User Reviews

This well-regarded episode of the influential 1960's science fiction series "The Outer Limits", written by Harlan Ellison, tells the story of a man who awakens to discover he is being pursued by alien beings and has no idea why. Robert Culp plays Trent, the mysterious amnesiac whose only aid and link to his past comes in the form of a mechanized hand grafted onto his wrist. The hand is missing 3 of it's fingers which are actually components of it's computerized brain. Trent must retrieve these missing pieces to make the hand fully functional so it can fill in the missing pieces of his memory.

Though the talking hand's exposition in the first ten minutes is a bit of a chore to follow, the episode really takes off when Trent encounters his alien pursuers in a towering office building.

Much of the episode's appeal can rightly be attributed to the casting of Robert Culp as the mysterious Trent. He exudes intelligence, humanity and not an ounce of hysteria, but rather a quiet desperation as he dodges attack after attack during his dangerous search for answers. A quest further complicated when he encounters Consuelo (Arlene Martel in an excellent, heartfelt performance), an office worker who's also trapped in the building. She becomes Trent's ally and soon, amidst all the excitement and suspense, an engaging little love story develops here, too.

There are aspects of the production that, for some anyway, might not hold up so well since it first aired in the 1960's. For example, the aliens are supposed to be on Earth passing themselves off as humans, but for some reason they look like they are wearing a lot of eye shadow with stockings pulled over their heads. Also, for an advanced alien race you'd think they'd have come armed with something more sophisticated than ordinary revolvers. A teleportation device just looks like a funhouse mirror, and the scoring is, at times, quite jarring thanks to the plinking of an overbearing piano. However, these shortcomings do not overshadow the considerable appeal of it's intriguing story, exciting action sequences and the high caliber of it's lead performances.

Also quite a fascinating character in it's own right is the glass hand. A glittering piece of art with printed circuitry exposed beneath it's transparent "skin", this is one of the coolest props ever designed for a science fiction show and Robert Culp himself supplies the voice of the computerized appendage.

What sets the great episodes of 'The Outer Limits' apart from the others? First, the use of dark and mood setting lighting (totally absent from episodes like 'Expanding Human'); second, the use of music that complements or emphasizes the tone of the story (absent from episodes like 'Behold, Eck!'); good acting and direction (missing from 'The Architects of Fear,' and many others) and most importantly, a story whose tension builds to a strong ending (there are too many episodes that fall apart at the end, such as the intriguing 'Cry of Silence,' and 'Cold Hands, Warm Heart,' with William Shatner, etc., etc.)

This episode has it all. The 'Gilgamesh' story is retold as a dark science fiction tale (kudos to Harlan Ellison!); a master stroke to use the downtown Los Angeles Bradbury Building, darkly lit and other worldly looking, as the primary set. You can see the 'old' Bradbury Building in the film noir classic 'D.O.A' (1950), and the 'new' building with an enlarged glass skylight roof built for 'Blade Runner'(1982) in 'Pay It Forward' (2000). The setting and lighting really add to the theme.

The music is strikingly different from almost any other episode. It is mostly a percussive piano, like the flat deadly snap of a gunshot, that hammers away the stark theme -- all humanity has died 200 years in the future and warring aliens have traveled back in time to kill Trent, who holds the secret to the disappearance of the 70 billion gone.

A tympani, organ, and a theremin like cello provide most of the musical accents. The borrowed 'One Step Beyond' theme doesn't horn in at key moments, but is just hinted at musically towards the end. Harry Lubin does a great job of blending stark music with stark theme. Knowing Harlan Ellison's habit of fitting specific music in his scripts, I wouldn't be surprised if he had had a hand in shaping how the score would sound. That may be why it's so different from any other episode's score.

For those who watched these episodes when they first were shown on TV, some are never forgotten. This is one. Although it seems like Robert Culp wears the same hairdo, stove pipe white pants and tennis shoes in all three of his 'Outer Limits' appearances, he does a good job here, probably due to the no nonsense direction of Byron Haskin. Culp was merely embarrassing spouting nursery rhymes in 'The Architects of Fear,' but was better in 'Corpus Earthling,' and here, since he's really a robot--oops! I shouldn't have told you! -- his acting is more effective.

Then there's the great story! The tension keeps building, and new discoveries and layers of meaning are literally added as missing fingers are attached to his computer hand. This is real science fiction content. New revelations and surprises are added up to the very end of the story. No weak ending here! The only weak point: how easily Trent can dispatch the 'invincible' aliens. But so what? This is not just an 'all action' episode, but a gradual unravelling of a terrifying future, and ultimately, Trent's present.

