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The Worst Episodes of The Outer Limits

Every episode of The Outer Limits ranked from worst to best. Explore the Worst Episodes of The Outer Limits!

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Anthology series composed of distinct story episodes, sometimes with a plot twist at the end, with occasional recurring story elements that were often tied together during season-finale clip shows.

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Episode Rankings

  1. #1 Worst Episode
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    The Outer Limits Season 6 Episode 22 - Final Appeal (2)
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #1 - Final Appeal (2)

    S6:E22

    It is the year 2076 and Dr. Theresa Givens, a time-traveler from the 20th Century has been sentenced to death. Her crime - violating severe anti-techology laws passed in the wake of the nuclear holocaust 20 years earlier, an event that destroyed most of the world and prompted those who survived to return to the bucolic world that existed before the Industrial Revolution. Theresa has one last chance for a reprieve. Her lawyer, Nicole Whitely has won leave to appeal to the Supreme Court, a body headed by Chief Justice Haden Wainwright. The balance of the court is divided evenly between conservatives who support the ban on technology and liberals who favor a review. In light of the importance of the case, the government has sent Solicitor General Wallace Gannon, a fierce defender of the law, to argue its case. The court has suspended the normal rules, allowing Theresa to join her lawyer in speaking in her defense.

    Director:Jimmy Kaufman
    Writer:Sam Egan

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  2. The Outer Limits Season 4 Episode 15 - Mary 25
    3.6/10(5 votes)

    #2 - Mary 25

    S4:E15

    Charlie Bouton's (Tom Butler) last project for the Innobotics Corporation was a sexy female companion robot named Valerie 23. It almost put the company out of business when it went berserk and attacked someone. So, his bosses are skeptical when he and scientist Melburn Ross (Michael Shanks) introduce Mary 25 (Sophia Shinas), a nanny robot adapted from the earlier model. In order to overcome their doubts, Charlie proposes letting the robot take care of his own children - a move that is met by serious resistance from his wife Teryl (Cynthia Geary) and his children Brad and Brook. From the beginning, there are problems. Unlike the human nanny, Carmen, Mary doesn't grasp the subtleties of child care and Melburn must fine tune her. But, Melburn sees that the problems go beyond Mary's programming. Charlie is smitten with his inorganic creation and has begun to abuse Teryl - a woman with whom Melburn was once romantically involved.

    Director:James Head
    Writer:Jonathan Glassner

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  3. The Outer Limits Season 4 Episode 17 - Lithia
    3.8/10(6 votes)

    #3 - Lithia

    S4:E17

    It is 2055 and the post-apocalyptic world is populated exclusively by women; all the men were killed in the Great War and the Scourge that followed. Into this matriarchy comes Major Jason Mercer (David Keith), who was cryogenically frozen forty years earlier and now awakened in Lithia. Lithia is a small agricultural enclave overseen by a group of women that include the regal elder Hera (Julie Harris), Ariel (Claire Rankin), Miranda (Nadia Capone) and Pele (Kirsten Williamson). Mercer's arrival sparks a debate about the nature of men among some women and revives long-dormant sexual feelings in others. The debate intensifies as Mercer, seeing the enclave's poverty and primitive tools, begins to repair the community's broken machines and pushes Miranda, the group's trade representative to barter with Hyacinth, a neighboring community, for electricity to run the machines. Over the objections of the elders, Mercer gets the machines running.

    Director:Helen Shaver
    Writer:Sam Egan

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  4. The Outer Limits Season 4 Episode 5 - In the Zone
    4.0/10(5 votes)

    #4 - In the Zone

    S4:E5

    With its deadly lasers and hand-to-hand battles, 'The Octal' is a combat sport for a new generation of athletes - but Tanner Brooks is no longer a young man. Although he's promised his wife Jessica that this will be his final tournament, Tanner is desperate to go out a winner. Dr. Michael Chen has a way to make that happen. Through an experimental treatment that taps the power of the human nervous system, Chen accelerates Tanner's reflexes and perceptions. To Tanner, everything in the Octalbegins to move in slow motion ... and Tanner quickly becomes unbeatable. However, there are side effects: Jessica notices that Tanner is tired, haggard and his hair is going gray. But, when Tanner's body begins to blur and fade out of existence, Tanner and Jessica must choosebetween one last moment of glory ... their love for each other ... and oblivion.

