The sixth episode of the Twilight Zone’s second season has a research team encounter an intelligent sea creature that endangers more than just their lives.
This episode of The Twilight Zone takes viewers to the bottom of the world, at an undersea research facility jointly run by the United States, Canada, and China. Dr. Orson Rudd, a family man and the chief scientist, unveils in an audio log that they are conducting experiments on the ice, and looking for new species.
This multilingual operation utilizes smartphones and specialized translating headsets to communicate. That’s practical, but watching characters communicate this way gets very tiresome, and will have subscribers wondering why they didn’t just use subtitles. It also turns out that Rudd is having a secret affair with Channing, another scientist. It doesn’t serve much purpose overall, but it’s here.
Outside the facility, at the diving tent, a mysterious creature kills both of the diver and his spotter, leaving behind a lot of blood. The creature climbs out of the water and hides in a container. When the others arrive, they find an an octopus inside. Instead of killing it, they take it to the lab with the other new species they’ve discovered.
“8” — Pictured: Michelle Ang as Ling of the CBS All Access series THE TWILIGHT ZONE. Photo Cr: Robert Falconer/CBS 2020 CBS Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
They find the body of the diver and determine the octopus killed him. When they go to kill it, the surprisingly smart sea creature squirts water at the lights, damaging them. Rudd puts a character named Tommy in charge of watching it and goes to tell Channing that this the creature is the find they’ve been looking for; it could revolutionize pain management, anesthesia, and more. But Ling, a Chinese member of the team, hears them through the translator app on Channing’s phone, which he left in the lab.
Meanwhile, the octopus escapes its container and kills Tommy using its tentacles and cloaking ability. Then it goes to Ling’s room and steals Channing’s phone, which is connected to the computers on the ship.
The creature taps into the phone and reveals the intentions of the Chinese: they want to use the creature’s DNA to enhance humans so they can live on both land and in the water, controlling both. But the creature reengineers their sequence making it so members of its species can travel on land and become the dominant species. It then attacks Channing, and escapes when Rudd cuts off its tentacle. It begins to reengineer its genetic makeup to fit the new sequence to become the superior being, leaving us with the impression that humanity’s dominance of the planet has come to an end.
“8” — Pictured: Nadia Hilker as Channing of the CBS All Access series THE TWILIGHT ZONE. Photo Cr: Robert Falconer/CBS 2020 CBS Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This episode feels like the movie Alien but underwater with a lot more nerdy exposition and off-putting pacing. I’m not sure if it’s the unusual 30-minute runtime, but it’s hard to focus on the suspense when you’re constantly water-logged with exposition-heavy data dumps. At times it felt like a lecture more than a suspenseful trip into The Twilight Zone.
The visuals were very impressive, from the costumes to the set design of the facility all the way to the evil octopus. The scene where the creature ripped out the guy’s eye let us know just how dangerous it could be. This is no seafood dish waiting to happen; the episode sold the idea that humans may no longer be at the top of the food chain.
Some of the excessive dialogue and backstory could have been trimmed, and almost all of the character motivations feel as generic as they do forced. The only real character development we get is for the octopus. All the humans might as well be red shirts because no matter what they do, they all feel expendable. I honestly couldn’t remember anyone’s name by the end.
The twist double-whammy was the best part. Not only do we learn that the octopus has used the human’s plan against them, but also the brilliant reveal that this story was really about the eight-legged alpha the whole time.
Episode Grade: B-
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