The Outer Limits - Season 4 Episode 12 Fear Itself
Overview: For as long as he can remember, Bernard Selden (AYRE GROSS) has been haunted by a paralyzing fear. It started when he was six, when he set a fire that killed his four-year-old sister and today, at 27, the fear clings to him like a blanket. But, Dr. Adam Pike (Jeffrey Demunn) has hope for a cure. He has diagnosed Bernard's condition and believes that if he can isolate the part of the brain responsible for fear, the amyglada, he can cure him. The series of injections and radiation designed to build a layer of calcium around the amyglada produces stunning results; Bernard's fear recedes. He even starts a relationship with his neighbor Lisa (Tanya Allen). But there are side effects. Now, Bernard can use his brain to make others feel the kind of crippling fear he used to feel. He is still a prisoner of the past, haunted by images of Mr. Wilkes (Alex Diakun), the owner of the foster home where Bernard's sister died.
Comment
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.