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Directed by Gerd Oswald
Written by Orin Borstein
Some material by Lou Morheim and Joseph Stefano; based on the novel Corpus Earthling by Louis Charbonneau
Geologist Dr. Jonas Temple and his assistant Laurie have been examining unusual rocks that seem unlike any they have studied. Later, when Temple is alone, the rocks assume the forms of black, living, pulsating creatures that slither across the cabinet and forcefully enter Temple's body as he struggles for his life. They are creatures from another planet who wish to take over Earth by using human bodies as their hosts.
Laurie's husband, Dr. Cameron, has a metal plate in his head and he can hear the creatures talking. Thinking he is suffering brain damage and going insane, he takes Laurie on a trip, but Temple, doing the bidding of the rock creature inside him, follows them to kill Cameron because Cameron knows their secret.
NOTES: Director Gerd Oswald and cinematographer Conrad Hall combine in "Corpus Earthling" to produce one of the most nihilistic, moody, film noir episodes on series television. Low angles, stark shadows intensify the paranoia of the story, as Robert Culp's Paul Cameron is forced to destroy everything he loves: his wife and his closest friend. He is left amid smoky desolation, with no way to convince anyone he has saved the world from talking rocks. It is a tour de force for Culp and Salome Jens, who would later play with Culp in the I Spy episode "A Room With A Rack," which explored the effects of torture on the human spirit. In "Corpus Earthling," Paul Cameron has done nothing to deserve his fate. He is even a war hero with a metal plate in his head. There is no cosmic justice here; no one to salute his heroism. It is a superb horror story from what could have been a laughable plot (talking rocks conspiring to take over the world) that inexorably leads to its needful, but terrible, conclusion.
Culp starred in two more of the best Outer Limits episodes, "The Architects of Fear" and "Demon with a Glass Hand," before going on to star in I Spy, the first TV drama to have an African-American actor, Bill Cosby, as a lead. Culp and Cosby would become one of the great screen teams and help shape television history. Culp would later portray Bill Maxwell in the 1980s superhero series The Greatest American Hero. Salome Jens is best known to modern SF fans as the Female Changeling on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
(Original Airdate: November 18, 1963)
Robert Culp (Dr. Paul Cameron), Salome Jens (Laurie Hendricks-Cameron), Barry Atwater (Jonas Temple), David Garner (Ralph), Ken Renard (Caretaker), Robert Johnson (Voice of the rocks)
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MGM Worldwide Television Group
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