The Inheritors
The Outer Limits (1963)
The Inheritors, directed by James Goldstone.
Four soldiers miraculously survive head wounds. The bullets had been cast from a meteor and microscopic examination shows alien cell structure in the metal. Each man exhibits extra brain waves and it is clear the same brain is now controlling all of them.
Without ever meeting each other the soldiers take off and start working on a project they do not understand. Fearing the worst, the Fed "men in black" are watching and talking to them, but what can you do about super-intelligent opponents with mind-control powers?
Part of the project becomes clear: they are building a starship. Going back to where the meteor came from? Maybe that's not so bad.
Then they start collecting the children...
The only two-part episode in the series, this one seems more like a labor of love than was usual for the second season. It's not like anything else in the series, but is still one of the best episodes.
On the down side:
The police procedural development is pretty routine, even if the plot is a nice concept this time.
Sets and locations are mostly nothing special. The starship is rudimentary.
As the commentary track points out, it looks more like one of the Quinn Martin productions of the 1960s, like The Fugitive or The F.B.I.. Not forgetting The Invaders (1967)!
This is all redeemed by an involving story of deep ethical conflict. I kept flipping between:
Alien brain infection: must be monsters...
...but they don't act like monsters. They are the same people as before, smarter and with powers, plagued by the overwhelming compulsion to complete an unknown mission...
...and they themselves have qualms. Are they doing evil? How would they know?
We've just started to take their side when they begin collecting children to take with them. That can't be right...
..except the children are the unloved and disabled. Maybe they go to a better place?
And what are the Feds supposed to do about this? They can't let them take the children, no matter what. Here the police are good at pointing guns but terrible at stopping the conspiracy or understanding anything about the alien visitation.
The ultimate dilemma: what do you do when you don't know if you are doing right or wrong? It is an SF mystery where the transformed men, the Feds and the audience all have to figure it out together. There is even a hint at the end that the alien force is learning, too.
The backbone of this part of the story is our matched opponents: government science cop (Mulder!) Robert Duvall and leader of the alien plot Steve Ihnat.
Duvall is so intense we wonder as to his backstory, if he has encountered something like this before. Even granting that the alien-controlled humans may be well intentioned he can't let them get away with the children.
Ihnat was a familiar supporting actor of the period, usually as a villain, last seen in The Chase (1966), In Like Flint (1967) and Fuzz (1972). He would also be the psycho villain in Star Trek Whom Gods Destroy. He died at age 37.
It is too bad Ihnat did not get a chance to do leading parts because he goes deep and produces something special here: like the others he does not know the ultimate purpose but is more confident that it is a good thing. And yet he cries when taking the children. He can't know for sure. The scenes where he and Duvall face off are very fine.
Returning:
Robert Duvall from The Chameleon.
James Shigeta from Nightmare.
Ivan Dixon from The Human Factor.
Ted de Corsia from It Crawled Out of the Woodwork.
Dabbs Greer from The Children of Spider County.
Director James Goldstone from The Sixth Finger. He would also direct Star Trek Where No Man Has Gone Before; all three shows are about the problems of enhanced humans. He also directed Star Trek What Are Little Girls Made Of?.
I immediately recognized the little blind girl as one of the terrified children from The Birds (1963):
This is Suzanne Cupito, later "Morgan Brittany".
Notes:
The country at war is not named but is obviously Vietnam. This was before full escalation of US forces.
To raise money Lt Minns masters commodity futures. In those days you had to go to a broker and sit in his office.
Soldiers who share a secret even they don't know is like The Manchurian Candidate (1962).
Children in the same situation is like Children of the Damned (1963).
Duvall bluntly draws the parallel between taking the children and abduction by child molesters.
Lots of theremin in the score.
One criticism: maybe too much is explained at the end. They could have left it open, letting us decide whether to rely on faith.
Gary Gerani and Steve Mitchell provide the Blu-ray commentary track.
