“8” is far from the worst episode of this new Twilight Zone season. (So far, that’s still “Ovation.”) But for me, it may end up being the most disappointing. I’m a fan of the films of this episode’s co-directors, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead, whose films Spring and The Endless glory in the visual possibilities and the inherently mind-bending wonders of science-fiction and horror. Plus, “8” is credited to Glen Morgan, one of The Twilight Zone’s producers and one of the primary creative contributors to The X-Files.
“8” also has a premise with a lot of potential. Set at a remote arctic base—staffed by scruffy scientists tasked to study deep sea predators “previously unseen by humans”—the episode stars Joel McHale as Dr. Orson Rudd and Nadia Hilker as Channing Carp, who have a secret agenda outside of just exploration and research. The NYBY Science Station is also hosting a visitor from China: the non-English-speaking Ling (Michelle Ang), who can only communicate with the crew via a translation app. When the team stumbles on a huge octopus unlike any they’ve never encountered before, this eclectic group—which also includes a few techs and grunts who have no particular emotional attachment to exotic undersea creatures—differ over what they should do about a potentially dangerous beast.
This is a classic science-fiction/horror setup, reminiscent of The Thing—and of all the movies and TV shows that have ripped off The Thing. But though the episode is blessedly short (a welcome trend this season), with a suitably eerie look and score, its story never really develops much beyond the introduction. Morgan and the directors drop in a few moments of bloody monster-movie violence; but most of “8” consists of the characters merely talking about the choices in front of them, rather than acting on any of their arguments.
Frankly, that chatter is often pretty clunky, too—and not in a “let’s pay homage to the corny old B-pictures” way. I don’t know if Joel McHale is just ill-suited to the mostly serious role he’s being asked to play here, or if even the most extraordinary actor couldn’t handle stiff lines like, “You’re investigating the physical mechanisms of this octopus?,” or, “We’re both trying to take from this animal what we don’t have.”
The central debates among Rudd, Carp and Ling—and between all three of them and the cohorts who just want to kill this tentacled interloper immediately—are at least interesting. The more high-minded scientists agree that it would violate the deeper purpose of their mission if they destroyed a creature that could be the only one of its kind. Ling even waxes poetic at one point about how humans and octopuses had common ancestors millions of years ago, and how this particular breed of cephalopod they’ve captured may have evolved as humans did, developing its own intelligence.
But just like Rudd and Carp, Ling ultimately reveals her own ulterior motives. The stealthy NYBY partners have made a deal to deliver the octopus to medical researchers, who hope to revolutionize pain medicine and develop life-saving drugs. But Ling? Her associates back home want her to isolate the part of this animal’s genetic material that’s similar to humans, to see if they can mutate our future generations to live in the oceans and on the land.
These are all cool ideas. But we only really hear about them—and in the least exciting way possible. Benson and Moorehead only occasionally get to show what they can do as visual stylists.
To be fair, one of the moments in “8” where the imagery really pops is the ending, which is equal parts beautiful and chilling. The big twist in “8” is that Ling was right: This super-octopus snuck into the facility on purpose, to study the humans’ overlapping genetic code. Cue Jordan Peele with the outtro, talking about how humanity may have paved the way for the Earth’s true dominant species. Also cue an absolutely gorgeous climactic shot of a sea monster floating and glowing, ready to spread the secret of its kind’s next evolution.
Still, given the talent involved with this episode, it’s a shame it mostly feels flat. Even the richer sociopolitical subtext—that these strange octo-things may triumph just because they don’t spend all their time arguing instead of working together—mostly stays below the surface, too sodden to punch through.
Stray observations
- This episode’s press kit easter egg: “In a moment, they’re going to send a man down thirty fathoms and check on a noisemaker. Someone or something tapping on metal.” That’s from the episode “The Thirty-Fathom Grave.” Of course it is!
- It’s a nice touch, featuring actual Rod Serling narration on an old TV documentary the crew watches. I couldn’t nail down exactly what was being shown, but he was the voice of several Jacques Cousteau TV specials.
- Did you spot Tim Armstrong from the punk band Rancid, playing the bearded tech Larry—the one who’s perhaps the most skeptical about the octopus? True to Armstrong’s past, his character even listens to a little ska at one point.
