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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 The Prophet
    8.8/10(6 votes)

    #1 - The Prophet

    S2:E13

    Robot QT-1, aboard an orbiting space-station, controls the massive energy beam which transmits the sun's power to receivers on Earth. But QT-1 (Cutie) has some strange bees in his positronic bonnet. How could weak creatures of protoplasm create a nearly invincible, totally logical entity like himself? It is up to his human supervisors, Powell and Donovan, to convince Cutie of his niche in creation before his new robot theology becomes a threat to all life on Earth.

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    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown
  2. Background image for Satisfaction Guaranteed
    8.6/10(7 votes)

    #2 - Satisfaction Guaranteed

    S2:E12

    A human-looking robot housekeeper is the latest gadget to acquire in the ceaseless battle to keep up with the Joneses. But housewife Claire Belmont starts to question the wisdom of her husband's purchase when TN3 (Tony) arrives. Can a man-like robot do everything a man can do: but willingly, obediently, tirelessly? Is a robot less than a man, or more?

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    Director:John Gorrie
    Writer:Unknown
  3. Background image for Andover and the Android
    8.5/10(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 Tunnel Under the World
    7.9/10(52 votes)

    #4 - Tunnel Under the World

    S2:E8

    Déja vu: as Guy Birkett goes through the day he has a nagging feeling that he's been here before, experienced this already; except the details are always different. Is it conceivable that he is merely a simulacrum, the ultimate in consumer market surveying? He finds there is a reality behind the reality he knows; but for a pawn to question the reality of the chessboard is a perilous undertaking.

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    Director:Alan Cooke
  5. Background image for The Fox and the Forest
    7.7/10(7 votes)

    #5 - 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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  6. Background image for The Machine Stops
    7.7/10(93 votes)

    #6 - 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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  8. Background image for Level Seven
    7.6/10(56 votes)

    #7 - Level Seven

    S2:E4

    In the huge, labyrinthine nuclear bunker meant to shield the survivors in government from the aftermath of atomic war, Level 7 is the deepest and the safest from radiation. But in spite of its hermetic isolation, the nerve center of government is ultimately not safe from the consequences of the holocaust which rages miles overhead.

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    Writer:Unknown
  9. Background image for The Dead Past
    7.5/10(59 votes)

    #8 - 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
  10. Background image for Welcome Home
    7.5/10(27 votes)

    #9 - Welcome Home

    S4:E6

    Dr Frank Bowers has been looking forward to returning home after a long stay in a psychiatric ward. But when he gets there, he finds that not only does no one recognize him, but another man called Frank Bowers is living in his place.

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    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown
  11. Background image for This Body Is Mine
    7.4/10(35 votes)

    #10 - This Body Is Mine

    S4:E3

    Allen Meredith is a brilliant scientist but too mild-mannered to make an impact or fight for the money he needs. He has invented a process to exchange minds between bodies. His ambitious wife Ann persuades him to invite his boss, the domineering Jack Gregory, to their house for dinner. Once there, they drug him and Allen swaps bodies with Jack, then goes back to work to transfer millions into his account. But meanwhile Ann is finding the combination of Jack's masculine personality in Allen's body rather attractive and they begin making their own plans.

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    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown
  12. Background image for Thirteen to Centaurus
    7.3/10(56 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(52 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 Uninvited
    7.2/10(14 votes)

    #13 - The Uninvited

    S4:E10

    A Middle-aged couple are disturbed during the night by a series of unwelcome visitations.

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    Director:Unknown
  15. Background image for The Midas Plague
    7.1/10(43 votes)

    #14 - 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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  16. Background image for Deathday
    7.1/10(34 votes)

    #15 - Deathday

    S4:E4

    Adam Crosse is a reporter for a local paper. A neurotic under-achiever, the last straw comes when he discovers his wife Lydia is having an affair and she coolly tells him she has no intention of either giving up her lover or divorcing Adam. The top crime story of the moment is a serial murderer nicknamed "The Kitchen Killer". Adam sets out to murder his wife and blame it on this shadowy psycho.

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  17. Background image for Stranger in the Family
    7.0/10(62 votes)

    #16 - 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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  18. Background image for Some Lapse of Time
    7.0/10(44 votes)

    #17 - 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
  19. Background image for The Counterfeit Man
    6.9/10(62 votes)

    #18 - 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
  20. Background image for Sucker Bait
    6.9/10(42 votes)

    #19 - 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
  21. Background image for Come Buttercup, Come Daisy, Come... ?
    6.7/10(47 votes)

    #20 - 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
  22. Background image for To Lay a Ghost
    6.5/10(47 votes)

    #21 - To Lay a Ghost

    S4:E2

    Eric and Diana Carver move into a new home in the country, but a series of strange events soon cause Diana to suspect the house is haunted by the ghost of a man. A ghost who seems to be interested in her particularly. She was sexually assaulted when she was a schoolgirl and ever since has had a complex about sex and intimacy. When they call in Dr Philmore, a paranormal expert, he suspects that Diana subconsciously wants to the dominated by this supernatural intruder.

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    Director:Unknown
  23. Background image for No Place Like Earth
    6.2/10(65 votes)

    #22 - 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
  24. Background image for The Man in My Head
    6.2/10(24 votes)

    #23 - The Man in My Head

    S4:E8

    A team of soldiers break into an enemy missile base. Such is the secrecy of their mission, they have been hypnotically programmed with their orders and will only remember each stage of the operation when they hear a pre-arranged signal. It seems foolproof, but gradually doubt and paranoia begin to overtake them.

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    Director:Peter Cregeen
    Writer:Unknown
  25. Background image for Lambda I
    5.5/10(42 votes)

    #24 - 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
  26. Background image for The Chopper
    4.4/10(10 votes)

    #25 - The Chopper

    S4:E9

    The vengeful spirit of a dead motorcyclist is reluctant to leave his wrecked machine and manifests itself to a woman journalist as motorbike noise.

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Best Episodes Summary

"The Prophet" is the best rated episode of "Out of the Unknown". It scored 8.8/10 based on 6 votes. Directed by Unknown and written by Unknown, it aired on 1/1/1967. This episode scored 0.2 points higher than the second highest rated, "Satisfaction Guaranteed".