The Outer Limits 1963 "O.B.I.T." episode (Remind you of anything?)

[Bill Bored]

This is when TV was worth watching.

Watch for free on HULU:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/63079/the-outer-limits---original-obit

From Wikipedia's entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O.B.I.T.

Opening narration

"In this room, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, security personnel at the Defense Department Cyprus Hill's Research Center keep constant watch on its scientists through O.B.I.T., a mysterious electronic device whose very existence was carefully kept from the public at large. And so it would have remained but for the facts you are about to witness…"

Plot

While inquiring into the disappearance of an administrator at a government research facility, a Senator is confronted with paranoia, secrecy, and intimidation. He ultimately learns the cause: An unusual security device that is used to monitor its employees. The Outer Band Individuated Teletracer (known by the acronym O.B.I.T.) is so pervasive that no one can escape its prying eye, at any time or in any place. After the missing administrator is found alive and reveals his knowledge of O.B.I.T., its sinister unearthly origins and purpose become apparent.

Quotes

Lomax: People with nothing to hide have nothing to fear from O.B.I.T.

Orville: (scoffs) Are you that perfect, Mr. Lomax?

Lomax: The machines are everywhere! Oh you'll find them all, you're a zealous people. And you'll make a great show of smashing a few of them. But for every one you destroy, hundreds of others will be built. And they will demoralize you, break your spirits, create such rifts and tensions in your society that no one will be able to repair them! Oh, you're a savage, despairing planet, and when we come here to live, you friendless, demoralized flotsam will fall without even a single shot being fired. Senator, enjoy the few years left you. There is no answer. You're all of the same dark persuasion! You demand – insist – on knowing every private thought and hunger of everyone: Your families, your neighbors, everyone — but yourselves.

Closing narration

“ Agents of the Justice Department are rounding up the machines now. But these machines, these inventions of another planet, have been cunningly conceived to prey on our most mortal weakness. In the last analysis, dear friends, whether O.B.I.T. lives up to its name or not will depend on you.

[PSPS]

1. It reminds me of when we had TV really worth watching!

Those old anthology shows were the best.

[Newsjock]

2. Good stuff

Yes, too many of these early episodes (and Twilight Zone, too) are no longer fiction.

[ohheckyeah]

4. Do you remember

the Twilight Zone episode where the earth gets so hot people are going crazy?

[pinboy3niner]

7. How about "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJyaBxYjWcQ

[ohheckyeah]

11. I found the episode I was thinking of

it was entitled Midnight Sun. The earth was actually get colder but the lead character was suffering from a fever and hallucinations which was used to lead us to believe it was getting hotter. I forgot about the fever part.

Thanks for the link. I'll check out that episode.

[pinboy3niner]

20. That's a very memorable episode

It starred Lois Nettleton, who, incidentally, was married for 6 or 7 years to Jean Shepard, the guy who created 'A Christmas Story.'

I mentioned the 'Monsters' episode because it's another one that has special resonance in these times when some are drumming up suspicion, fear and paranoia about some groups in our society to serve their own agendas. I hope you enjoy it!

[apocalypsehow]

17. Edit: *delete*. Didn't see your reply #11 before I posted this. n/t.

[Arctic Dave]

3. NSA, DHS, TIA. It has shades of a all the acronyms of fascism.

[Bill Bored]

5. Yes but I was also thinking Facebook and Twitter. nt

[Tunkamerica]

6. Ubik is all-powerful and all-knowing, and Ubik is everywhere.

[Cleita]

8. Rod Sterling was way ahead of his times.

He could see the problems we would have in the future if a certain set of circumstances were allowed to prevail. A lot of his work was a warning to society put in a fantasy venue. Too bad we didn't listen.

[Number_Six]

9. The trilogy of thought

I always said that The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits and Star Trek were a trilogy of show all designed around one central theme:

Pogo's famous line: "We has met the enemy and he is us."

I grew up watching all three and all three of the execs of these shows...Rod Serling, Joseph Stefano and Gene Roddenberry used these vehicles to teach us all quite a bit.