Although it's true that James Cameron publicly admitted to having used Harlan Ellsion's ideas from this episode and his other one 'Soldier,' in developing 'The Terminator,' the traveling backward in time to kill someone to change the future theme was already an old science fiction story plot from at least the nineteen thirties! In fact, 'The Outer Limits' episode 'The Man Who Was Never Born' is specifically about this very theme.

No matter what, you can enjoy this stand out episode as one of the very best of the entire series. I give it a 9.

***SPOILERS*** Finding himself back in 1964 in the what seems like the totally deserted Barbuary Building in L.A "Two Fingers" Trent, Robert Culp, is chased by a number of strange raccoon like looking aliens who want to not only kill him but get their hands his glass left hand. It's that hand when it has it's three other fingers, which the aliens have, attached to it will have all the knowledge of the universe. Including where the 70 billion human beings who survived a war, some 1,000 years in the future, between the human race and their Kybean invaders have hidden themselves!

Trent gets unexpected help from the cleaning woman in the near deserted building Consuelo, Arlene Martel, who has no choice but to help the two fingered guy in realizing that the fate of all humanity, which will be complete annihilated, is at stake if Trent is ever caught and killed by the Kybans! The Kybans lead by their leader Arch, Abraham Sofaer, go back and forth in time only by two's with the help of this "Time Mirror" that's in the building that Trent is commanded, by his glass hand, to destroy.

It's in the end after Trent's completes his mission and Consuelo falls in love with him the the truth about him and the mission he's been sent on as well as the missing 70 million human beings comes out! And it turns out to be a shock to he system to everyone involved! Trent Consuelo and all of us watching the movie!

***SPOILERS*** Interesting and well thought-out sci-fi episode from the "Outer Limits" written by Harilan Ellison which is considered to be one of the best of the series. Robert Culp as Trent the man from the future has no idea what he's, or those who sent him, have got in store for him. It's that very fact of Trent not knowing what his mission really is and even far far more important what he has to do with the missing 70 billion future human beings he would not have been able to carry it out. That's in Trent knowing that what he's to do, like risking his life, to save all of humanity really has nothing at all to do with him at all. It's that very fact of Trent not knowing exactly who and what he is that made him successfully complete his mission! A mission he would have failed in if he knew the truth about himself!

It's too bad I can't rate this any higher. Despite sequels rarely being as good as their predecessors, the second season of Outer Limits boasts some of the best and most classic episodes to ever come out of the show. For whatever reason, it seems like the ones starring Robert Culp are always impressive and manage to amaze audiences. He wasn't in that many (4 if I remember correctly), but these 4 are all excellent, with this one in particular being arguably the best of the entire series. What makes Demon With a Glass Hand special is multitudinous: its storyline and its setting. This is (I'm fairly certain) the only Outer Limits episode that is completely devoid of sunlight. Because it takes place at night, the dark visuals and high contrast of the shadows give it a film noir feel, and it can't be a coincidence that there is a female character in it that gets Culp into some trouble. Like always, I'll start by explaining the plot, which is the primary show stealer of this episode. The story begins with a man named Trent (Robert Culp) who is unable to remember anything about his life beyond a certain timeframe. One of his hands is a transparent computer that is able to communicate with him. However, three fingers are missing from the hand. Aside from hindering Trent's ability to grasp objects, the fingers actually store the hand's data, which basically means it can't tell him who he is until the fingers are returned. Some time later, Trent discovers he is being pursued by a race of aliens known as Kyben, and they're the ones safekeeping the fingers. As he wanders aimlessly around, Trent eventually stumbles upon Consuelo Biros, who works in the building Trent is lost in. After subduing a Kyben soldier, Trent learns just how confusing his predicament really is. The Kyben says that Trent is actually from the future, and the Kyben are from the future as well. In this alternate timeline, earth has been waging an interplanetary war with the Kyben, and the humans are losing. In a last ditch attempt to kill the invaders, the humans release a "radioactive plague", which proves so effective the Kyben are trying to find a cure. This is why they want to kill Trent, so they can access the supercomputer on his left hand. After battling Kyben soldiers throughout the building, Trent is barely able to return all the missing fingers to his hand. With its main power source replenished, the hand is now able to answer his question of where the remaining humans from the future are located. The hand tells Trent that he's not even a human being, but a robotic sentinel who must keep all of humanity safe in the coming centuries. Every single person alive on earth has been transcribed onto a metal coil, and the coil is in Trent's abdomen. After Consuelo learns the truth about what Trent is, she leaves him. He is now destined to spend over a thousand years alone, waiting for the day he will be called upon to bring humans back to earth. This episode is awesome. Throughout all the Outer Limits episodes, I have never seen nor heard of any quite like this one. It's not hard to see why it's often been singled out compared to its peers. It really is far above most of the others in terms of quality. The acting here is mostly great, but Robert Culp is the main character, so most will just pay attention to him instead of the Kyben or Consuelo. As Trent, he is a desperate, nervous man whose life hangs in the balance. Since he can't remember anything about his past, it makes sense he wouldn't be able to trust anybody. Robert is always a good actor, and this episode will always be his best performance to me. The setting of this episode is my second favorite thing about it. Taking place almost entirely in the famous Bradbury Building located in LA, the interior creates something of a contradiction. It is a very large building, but the corridors are still narrow. Even if Trent could remember things, getting lost in a building like that is excusable. Finally, there's also a slight amount of controversy associated with this episode. Due to its storyline being about people being sent into the past from the future with the intent of killing an important person, it has often been said that Terminator with Arnold Schwarzenegger is a ripoff of this. You can't deny the similar plots, but Harlan Ellison (the writer for this episode) said that Terminator didn't plagiarize Demon With a Glass Hand. Instead, it is almost a carbon copy of Soldier, another Outer Limits installment. Still, Ellison's name appears in the credits of the first Terminator movie. What it all comes down to is Demon With a Glass Hand is such an incredible display of television that it makes sense people would want to copy its storyline. How can you not like it? I'm just disappointed that the alleged full length movie based on this episode never came to anything. It was announced in 2014 and nothing has showed up since.

