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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 Machine Stops
    7.0/10(1 votes)

    #1 - 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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  2. Background image for No Place Like Earth
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #2 - 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
  3. Background image for The Counterfeit Man
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #3 - 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
  4. Background image for Stranger in the Family
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #4 - 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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  5. Background image for The Dead Past
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #5 - 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
  6. Background image for Time In Advance
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #6 - 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
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    The 20 WORST Episodes of Out of the Unknown

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  8. Background image for Come Buttercup, Come Daisy, Come... ?
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #7 - 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
  9. Background image for Sucker Bait
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #8 - 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
  10. Background image for The Fox and the Forest
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #9 - 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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  11. Background image for Andover and the Android
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #10 - 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
  12. Background image for Some Lapse of Time
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #11 - 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
  13. Background image for Thirteen to Centaurus
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #12 - 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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  14. Background image for The Midas Plague
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #13 - 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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  15. Background image for Frankenstein Mark II
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #14 - 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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  16. Background image for Lambda I
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #15 - 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
  17. Background image for Level Seven
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #16 - 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
  18. Background image for Second Childhood
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #17 - Second Childhood

    S2:E5

    Charles Dennistoun, a 60-year-old contestant on 'You Bet a Million' - a quiz show for millionaires - wins the jackpot prize, a course in rejuvenation. But his friends and family have mixed feeling, and the repercussions have blackly comic effects on all concerned.

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    Director:John Gorrie
    Writer:Unknown
  19. Background image for The World in Silence
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #18 - The World in Silence

    S2:E6

    College student Sarah Richards is alone in fearing and disliking the new teaching machines but even she does not foresee the terrifying situation that arises when her supervisor, Stephen Kershaw, re-arranges the machines to conform with revised fire regulations.

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    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown
  20. Background image for The Eye
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #19 - The Eye

    S2:E7

    Julian Clay is accused of murdering Andrew Maddox - a charge he cannot deny because 'The Eye', a device which records the past, saw him do it, However, the law affords one loophole.

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    Director:Peter Sasdy
    Writer:Unknown
  21. Background image for Tunnel Under the World
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #20 - 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
  22. Background image for The Fastest Draw
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #21 - The Fastest Draw

    S2:E9

    Amos Handworthy's grandfather was quick on the draw: as a U.S marshal it was a job requirement if you wanted to stay alive. But now Amos has built a gun-slinging robot, programmed to be a split second slower than him in a gunfight, so that he can perpetuate the myth and glory of his grandfather's frontier past. But will Amos bet his life on a duel with real bullets?

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    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown
  23. Background image for Too Many Cooks
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #22 - Too Many Cooks

    S2:E10

    Dr Andrew Cook, inventor of a process for making living replicas of human beings, has unwittingly duplicated himself and becomes a secret weapon in the Solar System's struggle for economic survival against a powerful alien culture, the Sentients.

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    Director:Unknown
  24. Background image for Walk's End
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #23 - Walk's End

    S2:E11

    Dr Saint's offer of a free place in his comfortable old-folks' home appears entirely philanthropic to Miss Claythorpe. However he is suspiciously vague about the treatment that goes with it.

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    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown
  25. Background image for Satisfaction Guaranteed
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #24 - 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
  26. Background image for The Prophet
    NaN/10(0 votes)

    #25 - 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

Best Episodes Summary

"The Machine Stops" is the best rated episode of "Out of the Unknown". It scored 7/10 based on 1 votes. Directed by Philip Saville and written by E.M. Forster, Kenneth Cavander, Clive Donner, it aired on 10/6/1966. This episode scored 7.0 points higher than the second highest rated, "No Place Like Earth".