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The Best Episodes of Out of the Unknown

Every episode of Out of the Unknown ranked from best to worst. Let's dive into the Best Episodes of Out of the Unknown!

The Best Episodes of Out of the Unknown

Out of the Unknown is a British television science fiction anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and broadcast on BBC2 in four series between...

Seasons4

  1. Background image for Get Off My Cloud
    9.2/10(14 votes)

    #1 - Get Off My Cloud

    S3:E13

    A bed-bound SF author finds himself within one of his own fantasies after a mental breakdown.

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    Director:Peter Cregeen
    Writer:Unknown
  2. Background image for The Little Black Bag
    8.4/10(30 votes)

    #2 - The Little Black Bag

    S3:E8

    When a down-at-heel, alcoholic physician discovers a medical kit, based on future technology, accidentally left in the wake of a time-travel expedition, he becomes a dispenser of miracle cures. But is his discovery enough to salvage his self-esteem and redeem his life?

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    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown
  3. Background image for Andover and the Android
    8.3/10(10 votes)

    #3 - Andover and the Android

    S1:E9

    Roger Andover will inherit a fortune if he marries. But he is a solitary man with no ambition: human relationships mystify and dismay him. But to present a life-like female android as your wife: surely that will satisfy everyone? Andover finds more than he bargained for when his robot bride challenges his preconceptions about humanity.

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    Director:Alan Cooke
  4. Background image for Liar!
    8.3/10(11 votes)

    #4 - Liar!

    S3:E2

    The positronic brain of robot RB-34(Herbie) has an unforeseen 'extra': he can read human thoughts. So his take on the First Law of Robotics ("A robot may not harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm") is unorthodox: he tells human beings only what he believes will not hurt their feelings. Can renowned robopsychologist Dr. Susan Calvin 'fix' RB-34? Or are there areas of her own psyche where she would rather not hear the truth?

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  5. Background image for Random Quest
    8.1/10(9 votes)

    #5 - Random Quest

    S3:E6

    Following an explosion in a laboratory accident, physicist Colin Trafford is sent to a parallel universe where he enters into the body of his counterpart, a popular writer married to an attractive woman who hates him.

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    Writer:Unknown
  6. Background image for The Yellow Pill
    8.1/10(13 votes)

    #6 - The Yellow Pill

    S3:E12

    A murderer is examined by psychiatrist John Frame who is surprised to find the criminal knows many details of his private life.

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  8. Background image for Immortality, Inc.
    8.0/10(6 votes)

    #7 - Immortality, Inc.

    S3:E1

    The very rich can buy eternal life: all that's needed is someone desperate enough to donate, for a high price, a young body into which their personality can be transferred.

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    Director:Unknown
  9. Background image for The Fox and the Forest
    7.7/10(7 votes)

    #8 - The Fox and the Forest

    S1:E8

    Sarah and David Kirsten are tourists from the 21st century who take a forbidden holiday in 1938 Mexico. But enforcers from the future, trying to keep the time-stream free from pollution and paradox, are on their trail. Can they evade their pursuers without betraying their origins?

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  10. Background image for The Naked Sun
    7.7/10(21 votes)

    #9 - The Naked Sun

    S3:E7

    Earth police detective Lije Baley and his robot associate, R. Daneel Olivaw, investigate an impossible murder on a planet where physical proximity is taboo but nudity is not.

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    Writer:Unknown
  11. Background image for The Dead Past
    7.5/10(61 votes)

    #10 - The Dead Past

    S1:E4

    Time travel may still be impossible, but the Chronoscope, sensing the nearly imponderable tracks of ancient photons, allows a glimpse into any event in Earth's distant past. Historian Arnold Potterley is rebuffed when he petitions for use of the Chronoscope to study ancient Carthage. So he commissions the building of a private time-viewing machine, with unexpected results.

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    Director:John Gorrie
  12. Background image for Thirteen to Centaurus
    7.3/10(58 votes)

    #11 - Thirteen to Centaurus

    S1:E11

    Interstellar travel at sub-light speeds: the enormous distances, isolation from human culture and the aching loneliness of space are enough to drive the strongest personality insane. Better to block all memories of human contact and to program the 12-strong crew to accept only the reality they can see and touch within their spacecraft. But a child born on "the Station" becomes insistent on learning the truth about 'Outside'.

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  13. Background image for Time In Advance
    7.2/10(54 votes)

    #12 - Time In Advance

    S1:E5

    Imagine a future where you serve your prison sentence before you commit your crime, in the various hells of savage new planets just being colonised. If you survive, like Nick Crandall and Otto Henck, you can return home with carte blanche to commit murder...

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    Director:Peter Sasdy
  14. Background image for The Last Lonely Man
    7.2/10(51 votes)

    #13 - The Last Lonely Man

    S3:E3

    If, by an accident of science, it became possible for the personality to pass at the moment of death into the mind of someone still alive, then the big new problem would be into whom. To foist the wits of a rogue onto an unwilling recipient would be unjust indeed. Any government who could thus cheat death might indeed win a popular vote, but only so long as all was voluntary - mutually contracted. James Hale is a man of such a society. He has insured against death of his personality by arranging mutual "Contact" contracts with his relatives. He is already host to his late father with whose memories and prejudices he has now learned to live. He himself is a responsible parent of twins whose Contact he will arrange when they are of age.