This ep is very heavily plotted for an hour ep. It tells the story of futuristic aliens called the Kyban and how they pursue a very strange man back to the 20th century. The man is named Trent. He only remembers existing for ten days. He meets a very beautiful and incredible 20th century lady named Consuelo. She helps him defeat the Kyban. The ep is based on literary work by famed scfi writer Harlan Ellison. Robert Culp is positively fine in the lead and he gets superior support from beautiful Arlene Martel playing Consuelo. The aliens are surly played by Steve Harris, Abraham Sofaer, and Rec Holman among others . A real and true winner of an epp.

This episode is legendary in the respect that so many find this to be the diamond in the rough. If set against the rest of Outer Limits Season 2, that could be a fair approximation. However, it doesn't quite make it when set against many of Season 1's episodes. There are logistic problems that prevent this. Gone are the geniuses that made Season 1 what it was. Gone is the clever imagination and ever so subtle nuance that propelled potential pretension, cliché, and mediocrity into something awesome and mysterious. I admit that I was ready to give up on Season 2 after the 4th confounding and benign episode during the original broadcast. I was 7 years old. So, it was with some apathy that I began to watch this issue. All Robert Culp had to do was narrate was that he was born 10 days prior, etc., that I surmised immediately he was some kind of android. The glass hand sort of clinched it. So, if being a robot of some kind was supposed to be a surprising revelation at the end of the episode, it wasn't for me. I continued to watch assuming that this would be incorporated into the plot somehow in a fancy way. Instead the writers started to try and downplay this 'tell' and made every attempt to cleanse my precognition by emphasizing his alleged humanness. As a result, I became more confused and really couldn't get around that glass hand. It was there and a significant part of the plot line, after all. Culp has no memories of anything prior to the previous 10 days, admits he hasn't slept in that time (most humans die after 4 days), and doesn't seem concerned that he has a glass hand or why. He talks to it, it talks back. Therefore, if he reveals himself to be a mechanical being at the conclusion of the episode as if that is supposed to be the 'big surprise' then I would suggest he'd be the only one who didn't already know this. Anyway, I digress. So, during my original viewing decades ago, as soon as his 'futuristic' pursuers are visually revealed, I chose to find something else to occupy my evening. White face, blacked eye sockets, a modified shower cap, an occasional nylon stocking pulled over the head and a piece of cheap costume jewelry are not what this 7 year old wanted to see as the 'monster' in an Outer Limits episode. Simply dreadful, tired and completely disappointing. I understand the budget issues surrounding OL episodes, yet, once again, the season 2 team seems to have no imagination - or it doesn't come across that they even tried to do something unusual with the makeup. (I did discover after finally watching all of the way through recently that you could tell which of the aliens was the boss because he had a small cape - >insert underwhelmed wow<) Arline Martell is on hand as....well, to provide assistance when needed (yank necklaces from aliens attacking Culp, resurrecting Culp from the semi-dead, and, of course, to fall in love with Culp). How much different this episode would have turned out of Martell wasn't part of the story. I suggest Culp would have lost and the 70 billion missing human beings would never see the light of day again. That's a huge number, isn't it? We have over 6 billion today and we suffer greatly from those things that over-population and bad government would promote. There's no telling what problems 70 billion people would have, but apparently these aliens trying to exterminate them all was their first and foremost task. Like I said, I finally was able to get through this recently. I have a feeling that the original story simply had to be better than this representation. I also hear that Ellison was very unhappy with the liberties taken with the final product. So, I