- Next: “A Human Face.”
49 Comments
If they can squander this, the series is going nowhere.
Glen Morgan’s X-Files episode The Host got quite a bit of mileage out of Mulder and Scully capturing a “fluke man” and then having no idea what to actually do with it. I guess he’d already spent all his good ideas about the situation there.
It’s Antarctic, not Arctic, right?
I once knew someone who always wanted to own a sandwich shop. So he bought a sandwich shop. Then he realized that meant he’d be obliged to WORK at a sandwich shop. Subscription sites with deep pockets are buying up all the old pop cultural touchstones. But its not enough to merely own the rights to ‘Twilight Zone’ and ‘Picard’. You need to also put in the effort to produce a product that’s worthy of the name you acquired
…not sure about the Twilight Zone , but Picard was quite good , rather than remake TNG , (a show of the 80s and early 90s ), it was its own thing.
sorry but I couldn’t help thinking of
You should post these everytime avclub review anything star trek or star wars
I thin Picard is quite good. I don’t understand all the hate it gets.
In the future, humans are the sushi!
Definitely one of the weaker (I think I agree with Ovation being the weakest). It’s not horrible it just could be so much better.
I would really love to watch this. I hope maybe someday they make a deal with Netflix or Amazon to show episodes once they get all the viewing out of them. I have Amazon and Netflix, and I am NOT buying another streaming service, no matter how cool some of them might be in a show here or there. With two already and cable, there is a line, and buying another one is crossing that line for me. You have to draw the line somewhere
This episode is really not one you would love to watch.
The idea of a Chinese scientist not knowing English is frankly ludicrous.
It’s a nice touch, featuring actual Rod Serling narration on an old TV
documentary the crew watches. I couldn’t nail down exactly what was
being shown, but he was the voice of several Jacques Cousteau TV
specials.
Specifically including the one about the octopus, as I recall.
The voice overs were actually done by an impersonator, Mark Silverman, who also voiced Serling in last season’s finale, “Blurryman”. That’s mentioned in the end credits.
I’ve been following the reviews and I actually thought this one worked…ngl and Tim sold it for me, Joel is really schlocky but the plot was decent and engaging. The horror elements when the octopus is killing everyone was pretty metal too…Ovation still the low point.
I’ve been following the reviews and I actually thought this one worked…ngl and Tim sold it for me, Joel is really schlocky but the plot was decent and engaging. The horror elements when the octopus is killing everyone was pretty metal too…Ovation still the low point.
It was ok. Good premise but not properly fleshed out. Not a big fan of Joel either which didn’t help. This episode would have been pretty good for season 1 but season 2 has been much better, which makes “8” feels like more of a disappointment in that regard.
“NYBY Station”?Christian Nyby was the director of The Thing from another World (1951).
I was confused by the beginning of the episode. The diver and that other person were pulled under and killed, presumably by the octopus, but the octopus was in the cooler. I can presume there was more than one octopus, but if it’s so smart and dangerous, how did they get the first one in the cooler?…unless it was so smart that it *wanted* to get captured to learn all about DNA! Wow, this was not a good episode.Sidenote: all I could think about once the octopus squeezed out of that small hole at the top of the tank (and camouflaged itself) was the octopus from Finding Dory, which was way cuter and funnier than this one.
I will say that at least the escape through the tiny hole is legit – I lived near an aquarium where they loved to tell the story of an octopus that escaped out a tiny hole (less than an inch IIRC, octopus was probably considered “mid sized, I think something like five feet across when laying that way) and proceeded to wreak havoc by yanking all the wiring etc. out of the nearby equipment and somehow causing another tank to overflow.They’re testing the fences.
And thus we learned that octopuses are jerks.
They are super smart. And I’ve seen video of them squeezing through tiny holes, so I had no trouble buying that. It was really cool to watch, too.
They can also predict Superbowl winners.
The cold open shows the cooler snapping shut, the insinuation being that the octopus killed the staff and then stowed itself away in the cooler.
Ah, I must have missed that.
And yet if it’s trying to hide away in the cooler, why does it thrash about in it making the crew aware of its presence? This episode is horrible.