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  15. Background image for Stranger in the Family
    7.1/10(64 votes)

    #14 - Stranger in the Family

    S1:E3

    A young man, known as 'Boy', is born with no fingernails and with mental powers that enable him to control others. He falls for a young actress, initially repulsed, whose agent-boyfriend encourages the relationship because he thinks Boy's powers can be used to make a lot of money via TV commercials. But he is being hunted by a mysterious surveillance team who have moved into the next-door flat in the tower block where he lives...

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  16. Background image for The Midas Plague
    7.1/10(46 votes)

    #15 - The Midas Plague

    S1:E12

    The Future is bright for most of society: robot labour and free energy make the creation of goods easy and automatic. But the disadvantaged of this Golden Age are those who have to stem the inexorable tide of robot-manufactured goods; they are continually supplied with more things than they can possibly consume. Is there any way for a 'poor' man to get off this treadmill of consumption?

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  17. Background image for Some Lapse of Time
    7.0/10(46 votes)

    #16 - Some Lapse of Time

    S1:E10

    Dr Max Harrow is awakened from a re-current nightmare in which he is pursued by a barbaric accusing figures, to find collapsed on his doorstep, The tramp is suffering from a genetic radiation disorder that should killed him in infancy as it did Harrow's baby son. The ma is the living image of Harrow's nightmare figures, Clutched in his hand is a human finger bone and he speaks a strange, unknown tongue, Why did he collapse outside Harrow's house? What is his motive for tracing him?.

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    Director:Unknown
  18. Background image for The Machine Stops
    7.0/10(1 votes)

    #17 - The Machine Stops

    S2:E1

    In the far future, the material needs of humankind are tended by the omnipresent Machine, which makes their environment, in vast tunnels beneath the earth, comfortable and safe. But safe from what? And what if the Machine Stops? A young boy, Kuno, finds his questions can't be answered until he has lifted the veil of security and trespassed upon the surface.

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  19. Background image for Beach Head
    7.0/10(23 votes)

    #18 - Beach Head

    S3:E4

    On his thirty-seventh mission, Commandant Tom Decker and his colleague Ensign Warner-Carr become alarmed at what they find when their spaceship lands on Planet 0243/B.

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  20. Background image for The Counterfeit Man
    6.9/10(63 votes)

    #19 - The Counterfeit Man

    S1:E2

    On Jupiter's moon Ganymede, an alien life-form has taken over the body of a human astronaut, creating an almost perfect copy. But perfect enough to escape discovery on the long return trip to Earth? Can the deadly counterfeit be detected and stopped before its hunger for new life can endanger an entire planet?

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    Director:Unknown
  21. Background image for Sucker Bait
    6.8/10(44 votes)

    #20 - Sucker Bait

    S1:E7

    An expedition sets out to discover what has happened to a lost colony on a distant planet. Amongst the scientists is a strange, intense teenager called Mark Annuncio, raised to be a kind of human computer, able to make connections between different specialisms. Disliked by the crew, Mark nevertheless may be the only person capable of saving the ship when they land and scientists begin dying mysteriously.

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    Director:Unknown
  22. Background image for 1 + 1 = 1.5
    6.7/10(8 votes)

    #21 - 1 + 1 = 1.5

    S3:E9

    The population of the United Kingdom at the beginning of the 21st Century is static, thanks to computerized population control, but the wife of the Population Officer becomes pregnant for the second time.

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  23. Background image for Come Buttercup, Come Daisy, Come... ?
    6.6/10(49 votes)

    #22 - Come Buttercup, Come Daisy, Come... ?

    S1:E6

    Henry Wilkes cultivates rare tropical plants as a hobby; with an attention to detail which is, perhaps, closer to an obsession. The length to which he goes to propagate and nurture new hybrids alarms his wife. Is there more going on in the greenhouse than could safely be exhibited at the next Battersea Flower Show?

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    Director:Paddy Russell
    Writer:Mike Watts
  24. Background image for No Place Like Earth
    6.2/10(67 votes)

    #23 - No Place Like Earth

    S1:E1

    Earth is no more, destroyed by nuclear war; but itinerant handyman Bert Foster, wandering the canals of Mars, is possessed by a restlessness for a home which no longer exists. Perhaps the isolated outpost on Venus retains something which could satisfy this hunger; or has the madness which shattered a world merely settled in a new location?

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    Director:Peter Potter
  25. Background image for Frankenstein Mark II
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #24 - Frankenstein Mark II

    S2:E2

    A stranger calls at the home of divorcée Anna Preston, asking to collect some of her ex-husband's belongings. Anna agrees, but is suspicious, and tries to contact her 'ex' at the space-research establishment where he worked. But none of his colleagues can tell her where he is and the authorities block all her efforts to find out. Anna grows more convinced that he is in danger, but the truth is more horrifying than even she can imagine.

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  26. Background image for Lambda I
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #25 - Lambda I

    S2:E3

    Why take the Great Circle route to Australia when you can tunnel through the very molecules of the solid earth itself in a TAU-mode shuttle? When a routine TAU-shuttle becomes entombed in solid rock miles under the earth, the only means of rescue may be the wildly experimental LAMBDA-mode shuttle; and even its creator has no idea how it will behave, or whether its pilot can keep his sanity during the rescue mission.

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    Director:Unknown

Best Episodes Summary

"Get Off My Cloud" is the best rated episode of "Out of the Unknown". It scored 9.2/10 based on 14 votes. Directed by Peter Cregeen and written by Unknown, it aired on 4/1/1969. This episode scored 0.8 points higher than the second highest rated, "The Little Black Bag".