    Director:David Warry-Smith
    Writers:Jon Povill, Naren Shankar

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  5. The Outer Limits Season 4 Episode 10 - Identity Crisis
    4.0/10(4 votes)

    #5 - Identity Crisis

    S4:E10

    Captain Cotter McCoy (Lou Diamond Phillips) is the first of a new breed of soldier. As part of a top secret program overseen by Dr. Greg Olander (Robert Joy), General Langston Chase (Dale Wilson), and Cotter's friend, Colonel Pete Butler (Scott Kraft), the contents of McCoy's brain can be temporarily transferred into an android version of himself. This process creates a virtually indestructible fighting machine with the smarts and experience of a human being. But, one day something goes wrong. During the transfer, the real McCoy's body is blasted with electricity, stopping his heart, inflicting serious brain damage and leaving Cotter's mind trapped in the android body. To make matters worse, the interface between his mind and the android body is flawed. McCoy's motor control is already beginning to break down and the interface will likely collapse within 12 hours.

    Director:Brad Turner
    Writer:James Crocker

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  6. The Outer Limits Season 5 Episode 1 - Alien Radio
    4.0/10(5 votes)

    #6 - Alien Radio

    S5:E1

    Stan Harbinger (Joe Pantoliano) is a top-rated talk show host with a flair for the outrageous and a reputation as a skeptic's skeptic. Assisted by his producer Trudy (Cynthia Nixon), Stan takes special delight in shooting down callers who claim to have alien encounters, especially people like Eldon DeVries (Alan Zinyk), who believes his body has been taken over by aliens. However, when Eldon commits suicide by setting himself on fire in front of Stan, things begin to go wrong for Stan. A plan to syndicate the show is threatened by protests from UFO believers, angry at Stan's role in Eldon's death.

    Director:Neill Fearnley
    Writer:A L Katz

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  7. The Outer Limits Season 6 Episode 16 - Revival
    4.0/10(5 votes)

    #7 - Revival

    S6:E16

    Ezra Burnham and his daughter Sarah are old hands at the business of faith healing. Ezra, a preacher who lost his faith when his wife died, is the front man, the one who lays his hands on the deaf and lame. But Sarah is the key to the act, working backstage and communicating with Ezra through a tiny earphone about the plants she's scattered through the audience. It's all going well until one day a strange young man in a wheelchair approaches Ezra near the end of a revival meeting. Luke is not a plant, but when Ezra lays his hands on him, he not only rises from his wheelchair, he begins to float six inches off the ground. After the meeting, Luke and his mother Serna approach Ezra with a proposition. If Ezra will teach Luke the secret of the revival circuit, Luke will continue to work his mysterious magic at Ezra's side.

    Director:Michael Robison
    Writer:Mark Stern

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  8. The Outer Limits Season 7 Episode 19 - The Tipping Point
    4.0/10(6 votes)

    #8 - The Tipping Point

    S7:E19

    A project to develop a universal computer language may lead to all the computers in the world to link and form an artificial intelligence that one computer whiz feels that he must destroy or risk world domination.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  9. The Outer Limits Season 4 Episode 8 - Rite of Passage
    4.2/10(6 votes)

    #9 - Rite of Passage

    S4:E8

    The birth of a child is a joyful event, but for Shal and Brav, two young naive humans who live in a small commune in the woods, it is also a mystery and moment tinged with sadness. After Shal gives birth to a son, the first of the commune to do so, she and the baby are taken away by Mother, a wise alien who acts as a parent to the young people. When the aliens send Shal home without her baby, she asks Brav to help her to rescue the child. With the knowledge Shal has gained from her time with Mother, they break through the protective barrier set up by the aliens to discover a new and fascinating world. It is a dangerous trip, with stinging, snake-like crawlers lurking in the shadows. But, it is also a journey of discovery as Shal and Brav find evidence that lead them to believe that their real parents were killed by the aliens. They find their baby, and after a fight with an alien, escape into the forest.

    Director:Jimmy Kaufman
    Writer:Chris Dickie

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  10. The Outer Limits Season 7 Episode 4 - The Surrogate
    4.2/10(6 votes)

    #10 - The Surrogate

    S7:E4

    A struggling artist signs up for a surrogate birth program.

    Director:Ken Girotti
    Writer:Unknown

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  11. The Outer Limits Season 2 Episode 17 - Paradise
    4.3/10(9 votes)

    #11 - Paradise

    S2:E17

    Dr. Christina Markham and Sheriff Grady Markham live in small town America. Alzheimer's disease is slowly robbing Christina of her mother Helen, who lives in a nursing home along with her long time friend Gerry. When three apparently healthy young women age and die within hours, the Markhams are baffled and frightened. Grady interviews stunned witnesses and Christina seeks medical explanations, hoping to prevent another tragedy. Only after Helen and Gerry vanish is the astonishing answer to the puzzle finally revealed.

