Directed by Byron Haskin; written by Joseph Stefano. Cast: Sam Wanamaker (Dr. Simon Holm); Phyllis Love (Andrea Holm); David Opatoshu (Ralph Cashman); Joyce Van Patten (Rhea Cashman); Ben Wright/Robert Justman (The Authority); Glenn Cannon (Teenager). Broadcast April 13, 1964. Story: The inhabitants of a six-block suburban area awaken one Sunday on the planet Luminos. They discover that if they survive the humid, viral climate, the immobile Luminoids will abduct Earth's remaining population for enslavement. Are the human test subjects up to the challenge of making this plan infeasible?
"So, what's the catastrophe this morning?"
So goes the opening line in "A Feasibility Study," the first of Joseph Stefano's Outer Limits screenplays to see production. It's a fitting introduction to the style he was to employ during his tenure as the show's producer and primary author. By posing a disarmingly simple question with unexpectedly disturbing implications, Stefano makes it clear that his creative concerns lay less with scientific riddles and clever social parables than with the ongoing struggle between a fractured, divisive human race and an impeccably organized, (mostly) alien evil. What is the catastrophe of the day? For Joseph Stefano, the only possible answer to this provocative and potent question—if not to the catastrophe itself—lay squarely in The Outer Limits.
For all this, "A Feasibility Study" is a bit of a rough start for Stefano as television writer. Like all memorable works of cinema, The Outer Limits lived and died by its writing, and it's undeniable that the show was fortunate to have as daring and visionary a talent as Stefano as its primary architect. Still, the pressures of a weekly broadcast schedule ensured that even his reach sometimes exceeded his grasp. While his characteristic, seemingly paradoxical mix of charitable humanism and knowing cynicism helped to make the series what it was, Stefano was occasionally unable to find the right balance between the two extremes. On those occasions, his cynicism was as likely to become embittered and overwhelming (as in "The Bellero Shield") as his humanism was to slip into easy sentimentality. The latter is certainly true of "Feasibility," in which a dense melange of lofty ideas never quite manages to gel into a cohesive whole. Nevertheless, the episode remains interesting and powerful, and succeeds virtually on the strength of its author's convictions; as with many of The Outer Limits' more problematic episodes, "Feasibility" proves that it at least has something to reach for.
What gives the episode its lingering power is Stefano's convincing portrayal of a human society incapacitated by its inability to find a collective purpose. Each of the characters in "Feasibility" is narrowly devoted to principles that serve only to isolate them from one another: for Simon, it's his unquestioning and unyielding religious faith, while Andrea adheres to a naïve idealism that is too untried to be genuine activism; Ralph Cashman appears only to live for his work, to which he dutifully marches even on a dreary Sunday morning. Even Rhea, Ralph's aimless wife, seems blindly 
focused on her role as homemaker and (routinely abandoned) wife. In this sense it's significant that Simon and Andrea's marriage (which she defines as "the beginning of [her] mental and spiritual deterioration") has eroded into separation on the very day of Midgard Drive's abduction—its separation from Earth. It's clear that the desperate individualism on display leads only to a permanent, dissatisfied isolation from which there is little chance of return.
This leaves the Midgardians ripe for exploitation by the sterile Luminoids, who embody the emptiness the earthlings so perilously court. Luminos is an apt metaphorical representation of a world without purpose: its stagnate, austere landscape is listlessly dominated by creatures who revel only in pure, bullying intellect (a Stefano theme also on display in "The Guests" and "Don't Open Till Doomsday"), yet who are wholly incapacitated by their social malaise. The Luminoids have become as physically immobile as their human captives are emotionally rigid, and are as indistinct as their hostile surroundings. While the Midgardians at least seek fulfillment on an emotional plane, however haphazardly and tenuously, the Luminoids can only aim for the insidious and vicarious satisfaction of slavery and oppression.
To achieve this, they use their captives' traits and habits against them: by restricting only their physical freedom and allowing them to "marry, worship and think" as they had on Earth, the Luminoids present an undeniably attractive offer to the Midgardians—and, presumably, to the human species at large. For such enslavement solidifies (quite literally) the individualistic isolationism displayed by Simon, Andrea, Ralph and Rhea, and makes it not only a viable option but a virtual necessity. Rebellion is averted by the humans' overwhelming fear of "contamination"—not only from the Luminoids' sluggish contagion, but also from the intensity of their own long-suppressed solidarity. And yet, Stefano asks, what is contamination if not a kind of solidarity itself? Under the circumstances the two seem inextricably linked, and infection provides the human subjects with a commonalty they can finally appreciate, if not understand. Cashman and Andrea, both afflicted with the Luminoid virus, offer the Midgardians deliverance from their dual enslavement, and for Stefano the certainty of lingering death matters less than the humans' willingness to accept their fate collectively and with collective dignity.
