Tone broods while Andre is connected to his time tilter. Is Andre alive or dead in this scene? It depends which version you're watching.
Cassia, Colas and Tone attend to a resting Leonora in this publicity still.
Note: This episode exists in two versions. One is the Outer Limits episode; the other is the unsold pilot for The Unknown, a suspense anthology that ABC commissioned from Joseph Stefano but ultimately rejected. The two versions are identical before their plots diverge about halfway through the story.
After two desperate women (Vera Miles, Barbara Rush) kill the playboy who's blackmailing them (Scott Marlowe), they come across the home of an inventor (David McCallum) whose "time tilter" can bring people back from the dead.
The Tropes of Things Unknown:
- Artistic License – Physics: How could a contraption made of strings hooked up to a bunch of mechanical clocks possibly control time itself, even if the strings are made of "rare magnetic wire"? Your guess is as good as ours. It sure looks nifty though, in a Clock Punk sort of way.
- Asshole Victim: Andre is an amoral, arrogant, narcissistic, sadistic blackmailer whose (attempted) murder drives the story.
- Blackmail: Andre is planning to extort a large amount of money from Leonora's father. Cassia was involved in the scheme, but soured on the idea and came up with the idea of poisoning Andre.
- Clock Punk: Pretty literally in this case, as the time tilter is literally made of clocks.
- Creepy Good: Tone is generally a good guy — he wants to bring people's loved ones back to life with his invention — but he is very creepy.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Hinted at with Tone. His mother died when he was a child, which drove him to devote his life to find a way to resurrect the dead.
- Didn't Think This Through: Evidently, Tone never considered that his time tilter could be used to bring back an evil person until it actually happened.
- Drives Like Crazy: The opening scene has Andre recklessly speeding through the French countryside in his Rolls-Royce while Cassia lights his cigarette. This is heavy Foreshadowing, as Andre dies by crashing his car at the end.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Tone when he realizes he resurrected an evil, amoral blackmailer.
- Poorly Disguised Pilot: Not so poorly disguised, actually, but: there were two slightly different versions made of "The Forms of Things Unknown." One was intended as a pilot for The Unknown, a straight suspense anthology that wasn't picked up. The Point of Divergence: In "Forms", the "Time Tilter" actually works, while in The Unknown it doesn't, and the inventor is delusional.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: A brief one.Tone (to Andre): I imagine Hell will be glad to take you back. You're one of its own!
