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n the paranoid Cold-War 1960s, a military base creates a data-processing computer that can see through walls and see through pretense, a machine that can monitor anyone at any time. What would happen if such machines became commonplace, creating dissension among humans so great that an invading alien race could simply walk in and take over without a fight?
An astronaut accidentally plunged from 1963 into the future of 2148 meets a mutant human who tells the horrific story of an extraterrestrial microbe developed and corrupted by a scientist that mutated mankind into hideous creatures with an inhibited ability to reproduce. What would happen if the mutant went back in time and killed the man responsible for such a plague?
The TV show is The Outer Limits. Its claim to fame is that it explored the threats of the past, present and the future in a way no other show had done before or, many may argue, since.
Sideshow Toy has produced 12-inch action figures from various episodes of this series in the past few years. Their latest is a double-packed pair, Andros from "The Man Who Was Never Born" and the Helosian alien from "O.B.I.T."—two classic first-season episodes.
Andro (played in the series by Martin Landau), an intelligent, soft-spoken mutant, manages to get back to the past and attempts to find and kill the scientist who unleashed havoc and destruction on the Earth, but he has come back too far. Instead, he meets and falls in love with Noelle, the scientist's mother, long before the birth of the scientist in question. Sideshow's Andro comes with a snub-nose .38 caliber revolver (which he got from the astronaut, who inexplicably produced it when his capsule landed on Earth—apparently in 1963 snub-nose revolvers were standard issue for astronauts), a flower and a book—one of many from a library in 2148. Andro wears an earth-tone robe and over-vest, and is sculpted to show every nook and crag of the mutant's head, hands and feet.
The Helosian alien (played by William O. Douglas Jr. and credited only as the O.B.I.T. Creature) is a minor presence in the episode "O.B.I.T." He is seen only on the video screen of the O.B.I.T machine (for "Outer Band Individuated Teletracer"), which is a surveillance machine like no other. This machine has the power to divide mankind through hatred after all privacy is lost. Like Andro, the alien has fooled everyone around him by taking on a human form. Sideshow's Helosian figure has no accessories but wears a glittering vaguely lavender jumpsuit and a translucent plastic sleeveless coverall.
Both figures have highly articulated bodies, with joints that move in many directions, including double-jointed elbows and knees for extreme angular poses exceeding the articulation found in most action figures available today. Each figure has a display stand with the character's name and the logo of the Outer Limits series. The pair comes in a beautiful display box with double-door flaps, printed with generous photographic and textual material from the episodes in question, including cast and crew credits, synopses of the episodes and wonderfully revealing production notes that delve all too briefly into the backgrounds of each episode.
High standards aren't easy
In the past, Sideshow has produced pairs of action figures from The Outer Limits—Ikar and his Soldier from "Keeper of the Purple Twilight" and the Prisoner and Regent from "The Zanti Misfits." Each set featured two characters from the same episode. In this case, Andro and Helosian are from consecutive episodes, but have much in common. Probably the strongest feature connecting them thematically is that each character was represented both as a human and as a hideous creature in its respective episode.
Sideshow's head sculpts have in the past been exemplary. In this pair, the Helosian is excellently sculpted. The mask worn by the actor in the series was Cyclopean, featuring one central eye. The mask was cleverly designed to hide the fact that the actor had to tilt his head so his left eye would line up centered over his mouth. This fact is portrayed in the Helosian's head sculpt, as his mouth is on a rakish angle.
His uniform is well made of a lycra-like knitted fabric interwoven with fine foil thread. Over that he wears a translucent coverall made from plain sheet plastic that looks and feels as if it was cut from a shower curtain.
Andro's head sculpt is less perfect, and unusually inaccurate for Sideshow. Whereas Martin Landau's mask was a mass of smooth, round polyps, this sculpture makes him look entirely cragged and sharp. Gone are the round puffy ridges and valleys. Instead, we get an effect that looks almost as if he were carved out of concrete. The individual features are similar, with even certain craters and ridges in the right place, but the overall effect is not the same. In the show, Andro in his mutant form is a soft, sympathetic character, while his action-figure likeness is hard and lacking emotion.
The slight weakness of this figure also extends to the accuracy of his outfit, but certainly not to the quality of it. In the episode, Andro wears a tattered, somewhat ragged inner robe with a rolled half-turtle collar. The action figure sports a pristine outfit with an open-necked Nehru collar with a snap to allow it to open and close. The outer vest has no lapels, yet in the series Andro's vest clearly has ragged lapels similar to those on a business suit.
The revolver, flower and book are well crafted, but trying to fit the revolver into Andro's hand is a difficult task and may result in the breaking of the trigger or trigger guard, which are accurate and therefore rather thin. Sideshow hands are molded from hard plastic and are inflexible, making this task something I would not recommend.
As a set, this pair comes in at just under the standard I've come to expect from Sideshow, mostly for the inaccuracies mentioned. However, the quality of the figures and accessories is fine. Both figures are, in their own right, decent, with fairly accurate likenesses of the characters in question, but other than the fact that these are rare characters as action figures, there is nothing that stands out to make this a must-have set.
Still, loyal collectors of merchandise from this must-see TV show or aliens and mutants in general may have to have this set as well.
The Outer Limits is legendary, and deservedly so. Each figure Sideshow has created from the series has been good, and in fact quite better than figures created by many companies that hold prestigious licenses. While I have no doubt that this pair of figures exceeds the quality that many other companies produce, it doesn't quite measure up to Sideshow's usually excellent standards. The problem with setting such a high standard of excellence is that you must continually exceed that standard. And that can be quite a task. — Sean
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