won't blame him for the failure here to maximize the potential. Once again the blame rests solely on this season's production staff. The story is or could have been very worthwhile. Instead it is very mundane as it takes place almost entirely in some ornate old abandoned office building. The maze-like confined atmosphere tends to frustrate and grate on the nerves as they run from room to room and staircase to staircase. The fact that advanced futuristic aliens would be shooting revolvers is tremendously distracting and, again, unimaginative. I won't even mention how Culp's partially fingered gloved hand manages to act like it has all the fingers when convenient. Oops. too late. The bottomline for me is whether I felt 'awe and mystery'. Nope. Not quite. A let down. Then Culp is revealed to be exactly what I thought he was in the first 5 minutes of the episode. I won't reveal what happened to the 70 billion people. You might even be able to guess it on your own like I did. For me the best part is when Martell walks away from Culp after he is revealed to be a robot after all of her professed love of him. Thus, he is left alone. This combined with the rest manages to pull this episode into the 'not worthless' category. I would recommend it despite my apparent condemnation here. But it currently sports a 9 in IMDb. That's way too high - considering all things, IMO.

The premise of "Demon with a glass hand" is okay I guess, but after "Nightfall", "The puppet masters" and "Childhoods End", this is yet ANOTHER excellent example of how Hollywood writers or producers dumb down excellent work by good writers, making it look ridiculous. Only Philippe Dick's work gets better, when being made into film, which is so odd.

1000 years into the future the Earth has been conquered by the Kyban, an alien race. In order to save the 70 billion future human beings, a man called Trent has been send back to our present. However, he has been followed by the Kyban, who want to kill him and then use the 70 billion for their own evil purposes.

A really bad thing about this episode is the clumsy ways the viewer learns about what's going on. Trent meets various Kyban agents who easily give up all sorts of information to their sworn enemy. ??? Why ever would they do all that? It's stupid. I don't mind so much that they come from the future and still use non-automatic hand guns, Colt 45's I guess, but this isn't explained via the usual "advanced future weapons can't travel back in time", which is also stupid. The Kyban can be easily overcome by ripping their time medallion from their necks, which either sends them back to the future (but they never use that phrase... ) or kills them, or both, it's never made clear. Trent meets a woman, who is stitched together of gender role confirming clichés. She, as a woman is very much anti-violence because ....drum roll ... her husband was a wife beater! Like the stereo typical subservient woman of that era, she makes excuses for him and doesn't blame him for his violence. But her anti-violence leads her to yelling "Don't kill him" to Trent, which makes him loose control of another (yet again, ridiculously easily captured) Kyban agent who then escapes. Trent, also stupid, never tells her the obvious things, like "help me or they will kill you and a lot of others too" (He doesn't have to say "70 billion") which would motivate her to help him, and while he does prove to her that he's truthful by ripping off their medallion to make them disappear into thin air, (again, a very obvious thing to do) he's slow and convoluted in doing so.

Yet another very cliché thing about her is that she says that she falls in love with him, outright, rather than demonstrating by kissing him or deep looks. He, being a manly mister man, of course refuses her. No time for silly emotions! The only not-so cliché thing about her is her Latina heritage.

In his conversation with the glass hand, Trent stupidly asks it where the third part of its brain is, after it has already been explained that it is with Bonn, a Kyban who is coming from the the future.

In order to win, Trent has to destroy the Kyban time machine, which is somewhere in the building. But the Kyban agents are shouting loudly through the building where they are going, this is also stupid.