Routinely interpreted as The Outer Limits' take on religion, "A Feasibility Study" actually skirts the spiritual questions raised by Simon's faith rather early on. Simon Holm may be the only openly religious character to grace a first-season episode, but his ill-defined faith is more refuge than comfort. The church that figures so prominently in his life, and in the episode's climax, exists largely as a reminder of the hollowness of human values that serve only the individual, and as such is little different from the elusive office Ralph Cashman is bound for as the film opens. Only in the end does the church take on any symbolic significance, and only through the admittedly desperate sacrifice of the Midgardians. While the implication may be that only collective values can make human institutions like religion, work and activism ring true, there's a characteristically ambiguous catch: the Luminoids are the embodiment of the solipsistic philosophical narrowness the episode cautions against, but they also inhabit an efficient society that's based on undeniably collective principles, however bankrupt. As so often in The Outer Limits, the choice that offers salvation also threatens damnation.
Despite the undeniable force of Stefano's story, "Feasibility" simply takes on too many issues to be entirely successful. The Luminoids' enslavement of the humans is echoed on a personal scale by the stifling nature of Simon's conventional expectations of Andrea. Yet this theme is taken nowhere beyond a few trite arguments, and is responsible for what has to be the worst line Stefano wrote for the series: "Marriage has become insignificant in this big, troubled world of ours. Maybe that's why the world's in such big trouble." Oh. While the episode makes much of the waning power of marriage as a unifying force, Stefano and The Outer Limits both explored these themes more frankly elsewhere ("The Bellero Shield" and Meyer Dolinsky's flawed "ZZZZZ," for instance). Even more egregious is the theme of human choice introduced near the film's climax. It feels perfunctory and tacked on, and nothing in the first 40 minutes of the episode (with the possible exception of Andrea's decision to leave her husband) warrants Simon's self-righteous and ill-timed speech on the value of choice as he leaves for the church. This curiously unfelt thematic detour is more intellectually interesting than emotionally engaging, and it detracts from the episode's poignant power.
Stefano's characterizations are unusually weak in "Feasibility" (though perhaps not for a writer unused to the medium), and, with a single exception, the lead performances do little to make up for it. Sam Wanamaker, a likeable actor long blacklisted in Hollywood and perhaps more accustomed to working on the British stage, is unconvincing as the emotionally inflexible Simon. The actor's particular brand of stiffness doesn't lend itself to a character whose ideals are crumbling around him, and his Simon seems unsympathetic in the face of an overwhelming tragedy. While such complexities of character are hardly rare in
The Outer Limits, here it feels like a misfire: instead of being incensed and distraught, Wanamaker's Simon seems merely huffy. (In the actor's defense, however, it must be said that Stefano gives him more than his share of unwieldy diatribes, and the burden is very much on Wanamaker to clumsily verbalize the episode's many themes.) 
David Opatoshu's Ralph Cashman is perplexingly buoyant for the first half of the film, as though the actor were expecting something more lighthearted; his distracted performance adds yet another discordant note to the ensemble. Still, it's uncomfortable to see such a usually fine character actor reduced to shuffling and bellowing by the episode's climax, and Opatoshu's confusion in the role is mitigated. Joyce Van Patten never advances beyond a stock, sitcom-esque shrillness.
Phyllis Love, on the other hand, manages to overcome her professional shortcomings and give Andrea Holm genuine conviction and passion. Andrea is as warm as Simon is unapproachable, and Love, though not a subtle performer, makes us believe that she is utterly engaged in her values in a way that he could never be (though her ideals prove to be as limited as his). Andrea is one of the series' most progressive and admirable female characters, and Phyllis Love's committed portrayal makes her all the more so.
Perhaps it's unfair to single out problematic writing and acting as the source of the episode's problems, when a stronger director might have made the most of them. Byron Haskin proves himself a peerless technical director and mood-setter here, and he plays up the horror aspects of Luminos quite effectively. From the sickly, not-quite-daylight pall of the Midgard Drive scenes to the steady, unsettling hum on the soundtrack (more likely the work of series sound effects coordinator John Elizalde), Haskin imbues the film with an odd, indefinably "off" feel that is appropriate to the alien setting—most Outer Limits episodes, after all, were pointedly earthbound. Simon's initial venture past the Luminoid barrier is a particularly effective set piece, and Haskin manages to make it a genuinely frightening sequence. Yet his indifference to the performances and the gravity of the story hinder the episode, and gives credence to Robert Culp's assertion (in issue 63-64 of Filmfax magazine) that Haskin was a director who "had no idea how to talk to actors." Pity.
And yet "A Feasibility Study" works on its own terms, and remains an unforgettable if flawed episode—so much so that the makers of cable station Showtime's pallid "new" Outer Limits remade it for their 1997 season, with expectedly mixed results. It's a valuable lesson we learn from the human captives on Luminos, and through them Joseph Stefano teaches us something about commitment, solidarity, and their attendant catastrophes—daily and otherwise.
—MH
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