Rocks In Your Head

 Sixty two years ago today, "Corpus Earthling," the 9th episode of The Outer Limits, aired.

    This involved intelligent, parasitic extraterrestrial organisms that appeared to be mineral samples -- black rocks -- capable of changing their shape sufficiently to be able to move short distances, then meld into human beings and take them completely over. A pair of these aliens had been brought to the geology lab overseen by Dr. Jonas Temple (Barry Atwater) as as-yet-unclassified samples, and were deliberating on the most promising candidates to take over. What their exact aim was in this invasion - aside, presumably, from being able to inhabit much more mobile forms, with dexterous limbs - is never made clear.

    Dr. Paul Cameron (Culp) has come to the lab to gather up his wife, Laurie Cameron (Salome Jens), who is Dr. Temple's assistant. While he's waiting in the lab, he hears a pair of strange voices. An injury some time past had resulted in Paul having a metal plate installed in his head, and as a result it has enabled him to hear the telepathic conversation between the aliens. Paul innocently calls out, trying to find out who's speaking, which alerts the aliens. They begin speaking to him, calling him "The Listener" and are able to overpower his mind sufficiently to get him to almost commit suicide by stepping out the window. (The lab is several stories up.) The fortuitous return of his wife sees her calling out in alarm, breaking the telepathic control.

    Concerned at his behavior, and deciding he needs a long-overdue vacation as a rest cure, he and his wife

decide to go away on a sudden vacation to Mexico.

    The aliens are worried that Cameron, as someone who would be aware of their otherwise silent communications, poses a potential threat to their plans, and remain intent on killing him. To that end, one of them takes over Dr. Temple.

    We soon see that human bodies don't fare well as hosts for these mineral creatures, in a short time showing signs of aging and generally taking on corpse-like coloring.

    The alien-controlled Dr. Temple tracks the Camerons down in Mexico, but only finds Laurie there, as Paul went out on a supply run so that they would have food, drink, etc. there at the cabin they rented. A second alien, carried in Temple's pocket, is brought out and takes over Laurie. So disguised, when Paul returns from shopping he has to fend off attacks from Temple - who by this point looks like a walking corpse - and Laurie, already clearly being altered for the worse by her passenger - ultimately stabbing the first and shooting the second, actions that cause the creatures to abandon their human hosts. Temple is almost certainly dead, possibly only having been kept moving by the control of the creature, and certainly not helped by the stabbing. Laurie is limp, possibly dead, as Paul carries her away, having set fire to the cabin with the hope that it will destroy the two aliens.

   So, we're left with an incomplete tale, not knowing if Laurie has survived, if she has, if she retains memories of what happened, how many more aliens are present on Earth, and if the two aliens we've "met" have passed along knowledge of The Listener. It's easy to imagine that the body of Dr. Temple will be found in the charred ruins of the cabin, and that even without further influence by the aliens, that Paul Cameron would become the lead suspect in Temple's murder, and would likely at least find himself on the run from authorities who would have little choice but to lock him up as a dangerous lunatic if he tried to explain events to them.

    This was the second of three Outer Limts episodes starring Robert Culp. As this was an anthology series, each story was separate and distinct, so he played different characters in each. Reportedly this was Culp's least favorite of the three, and it's certainly the least famous. (Episode 3 "The Architects of Fear", had its main plot openly lifted as a key plot point in the 1980s comicbook limited series WATCHMEN, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, while season 2, episode 5, "Demon with a Glass Hand" was one of two episodes with scripts by Harlan Ellison.)

   This episode aired four days before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

   I've never read the novel this was adapted from: Corpus Earthling, by Louis Charbonneau (Zenith Books, 1960), but the synopsis I read presents it as if it's a Mary Sue work, plotted at the level of fan fiction: " In the novel, Paul is an unmarried university instructor with amorous desires for Laurie, one of his students. He is a latent telepath who has been compelled, on at least three occasions, toward suicide by an alien force that calls him "the listener". The invaders were brought to Earth with the first geological samples from Mars (the story is set post 1990). Dr Temple, who diagnoses Paul as schizophrenic after he reveals he hears voices, is the first to be possessed when he touches the alien rocks with his tongue. At the end, after killing the aliens, Paul finds a telepathic girlfriend."