Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on YouTube.

I have a cold and a slight fever so tonight’s review is going to be a short one.

Episode 3.5 “Outpost”

(Dir by T.K. Hudson, originally aired on October 28th. 1990)

In the far future, a space mining company is transforming terminally ill people into cyborg mutants and sending them to work on inhospitable planets in return for keeping them alive.  Cara (Juliet Mills), a representative of the company, is sent to one of the outposts to discover why the horribly disfigured Sebastian (Tony Fields) is no longer doing his job.

Separated by a layer of glass, Sebastian and Cara have a 19-minute conversation.  Cara is rude and condescending and makes it clear that she has zero concern for the well-being of Sebastian.  This is perhaps as bitchy as the world will ever see a Mills sister act, which is really saying something when you consider some of the Saved By The Bell episodes in which Hayley Mills played Miss Bliss.  Sebastian has been hearing voices and is tempted to just wander across the alien landscape until he dies.  Why should he spent the rest of eternity miserable and alone.

Cara gets annoyed.  She says that work is important.  Why, when her husband was ill and dying, she didn’t even bother to take off from her job to visit him.  He died while she was away or, at least, that’s what the company told her….

Can you see where this is going?

This episode benefitted from the performances of Juliet Mills and Tony Fields but the story was extremely predictable.  The dialogue was definitely a bit more intelligent than we’ve seen in previous episodes of Monsters and I respected the episode’s ambition but, in the end, the story dragged a bit and the big twist was easily guessed.  This was not a terrible episode but it wasn’t particularly memorable either.