    Director:Mario Azzopardi
    Writers:Chris Dickie, Jonathan Walker

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  12. The Outer Limits Season 5 Episode 8 - Blank Slate
    4.3/10(4 votes)

    #12 - Blank Slate

    S5:E8

    Hope Wilson (Robbie Chong) knows there's something different about the bruised and breathless man who stumbles into the homeless shelter she runs with her mentor, Jack Parsons (Larry Musser). He looks like a junkie, but his hands are soft and his fingernails manicured. Tom Cooper (Dale Midkiff) doesn't know who he is, where he is and why two well-dressed men, Vincent (Michael Tiernan) and Cole (Brian Jensen), are chasing him. He only knows that the small metal case that he defends so fiercely contains five vials that hold all his memories, reduced to crystal form, as well as a specially designed injector that can delete or restore those memories.

    Director:Lou Diamond Phillips
    Writer:Unknown

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  13. The Outer Limits Season 4 Episode 20 - Nightmare
    4.4/10(5 votes)

    #13 - Nightmare

    S4:E20

    The battle cruiser Tango Bravo, under the command of Capt. Roger Kimbro (Maurice Dean Wint), is captured by the enemy Ebonites as it attempts to deploy a mysterious high-powered military device on planet N-1-8-4. Imprisoned inside a large bronze dome, the crew is addressed by The Voice, an unseen Ebonite interrogator, which demands they reveal the secrets of the device. When they resist, The Voice works on them individually in isolation, probing their weaknesses and testing their loyalty to one another. Capt. Kimbro is greeted by an all-to-real replica of a comrade he abandoned to die. Lt. Christopher Valentine (Cameron Graham) is played a fake tape of Kimbro disparaging his ability as a soldier. Dr. Elayna Chomski (Brandy Ledford) doesn't return from her interrogation at all, and when Maj. Ronald Naguchi (Robin Shou) goes for his, he finds her body dead, ripped open and suspended in liquid. Who will be the first to snap? Kimbro? Valentine? Naguchi?

    Director:James Head
    Writer:Sam Egan

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  14. The Outer Limits Season 3 Episode 3 - Re-Generation
    4.5/10(4 votes)

    #14 - Re-Generation

    S3:E3

    After their four-year-old son Justin dies in a household accident aspiring politician Graham Highfield and his wife Rebecca get a second chance at happiness. Dr. Lucy Cole clones a new embryo from Justin's brain and nerve cells and implants it in Rebecca's womb. As the pregnancy progresses, however, it becomes clear to Rebecca that this isn't just any fetus -- this is Justin himself, a fetus with the skills -- and the memories -- of a little boy. As he shares those memories with his mother, Justin reveals secrets that may destroy the whole family.

    Director:Brenton Spencer
    Writer:Tom J. Astle

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  15. The Outer Limits Season 3 Episode 1 - Bits of Love
    4.6/10(5 votes)

    #15 - Bits of Love

    S3:E1

    Aidan Hunter may be the last man on earth after a nuclear holocaust, but he's not lonely. In his subterranean bomb shelter, hes surrounded by his family, friends, lovers, anyone he wants ... Unfortunately, they're holograms -- computer generated people controlled by a beautiful holographic interface named Emma. But when curiosity turns to touch and Aidan makes love to Emma in a virtual reality pod, he quickly learns that trifling with a computers feelings can be dangerous ... and the morning after can be all too real.

    Director:Neill Fearnley
    Writer:James Crocker

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  16. The Outer Limits Season 3 Episode 4 - Last Supper
    4.6/10(5 votes)

    #16 - Last Supper

    S3:E4

    Frank Martin can't believe his eyes when his son Danny brings home a beautiful new girlfriend from college. The girl, Jade, is a dead ringer for a woman Frank rescued from a top-secret military experiment when he was a private in the army 20 years earlier. Of course, she can't be the same woman. Or can she? The Martins' world is turned upside down as Frank's past catches up with him and they gain a deeper understanding of Jade's timeless beauty.

    Director:Helen Shaver
    Writer:Scott Shepherd

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  17. The Outer Limits Season 4 Episode 13 - The Joining
    4.6/10(5 votes)

    #17 - The Joining

    S4:E13

    When a transport ship crashed and wiped out the colony on Venus, Capt. Miles Davidow (C. Thomas Howell) was the sole survivor. But, after he's rescued by a team that includes his fiancee, Kate Girard (Amanda Tapping) and Scott Perkins (Jeffrey Jones), it soon becomes clear that Davidow did not escape unscathed. Removed from the high radiation atmosphere of Venus, his body is reacting to the Earth's air like that of a chemotherapy patient. When doctors give him the radiation his body seems to crave, strange things start to happen. Davidow's body begins to spawn duplicate parts - a hand, a torso and more from wounds that miraculously heal. In spite of this, Miles and Kate get married while he's still in isolation, but his time on Venus and the strange creatures he encountered there have had a profound change on Miles.

