Cold Hands, Warm Heart

Colonel Jeff Barton (William Shatner) is an astronaut who orbited around Venus and has returned. He has become a celebrity and is also promoted to a General.

The next mission is to land in Mars and Barton will head Project Vulcan.

However his wife Ann (Geraldine Brooks) notices something strange. Jeff drinks a cup of coffee that is piping hot. He then feels cold all the time, turning up the heating really high.

Later his hands become webbed and he has nightmares of a Venusian creature.

Shatner and Brooks are great. The story though is not so great. Barton has been affected by something in the Venusian atmosphere but the space medics seem to be unbothered until it is too late. You would think he would had been monitored more by them.

The ending seemed to be unnecessary pat.

After being in space, Shatner needs warming up all the time.

Shatner and Brooks are two favourites of mine, to me Brooks is best known for a colour episode of QM's The Fugitive titled: The Ivy Maze! Shatner seemed to be warming up for Captain Kirk in Star Trek. I think I can forget some issues with this episode simply because the two leads are so known and liked by me.

The story is not all together bad as well. But having said all this, I can say this episode required repeat viewings before I became a fan.

It really is amazing how many Star Trek cross overs there are in The Outer Limits, I wonder if these cross overs are all known by the "Trekkers"?

First, to clear up a misunderstanding by several reviewers. Venus is usually closer to Earth than Mars, but not always. Sometimes Mars is closer because planets orbit the Sun out of sync with each other. So, William Shatner telling the reporters that Venus is closest to Earth is usually correct.

For the time, especially for a low-budget TV series, the effects are not bad, actually better, in general, than I expected.

SPOILER: Making the ship's leading edges glow when it entered Venus' atmosphere and Shatner scratching his hands before they visually changed were nice, unexpected touches.

The resolution was a little bit of a let down. I've often wondered how many of these older show's story line was written to be in line with the Television Code? Personally I hope for an unexpected twist at the end of these type of shows.

Regardless, not the best episode, but not as bad as many of the reviewers rate it. And, I did enjoy the mentions of "Project Vulcan".

I'm only writing this review to give a little education, in response to mikesinclair. At their closest, Venus and Earth are 38 million kilometers away. Meanwhile, Earth and Mars come only 56 million kilometers apart.

As far as this episode, I found it a delight. We love watching the older episodes of The Outer Limits on the Comet channel, and seeing a young William Shatner was a treat.

I haven't watched an awful lot of episodes of the original The Outer Limits show(and hardly any of the newer, mid-nineties one), but I have to believe that this is among the worst. Let's get one thing out of the way right off the bat; Shatner is not responsible for the negative of this. He is charming as usual. Say what you will about his pause-acting and how he does fake pain... well, it's probably true. Nevertheless, he's one of the best things in this. I suppose the rest of the performances are reasonable enough, although I find the wife rather irritating. The characters are decent enough, if they could use more development. Dialog as well as the rest of the writing is varied. The real issue here is how tedious and boring the story is, especially in its *slow* progression. Also, for a potentially interesting science fiction concept, this isn't all that compelling. Finally, the effects are underwhelming, to put it mildly. Even for the time and what may not have been a huge budget, they're unimpressive. The editing and cinematography being average add to how uninspired and phoned in this feels. I recommend this solely to the biggest fans of Captain Kirk. 5/10