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Out of the Unknown

1965 · TV series · 50 min episodes · 4 seasons

Created by Irene Shubik

Science FictionFantasyDrama

Out of the Unknown is a British television science fiction anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and broadcast on BBC2 in four series between 1965 and 1971. Each episode was a dramatisation of a science fiction short story; some were created for the series, but most were adaptations of already published stories. The first three years were exclusively science fiction, but that genre was abandoned in the final year in favour of horror and fantasy. A number of episodes were wiped during the early 1970s, as was standard procedure at the time.

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3 comments on Hacker News

  1. Positiverapjr9Sep 10, 2024

    For another glimpse at the feared future of mass production and consumption watch the "Out of the Unknown" series 1 episode "The Midas Plague" from 1965:

    https://archive.org/details/come-buttercup-come-daisy

    It's episode 12 in the zip file. A lot of the stories for the series came from well known science fiction writers of the time. All four years of the series are on the Internet Archive. The Midas Plague is a comedy, some of the other episodes are truly frightening.

  2. Neutralndsipa_pomuDec 29, 2022

    The TV series of Logan's Run and Planet of the Apes are reasonably obscure because they weren't too popular (I've got hold of both them, by the way).

    Some other titles to pique your interest:

    1981 BBC version of The Day of the Triffids

    1979 Tales of the Unexpected (not scifi really)

    1979 Sapphire & Steel (with the most annoying introduction - they are not elements!)

    1979 Quatermass series

    1979 The Omega Factor

    1978 Blake's 7 (should not really count as obscure due to the impact the series had)

    1977 The Fantastic Journey

    1977 Children of the Stones

    1977 Beasts (anthology series by Nigel Kneale)

    1975 Sky

    1975 The Invisible Man (really cheesy, featuring David McCallum)

    1975 The Changes

    1974 Zodiac

    1973 The Tomorrow People

    1970 Timeslip

    1969 The Owl Service

    1968 The Champions

    1966 The Time Tunnel

    1966 Mission: Impossible

    1965 Out of the Unknown

    1960 The Strange World of Gurney Slade

    1958 Quatermass and the Pit mini-series

    1955 Quatermass II

  3. Neutral8bitsruleAug 13, 2021

    The Beeb made the story into an episode of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_the_Unknown] aired on Oct 6, 1966. Was once online somewhere (having no luck today.)

    Every time I hear of Machine Stops, I think of Bradbury story "There Will Come Soft Rains" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Will_Come_Soft_Rains_(short_story)] For me both of these fellas capture something of the H.G. Wells atmosphere, tinged with sadness.