    Director:Brad Turner
    Writer:Sam Egan

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  18. The Outer Limits Season 6 Episode 20 - Nest
    4.6/10(5 votes)

    #18 - Nest

    S6:E20

    William Grimes, the leader of an exploration team from an Arctic research facility, goes crazy while exploring an ice cave and kills two colleagues before dying himself. Psychologist Jack Burrell is sent up to counsel the staff at the facility. Among his patients is the head of the facility, Robby Archer, a friend from his boyhood. It is not a happy reunion because of a traumatic childhood incident they shared but now they must work together. Grimes has infected the facility with polar mites, a strange ant-like species who take up residence in the warm tissue of the human body and create sort of psychosis.

    Director:Scott Peters
    Writer:Scott Peters

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  19. The Outer Limits Season 5 Episode 4 - The Grell
    4.7/10(3 votes)

    #19 - The Grell

    S5:E4

    The Grells were rescued from their dry and dying planet by humans, only to be turned into slaves on earth. Now the aliens are rebelling against their masters, fighting a guerilla war against a government lead by men like High Secretary Paul Kohler (Ted Shackleford).

    Director:Jorge Montesi
    Writer:Jeff F. King

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  20. The Outer Limits Season 5 Episode 21 - Starcrossed
    4.7/10(3 votes)

    #20 - Starcrossed

    S5:E21

    It is 2056, six years after the Hing, a humanoid race, invaded Earth. While America fights on, Russia has reached an uneasy truce with the aliens, leaving some regions under their control and others declared neutral. In the neutral city of Archangel on the Barents Sea, cynical American expatriate Michael Ryan (Nathan Fillion) runs Heaven, a small coffee bar and music club, where shady Russians mingle with Hing soldiers and other dubious characters.

    Director:Helen Shaver
    Writer:Chris Ruppenthal

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  21. The Outer Limits Season 6 Episode 10 - Down to Earth
    4.7/10(6 votes)

    #21 - Down to Earth

    S6:E10

    The true believers have gathered once again for the North American UFO Convention where there are typically squabbles, petty betrayals and egotistical grandstanding. Max Buford has in his possession what appears to be afragment from an alien spaceship. Max's arrival causes a flurry of activity, as the fragment's true origins are thrown into question.

    Director:Mike Rohl
    Writers:Scott Nimerfro, A L Katz

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  22. The Outer Limits Season 1 Episode 21 - The Voice of Reason
    4.8/10(6 votes)

    #22 - The Voice of Reason

    S1:E21

    A civilian with strong ties to the military tries desperately to use concrete evidence to convince a high level committee that alien forces are trying to overcome the human race.

    Director:Neill Fearnley
    Writer:Brad Wright

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  23. The Outer Limits Season 7 Episode 22 - Human Trials
    4.8/10(3 votes)

    #23 - Human Trials

    S7:E22

    A decorated soldier undergoes life-and-death tests for a mysterious mission.

    Director:Brad Turner
    Writer:Mark Stern

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  24. The Outer Limits Season 1 Episode 5 - White Light Fever
    4.9/10(10 votes)

    #24 - White Light Fever

    S1:E5

    An experiment at St. Peter's Hospital threatens nature's order of existence, when billionaire Harlan Hawkes pays a brilliant cardiologist, Dr. "Mac" McEnerney to help him cheat death.

    Director:Tibor Takács
    Writer:Unknown

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  25. The Outer Limits Season 2 Episode 13 - From Within
    4.9/10(9 votes)

    #25 - From Within

    S2:E13

    A mentally challenged boy named Howie is the last unaffected person in a small town overrun by a strange madness. Miners unearth ancient parasites, in the shape of worms, that attack the brains of their hosts. While the infected townsfolk lose all their inhibitions, Howie must save his sister Sheila, the only person who truly cares for him. Deprived of Sheila's guidance for the first time in his life, Howie struggles to evade his maddened neighbors and destroy the parasites. In the process, he becomes a hero to the whole town.

    Director:Neill Fearnley
    Writer:Jonathan Glassner

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Worst Episodes Summary

"Final Appeal (2)" is the worst rated episode of "The Outer Limits". It scored /10 based on 0 votes. Directed by Jimmy Kaufman and written by Sam Egan, it aired on 9/3/2000. This episode scored 3.6 points lower than the second lowest rated, "Mary 25".