OBIT was quite telling, indeed. And prophetic. And here we are stuck with our noses welded to just such a screen, worrying more about the Kardashians, or who's next off the island. And the real one-eyed monster wasn't this alien, no...television itself. Clever!!

But, it was stuff like "The Zanti Misfits" that really chewed: Are we that paranoid? Demented? Dark? Evil?

"YOU HAVE DESTROYED THE MISFITS, AND THEIR GUARDS WHO ARE OF THE SAME SPOILED PERSUASION. WE ARE INCAPABLE OF EXECUTING OUR OWN, YOU ARE NOT, YOU ARE PRACTICED EXECUTIONERS AND FOR THAT, WE THANK YOU."

Yeah, baby, who's the real monster? Oh, Maple Street, USA, of course! One of Rod's superb and claustrophobic pieces. Funny thing? Tests like this have been carried out in realtime, the results are far from hilarious...

"And we'll go one to the other...one to the other...."

Then, Gene came. What more did we need to know about the idiocy of the biped species...mankind?

"Can't you tell, Captain? He's black on the wrong side!"

Nowadays, we ain't got squat for good TV, not like this was, no, but in a plutocratic era where the elitists want us as jaded and dumb as the fabled Roman Proletariat, no, thinking person's TV ain't welcome.

Weren't we warned that might just happen?

"Nothing is more malleable that morality, sir. Your kind will work our machines and manufacture our dreams for us. There is no hope of escape. None."

Chilling. And prophetic!

[Bill Bored]

10. Thanks for this post! I think Facebook is worse than O.B.I.T. because...

...it's becoming more or more accepted and expected through peer pressure for people, esp. young people who don't know any better (and I mean the VERY young in grade school) to give up their right to privacy WILLINGLY. It's being marketed to them with games, etc. and they don't understand the implications. They gossip about each other (as with O.B.I.T.) and cyber-bully each other, and sometimes they end up dead.

And did you ever try to DELETE a Facebook account PERMANENTLY? It can't be done.

With all their trashy Facebook posts in the search engines and the "book" itself, imagine the explaining these kids will have to do on their job interviews, if they ever get that far, or if they ever run for public office! More likely, they'll just be weeded out before they have a chance to explain their youthful indiscreet behavior at all.

Either such behavior will become acceptable, or very few of our young folks (those with a certain mind set which I haven't been able to identify yet), will be the ones who succeed in the future.

At least O.B.I.T. was a system that had to be forced on most of its victims. Now we are being conditioned to give up our most sacred rights voluntarily.

[JackRiddler]

12. Yes, but he did the Twilight Zone, not the Outer Limits.

[Cleita]

13. You are correct. Time, senior memory and my bad, but the Outer

Limits was created because the Twilight Zone was so popular. They used to do that back in the day and I'm sure you remember. If a show was popular, like a western, then every channel put their own western on the air. This happened also because of the Twilight Zone.

[JackRiddler]

15. Loved both shows.

They still do that, by the way. If the real doings of idiots captured by one camera are a hit, every channel does the same. If forensic death-porn with stylish detectives is popular, every channel puts on one of those.

p)

[nc4bo]

14. Going to have watch this episode, looks like a good one. Watched Eagle Eye

a couple weeks ago and it gave me a serious case of the willies. Eagle Eye: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1059786/

Back in OL and TZ days it was fiction sometimes based on a little fact now it's more like reality/fiction based on some very real facts.

[Bill Bored]

18. Another cool surveilance flick is "The Conversation." Very eerie, esp. the bad sax playing.

I think Wiki got the O.B.I.T. plot summary a little wrong, by the way, so do watch it!

And also note that obit is short for obituary!

[Parche]

16. my favorite show of all time

obit sounds like it is a republican invention!!!

[Bill Bored]

19. That's David McCallum before his Man From U.N.C.L.E. days right? nt

[Parche]

22. yes

that is my favorite episode
nightmare is next

[daleo]

21. Watched an Outer Limits DVD recently

That included O.B.I.T. Some of that series was amazingly good. Some, not so much. But it was all fascinating.