I was going to say the same thing, what killed them? But, then I read your comment, and I think it killed them and then put itself in the cooler. I do think, however, that they could have done a better job of giving us the information to figure that out while we were watching the episode, though.
“You’re investigating the physical mechanisms of this octopus?,”
Is this a real line of dialogue? Including the questioning aspect? Jeez. No one can sell that.
THIRTY MINUTES, dummiesmake it WORK, it’s called “writing a short story”three segments, nine minutes eachFUCKING WRITE LIKE A WRITERjordan peele is DISAPPOINTING to a great degree
Was Community really so beloved that Joel McHale can get multiple at-bats as a dramatic genre actor? He showed up in some bad latter-day X-Files as well. At least when they cast Wil Wheaton, or whatever, it’s like, okay, we’re gladhanding the Con crowd, fine. But Joel McHale? Who wants to see Joel McHale act?
Yes it was, considering Just about the entire cast gets parts now. Danny Glover is now a star. Allison Brie is a minor star. Gillian Jacobs gets about the same level of parts as Joel McHale. The show was very funny and a critic darling.
I think you meant “Donald Glover”. Danny Glover’s been a star since the ‘80s.
I’ll be honest with you when I first saw the name I thought Danny was Donald’s father because I didn’t know that Glover was a widely used surname in America.
Gillian Jacobs even appeared in a previous episode this season.
I loved the Soup when John Stewart was on it and I thought McHale was remarkably well suited for it and did a good job taking it over. He could have easily been “asshole who rags on banker for reading/gets locked out of the bunker/tries to kill the guy who sells you what you need/drinks the water/takes control of the little people/decides he doesn’t want to live with a robot family 10 seconds too late/always wins at gambling”. I just…why wasn’t he an asshole who gets his comeuppance?
I think you mean John Henson. Jon Stewart was The Daily Show.
I do! I do mean John Henson. Joel McHale is a better version of John Henson and should stick to that type casting.
McHale can act given the right material and direction. Even in Community he had some stellar moments when he had to play it serious, one that always stood out to me was in the final episode where he had to come to terms with the fact that people in his life will move on and leave him behind.
Shit, Benson and Moorehead directed this? I had no idea they were doing an episode. I wonder if the CBS All Access log-in I got from an in-law still works. I opened the app exactly once, looked through literally the entire library in under 5 minutes, and closed it again. That was about a year ago, hopefully their sub is still active so I can check this out. Everyone should go watch their movies, Resolution, Spring, and The Endless they are all good and weird.
🤔 ovation wasn’t good, but…8 was some of the worst storytelling I’ve experienced in a minute. I mean maybe that amount of exposition would be good in a book, but not a visual medium. I’ll give it another watch since I didn’t realize that dude was from rancid… but pretty sure what he was listening to couldn’t be classified as ska…. it did strike me as an interesting choice at the time
An ending that needs that much exposition is not a good ending. All that speechifying in the final 5 minutes really ground things to a halt.
I’m confused. Weren’t a lot of old Twilight Zone episodes people talking about something in a room, then a twist happens in the last minute? Could someone correct me on this?
This episode was rough. They couldn’t figure out any other way to end the episode other than have Joel McHale just outright explain everything?
Yes but what has this got to do with Incubus?
Glad the octopus won.
Wow, this almost beat “Ovation” for worst episode. If MST3K comes back to do TV episodes, this should be on high their list. The contrived plot device where the Chinese “scientist” doesn’t speak English is just the tip of the iceberg for a story that I guess sums up to “Man is the ultimate parasite.” As a side note, I loved Joel McHale on “Community”, but he should really stick to comedy.
The first 3/4ths of this episode are great fun, and then… well, there’s a twist that would be absurdly fun in a B-movie, but played straight is just ridiculous, and then there’s the mountain of exposition we have to climb to explain the twist.I was expecting at the beginning that the octopus would prove to not be the big bad — that it was running away from whatever had killed the divers. Perhaps it would even have to try and alert the humans to what was going on…That would have been a simpler story to put across.You can tell that Benson and Moorehead didn’t *write* this.
Was I the only one that saw “Whipple” on the base-logo at the start of this episode? Or is this something that everyone is already aware of and I’m just late to the party?