While a group of underwater researches on a near-future sealab is hanging out, some of them are watching something on TV about sharks. Yes, that’s Rod Serling’s voice, but the crew isn’t watching an old Twilight Zone, it’s the narration Serling recorded for the 1968-1975 American version of The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, better known to many of us as The Life Aquatic, only real. Does The Twilight Zone exist in an episode of The Twilight Zone? Thankfully, you don’t have to think about that too long, because pretty soon the plot from Alien takes over and things start to get exciting.
Why is this the plot from Alien? Well, in theory, a guy named Rudd (Joel McHale) is leading a team of researchers who are investigating displaced underwater creatures that have generally been screwed-over by climate change. But it turns out that Rudd, along with crewmember Channing (Nadia Hilker) are not down here to help animals, but instead, to capture a specific type of octopus and harvest it for a pharmaceutical company called Troxell. So yeah, just like the Nostromo was actually sent to pick-up the alien in Alien, these people were actually looking for a murderous octopus.
Turns out this octopus is capable of turning straight-up invisible. In real life, this trait exits in something called the Glass Octopus, but the tentacled monsters in this episode are much bigger and much meaner.
The stakes of this episode are made exceptionally interesting when scientist Ling (Michelle Ang) realizes what her cohorts are up to. Unlike everyone else on this mission, Ling seems to legitimately care about studying underwater life. But, if we’re using the Alien analogy, Ling becomes this story’s Ripley, the one person we think is going to survive, but instead of trying to fight the monster, she’s actually trying to help it.
This makes watching the last ten minutes of the episode wonderful because as the Octopus starts picking-off the surviving members of the crew, you’re mind is actually racing: How is this going to play out? Is everyone going to just get killed? Is Ling just going to become friends with the murder-puses, and we’ll get a closing narration that this is basically what humans deserve?
