Thanks, Peter. I also looked it up in the OT Companion last night (excellent book, BTW) and he wrote a good bit about the building, almost too much - now I'll never be able to watch the episode without thinking about the crew returning from lunch at a beanery and gassing up the building!
Russell, there are no floating brains (except mine!) in season 1. I haven't watched most of season 2 yet.
In a manner of typing, there is a "floating brain" in the 2nd season story "The Brain of Colonel Barham". It floats in the chemical fluid that keeps it alive as part of a botched military experiment by human scientists. That's regarded as one of the worst episodes of the original series. I agree.
Huh, no floating Brain Aliens. I'm pretty sure I'm not imagining seeing this, I guess it's just not in this series.
I have 2 nightmare images from TV as a child:
Floating brain aliens from a b/w movie / tv show
A hand that had a bunch of eyes on the palm, similar to what was on the original paperback "Night Shift" book cover from Steven King. I remember seeing this in color on TV and for some reason it haunted my nightmares as a child.
I guess my search will go on! Thanks for the advice on thse OT sets!
Im glad I wasn't the only person with this problem. Got both sets from Amazon. Had to exchange both sets because my player (Denon 2200) wouldn't read some of the discs. When I got the new sets, same problem. So I just got a refund. Hopefully at some point I'll pick up the sets again and won't have any problems.
The only thing that comes close to more then the one floating brain of Colonel Barham in my mind are the 3 brains from Star Trek's Gamesters of Triskelion. But that was in color, there were 3 brains and they were attached to posts.
I thought of the ST episode, too. How about The Guests from season 1? There is a big brain where the house should be in the long shot, and there's a brain in the room upstairs. Maybe that's what Russell's remembering. Russell, you must buy both sets, watch all 49 episodes immediately, and report back!
Got a shop here in Macon, Ga. called MovieStop (owned by the GameStop people)and I found the first season set used for $19.99. Great value for all that content. I am like a kind in a candy store, haven't seen some of these stories since TNT played the Saturday late-night marathons 10-15 years ago.
Maybe you can check if you have a MovieStop, great buys on used material - comes with full guarantee also.
TNT was rerunning The Outer Limits on weekday afternoons as recently as 2002-2003. The Sci-Fi Channel picked up the rights to air the old series since then.
I also recently picked up seasons 1 and 2 during the DDD sale. After seeing this thread, I opened up season 2 and sure enough, discovered that side A of disk 2 won't play on either of my two players. Crap! Looks like another return for exchange to DDD.
Of course, since this appears to be something of a widespread problem with these sets, I wonder if MGM has (or had considering how old this release is) some kind of replacement exchange program in place. I cannot imagine that we few on this forum got the only bad copies.
Anyway, thanks to Doug Otte for posting the heads-up on this. I would never have gotten around to finding out about the defect before the exchange period was up otherwise.
I bought both OL box sets during the DDD sale and am happily reliving memories from S1. The warning about S2 DVD problems worries me, since I also have a Denon player. Was it a particular episode that hangs or are you unable to load the title menu for side A?
The problem with my Season 2 set was Disc 2, Side A. Disc would not load at all on my Denon 2200 & when attempted playback on the backup player(Denon 1200) disc would load, but playback was bad from pixelation to player locking up.
The one thing I failed to do was see what date the VOB files where to see if they where older pressings or newer pressings.
I noticed the lack of security stickers on my season two set as well. You may be on to something there, Bernie.
Also, I should have mentioned, my players are a Panasonic and a Sony, so the problem is not exclusive to Denon players. I can't even get the load screen to come up on either player when I insert the disk - it just spins and spins, probably searching for the entry screen pickup. And the players are very slow to open after I press eject. So there is no doubt something very screwed up about the way the data is recorded on the disk (ie - it's not a transient problem).
I'm mailing the set back to DDD tomorrow, although I wonder how many defective sets there are out there, and whether it will even be worth the trouble to exchange it if I'm just going to end up with another bad set.
We may find that we have to resort to contacting MGM directly. Hopefully, if someone actually gets a working set upon exchange, they can report back to let us know if any good ones exist.
I noticed that side A of all 3 discs looks copper-colored, but side B looks silver. I don't know if that affects anything. On season 1, both sides of all discs appear silver.
I had the same symptoms as Roy, but side A on both discs 1 and 2 are unplayable on my Sony 755 and newer Pioneer 59AVi. What's strange is, everything plays fine on my old Toshiba (2900?), but I'm not going to sacrifice being able to play them on my main machine (Pio). Both sides of disc 3 are fine in all players. Mine's in the mail back to DDD today. I'll try one more copy, then exchange it for something else if that one is bad.
I had written an e-mail to MGM last week right after I discovered it, but they ignored me. I'll try calling them before sending back the 2nd set if it's bad as well.
I received the replacement from DDD yesterday. I popped in disc 1. Both sides worked! I was getting excited.
I popped in disc 2 - oops. Still no good.
At least I'm getting closer. On the first set, side A of discs 1 and 2 didn't work. This time, only side A of disc 2 didn't work. On that side of the disc, I can see slight discoloration in blobs and along the grooves. It's under the clear coating, so it's a manufacturing error.
Maybe I'm stupid (no responses necessary!), but I'm going to try one more time.
Also, MGM responded to my e-mail after about 2 weeks saying they weren't aware of a problem w/ the set & to exchange it w/ the retailer.