Woodwork" is an inventive success. The monolithic, threatening NORCO is a place of sublime obscurity, and its terrifyingly dehumanizing pattern of death, resuscitation and enslavement speaks volumes about Stefano's perception of his network bosses. Literally wearing their fragile hearts on their sleeves (or at least on their lapels), NORCO's once-brilliant undead minions are reduced to acting as mere recruiters for the installation's league of techno-zombies, while Dr. Block, their ostensible leader, is dominated by an inscrutable, wholly uncontrollable energy cloud he can scarcely comprehend. The implication is as uproarious as it is disquieting: the assembly-line drudgery of weekly production, and the artistic cowardice of corporate sponsorship, had the potential to drain the creative life from The Outer Limits and its resident artists. If such an interpretation seems far-fetched, just watch a representative episode from the show's second season.

Thankfully, like Stevens, Stefano wasn't simply interested in excoriating Daystar's corporate parents. More than just a darkly satiric jab at ABC, "Woodwork" is another of Stefano's thought-provoking excursions into a deeply troubled relationship where repression has taken on monstrous form. Brothers Stuart and Jory Peters are among the writer's most emotionally compromised characters. The years-long rift precipitated by their parents' accidental death is untenable and hindering to them both, yet they rely on it in their bitter, mutual need for one another; in this sense, they've allowed their unexpressed anger and grief to become as blindly destructive as the "problem" in NORCO's pit. The purposeful, taciturn Stu and the frivolous, jovial Jory are at an emotional impasse, as afraid to confront the pulverizing resentment they harbor as they are fearful of leaving one another behind. Yet there is real affection between them, and the brothers share telling character traits despite their fundamental differences: the normally reserved Stu is charming and flirtatious with Dr. Linden, while carefree Jory is brooding and grim as he waits impatiently for Stu's return from the lab. Their relationship is dictated by the conservation of energy law central to the work at NORCO, and to the episode: their misunderstanding is too deep-seated to be completely destroyed or abandoned, yet their genuine love for one another allows for its reformation into something respectful and abiding. Sadly, NORCO's wailing energy beast eradicates the possibility of such a change, and takes Stu's life (twice) after forcing him to hastily confront the hapless and confused Jory.

If "Woodwork" is ultimately disappointing because it robs us of an uplifting resolution (one that seems inevitable until Stu's jarring second death), it seems likely that's precisely what Stefano had in mind. The bewilderment and loss that go unrelieved in the film leave us as demoralized as its characters, and force us to consider their predicament in a broader perspective—one in which the enigmatic energy mass and its helpless adherents take on universal significance. Stuart and Jory; the sad, vain Dr. Block and the despondent Dr. Linden; even the seemingly imperturbable Gaby and Detective Siroleo are all hopelessly enthralled by this indifferent, impenetrable being whose narrowly focused drive seems brutal and beyond understanding. Beleaguered by a force they cannot control, and compelled to contain that force without ever attempting to decipher it, they are not so different from the rest of us; the most any of them can do—and it is the least of them, Dr. Block, who does it—is mollify this incomprehensible God and allow NORCO to serve as its perverse "church."

"It Crawled Out of the Woodwork" intrudes into places no network censor could ever have conceived, and ultimately challenges our notion of a rational, well-ordered universe in which there are no (as Dr. Block puts it) "foolish laws." "Woodwork" may cast an unexpectedly harsh light on our susceptibility to petty fears and shallow resentments, and on our penchant for becoming subservient to those fears and resentments, but would we expect anything less of Joseph Stefano—or of The Outer Limits?

—MH

Copyright © 1998–2001 Mark Holcomb & David C. Holcomb. All rights reserved.