The Special One

The Outer Limits (1963)

The Special One, directed by Gerd Oswald.

A secret alien visitor claiming to be from a government office is tutoring a young boy because he is a "favorable mutation", mom and dad having worked in an atomic lab. The boy develops strange knowledge and stranger powers. The parents find this unnerving and eventually intolerable.

A slow moving SF thriller, this doesn't have much going for it. A cheap alien technology effect is actually pretty good: it looks like an overlay of swirling soap flakes, very 3D.

Macdonald Carey is a famous face, last seen in Shadow of a Doubt (1943). Marion Ross would become well known as Mrs Cunningham in Happy Days. Edward Platt returns from The Man with the Power. Also with familiar hard case Bert Freed.

Photographed by Kenneth Peach.

The Blu-ray commentary track is by Gary Gerani and Michael Hyatt. They point out that this is the only episode to bring the uncanny into the viewer's living room, a normal domestic setting when Dad wore a suit and tie at home.

They also say that Hyatt has been working on a restoration of Day of the Triffids (1962) which is at the top of my want list. I've been hearing about restorations for literally decades and no longer believe it will happen. Hoping I'm wrong.