
7 Season
153 Episode
The Outer Limits - Season 3 Episode 5 Stream of Consciousness
In a world where neural implants allow everyone instant access to information, Ryan Unger is a throwback, a moron. Because of a brain injury he suffered as a child, he's unable to tap into the Stream -- an electronic collection of all human knowledge -- so he struggles in vain to keep up by reading books, a primitive and forgotten art. But, when a virus in the Stream starts killing people by overloading their brains with data, only Ryan has the skills and independence to stop it. Can a primitive human, relying only on books and his own brain, save a world of machine-made geniuses from self-destruction or will the Stream wash over all of them?
- Year: 2002
- Country: Canada, United States of America
- Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy
- Studio: Showtime, Syfy
- Keyword: android, time travel, anthology, alien, mysterious force, genetic experiment, horror anthology, probe team
- Director: Leslie Stevens
- Cast: Kevin Conway
It was kind of all over the place wasn't it? It wasn't the best show out there, but it had it's moments and when those moments came it was far better than the X-Files. Unlike the Twilight Zone revivals that lost the moralistic bent, the 90s revival sort of brought it back in full swing and made it feel more like a Twilight Zone revival than an Outer Limits Revival, but let's be honest, the Outer Limits was kind of just a continuation under a different name with more of a lean towards science fiction. It also does a good job of staying within the genre of science fiction which is something that you scarcely see in shows post Alien when it started to meld into horror as well. So what you get is less X-Files and more pure Sci-Fi, which, by the 90s was refreshing. However the quality of the story telling was hit or miss. You can compare it to Tales From the Crypt, another Anthology from about the same time, or the Hitch Hiker, which were both solid for nearly every episode. The 90s revival of the Outer Limits wasn't as solid. You had some episodes that would blow your hair back, some that would entertain and nothing else, and those were about equal to the ones that just kind of fell flat. But, they didn't want to mix genres, they wanted to keep it more pure sci-fi, so it's hard to fault them for having so many misses in an Anthology series that tried so hard to stay true to the genre.