Directed by Leonard Horn; written by Anthony Lawrence. Cast: Kent Smith (Aabel); Lee Kinsolving (Ethan Wechsler); John Milford (John Bartlett); Crahan Denton (Sheriff Stakefield); Bennye Gatteys (Anna Bishop); Dabbs Greer (Bishop); William O. Douglas, Jr. (Erosian Aabel). Broadcast February 17, 1964. Story: An envoy from planet Eros attempts to gather the human harvest of his species' desperate seed, only to be thwarted by the very ideals he extols—and by his rebellious, half-human son.
Anthony Lawrence could be described as Joe Stefano's ideological kin: as writers, they overlap in obsessions, with a similar mix of faith and gloom and a richly poetic sense of not only language, but of situation and behavior. Lawrence, with "The Man Who Was Never Born" (perhaps, ultimately,
The Outer Limits most achingly graceful hour) and this episode, fit the series in an almost preternatural way. Like others associated with the show—throughout its run, or contributing to only one or two episodes—it was Lawrence's best work; while "Spider County" may not reach the well-documented heights of "The Man Who Was Never Born", it remains a delicately stated and effecting examination of the contradictions of ideals, and of generational impasse. Smith's Aabel (ostensibly alien, but intentionally evocative of an aged, static, unmistakably human power elite) can only flounder when his cherished notions of increased vitality prove anathema to an unacknowledged, entrenched aggression. The "dogs and desperation" he so readily attributes to Earth's inhabitants plague Eros as well, and drive the doomed experiment he impassively un-creates at story's end. Repopulating his unfeeling planet with kidnapped hybrids is a bust: the subjects are too human to comply; the qualities they were bred for are the qualities which, when expressed as defiance, guarantee Eros' demise. Sound familiar? Welcome to Earth, welcome to 1960s America.
Father-child relationships are in the foreground of "Spider County", both personally detailed (Aabel and Ethan, the Bishops) and socio-culturally weighted: the parallels to Earth's then-burgeoning generation gap, when the values of youth and adulthood began to rend drastically, underpin this drama. As mentioned, the insectosoid denizens of Eros (evoked, too obviously, by the generally satisfying bug mask of Aabel's true visage) are philosophically similar to Earth's old guard—more interestingly evoked by the disparate images of Aabel's disguise as an older white man in a business suit, and Greer's Bishop, the irascible sodbuster. The inability to dream is not the provence of either race alone; rather, it's a negative symptom of hardline formalism, of age without wisdom, and—a Lawrence/Stefano precept—of science without heart. Add parentage minus presence: Ethan's frustrating experience of a fatherless childhood is movingly underplayed by Kinsolving, an overly earnest but not insufferable James Dean stand-in. The common conception of television and movies only recently "discovering" the damage of absentee fatherhood is disproved by Lawrence's prescient teleplay; further, Greer's crusty, unlikable Bishop represents another common form of dad-lessness, that of the conformist, homegrown tyrant firmly cemented at an emotional distance. Both deficient fathers are symbolic, personifying power structures (Earth's and Eros') based in unexamined tenets of blind loyalty and repressive arrogance. Both are usurped—Bishop by his reactive, gun-toting bravado, Aabel due to his projection and lack of insight. A bully and a bug, dreamless and bound for uncreation.
There is light here (which necessarily failed in the appropriately painful climax of "The Man Who Was Never Born"), manifested by an unlikely candidate: Agent Bartlett, played with compassionate gusto by the 
talented Milford. That a government tool comes to Ethan's aid (and ultimately becomes fatherly) could have undermined the anti-authoritarian stance of "Spider County", but Lawrence, Horn, and Stefano utilize one of this anthology series few recurrent entities to marvelous effect: the United Space Agency, in various forms (and sometimes
slightly differently named), through many agents, scientists, and physicians—and at least one psychiatrist, lovesick Dr. Evan Marshall from "The Mutant"—remarkably recurred throughout both seasons of
The Outer Limits. Watch for this thread, it's commonly well-used, and with surprising regularity; it's not an unlikely precursor to
The X-Files. Bartlett is pure U.S.A. (a suggestive acronym), simultaneously procedural and unconventional, totally driven but with a warmth, flexibility, and scientific curiosity that the era's genuine Hoover spooks would have shot to kill.
The structural and technical aspects of "Spider County" reflect a practiced collaborative effort. Lawrence and Horn work well together; the story's dramatic push keeps pace with the series' best entries, as instances of primary action are balanced with talkier scenes. And if any episode could be deemed ideal for the sensibilities of cinematographer Kenneth Peach (unavoidably, The Outer Limits weakest photographer), this is it: the near-pastel grays characteristic of Peach's work somehow enhance the three key settings—jail, barn, and forest. Each takes on a signature feel (the shadow play in the jail is especially emblematic) that was likely informed by Horn and series art director Jack Poplin, in addition to Peach. Though "Spider County" is inexorably a case of theme over execution—as many episodes were, especially later in the first season, and entirely in the best of the second season—the execution is laudable, and casting Kent Smith (his second and final episode) is plainly additive. He conveys the unenlightened authority of Aabel without detracting from the sympathy his plight arouses; Smith is an old pro, fondly remembered as the obsessed male lead in Jacques Tourneur and Val Lewton's Cat People (1942). Here, he's not quite matched, but never embarassed, by his co-stars. Kinsolving, as mentioned, does well with a circumscribed part: teen angst, in any era, can smack of self-pity; remember him in the riotously bad Twilight Zone episode "Black Leather Jackets"? Of the remaining actors, only Milford and Greer stand out: Milford conveys a maturity lacking in the other characters (even Ethan, our identifier), and Greer, in his first of two notable episodes, plays Bishop with a blundering hayseed menace that contradicts his best known role, the sanctimonious Reverend Alden in the diabetes-inducing Little House on the Prairie. Greer is a film and TV veteran, and chronically misused—he's good at being bad, as he proved again in "The Inheritors" from The Outer Limits' second season.
The best scene featuring Aabel in his actual form (played by Douglas, a frequent Outer Limits actor in and out of alien masks, and somewhat amazingly, the son of the late supreme court justice) is senselessly used as the teaser, minimizing the impact of the scene in the story proper. Regardless, it's powerful, both technically (Peach's camera set-up in the overturned police car is astonishing) and contextually, as Aabel's careless violence erupts in the presence of his son, imprisoned for a crime he didn't, and wouldn't, commit—murder. Aabel is all too ready to kill for his selfish cause, and to enlist the aid of his own progeny. This is Lawrence's generational division at its maddest extreme; this is the cause and method of Eros—any resemblance to America in the 1960s, the Vietnam era, seems purely intentional. "Spider County" remains a firm, keenly subversive interlude.
—DCH
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