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Context Recap / TheOuterLimits1963S1E28TheSpecialOne

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1[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/outer_limits_the_special_one_teleportation.png]]
2[[caption-width-right:350:Mr. Zeno in mid-teleportation.]]
3
4[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/outer_limits_the_special_one_zeno_and_kenny.jpg]]
5[[caption-width-right:350:Zeno suffocates as Kenny turns the climate control machine on him.]]
6
7->This episode has no opening Control Voice narration.
8
9Roy Benjamin (Creator/MacdonaldCarey) grows suspicious of Mr. Zeno (Richard Ney), a private tutor who has been sent to educate his gifted son Kenny (Flip Mark), and with good reason: Zeno is actually an alien from the planet Xenon, and he's part of a plan to take over Earth by indoctrinating its child prodigies.
10
11->'''The Control Voice:''' The mold of a man stems from the mind of a child. Educators and emperors have known this from time immemorial. So have tyrants.
12
13!!The Special Tropes:
14* AnAesop: Good parenting makes the difference between your child listening to bad influences and thinking for themselves.
15* CompellingVoice: Mr. Zeno has a variation on this power; he controls his victims' bodies, but not their minds.
16* EvilTeacher: Mr. Zeno is actually from planet Xenon, and he influences [[ChildProdigy child prodigies]] to help his homeworld with their AlienInvasion. (He also murders the father of one pupil for asking too many questions.) However...
17* FakeDefector: Kenny was only pretending to cooperate, and he saves the day by turning the alien's own weapon against him.
18* FlashyTeleportation: Mr. Zeno travels between Earth and Xenon via a "lightning bolt" effect that is one of the series' most striking visuals.
19* MindControl: Mr. Zeno can control the bodies of his victims, while their minds remain free. A nice power to have when you're an alien invader who [[{{Sadist}} sadistically]] delights in forcing the humans who discover your plot to commit suicide against their will...
20* PsychicAssistedSuicide: Mr. Turner is forced to jump out a window by Mr. Zeno's mind control. Zeno tries the same trick on Roy Benjamin, only for Kenny to stop him.
21* [[invoked]] ScienceMarchesOn: Discussed InUniverse when Roy tells a friend that his son made a report on the properties of all 125 chemical elements. His friend replies there are only 102 elements, and Roy rationalises that "there must be 125 now -- who would know outside of a lab?". This is the first sign that Mr. Zeno's teachings are more advanced than Earthly science.[[note]]Of course, there is also an out-of-universe example, since 118 elements are known in RealLife as of 2021.[[/note]]
22* TeenGenius: Kenny, which is why Zeno is interested in him in the first place.

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