The Outer Limits (TV Series) Promised Land (1998) User Reviews

Sometimes Lessons Are Learned Slowly

[Hitchcoc · 8/10 · 5 June 2014]

This is a sequel to a previous episode. A group of earth people have escaped bondage. They were held by robot overlords, even though the war ended long ago. Now they forage for what food they can, but the aliens contaminated the food supply. They are desperate. One loose cannon eats some of the food and most of the others follow. They are soon dying. A small group goes out find what they can. They held fast to not eating the forbidden fruit (this thing is full of Biblical images, even the names they take).

We are also shown another group of characters. They are aliens who are left from the war. They have learned hydroponics and other growing methods and continue to tend these things. There is a grandfather, a mother, and two sons. One day the younger son, who is a curious guy, comes upon the earth people. He is chased back to his house and it is obvious that one group has what the other want. The aliens are armed but the earth people are enterprising and desperate. Soon they begin to hit and run, stealing the vegetables the aliens are growing. The aliens have set up booby traps and one of the earthlings is impaled. It isn't long before an actual war takes place between them, even though they have both preached against it. It is survival now. What happens is quite interesting and hopeful.

Among the best Outer Limits episodes - and it's not really about Humans and Aliens

[Manuel-Hoerth · 10/10 · 19 October 2012]

What I am gonna say now, may not sound like it's relevant to the episode, but it is and if you saw it you will know.

My family is German and my grandfather always told me about how there used to be German villages in Bessarabia and how he grew up in one of those villages. At the time those villages belonged to neither Germany or the Soviet Union. All the people in those villages where farmers, none of them where Nazis. A few of them where drafted as soldiers, but they all served in the Romanian army, since technically they were all Romanians. A deal between Hitler and Stalin (during the beginning of WWII when Germany and the USSR fought together and invaded neutral countries together) gave those villages to Stalin, so the Red Army attacked Romania and destroyed all those villages, so my family had to flee to Germany (anyone who remained was put into soviet labor camps). It was difficult for my family in Germany and they where not really accepted as Germans and where put into refugee camps where the conditions where harsh. But they where promised that (since Germany had sold their land and farms to the Soviet Union) they would be compensated accordingly and would receive new land and new farms. They had to wait a couple of years, but then they where finally given the land and farms they where promised. What they didn't know is that those used to belong to polish settlers that where driven away by the Wehrmacht with many of them being put into labor camps. Naturally the polish weren't happy about that and decided to strike back. So one day the Polish massacred the entire village with my grandfather being the only survivor.

Why did I tell you that? Well I didn't just tell you my family history, I told you what this episode is about. Of course it's not necessarily about presumed Nazis and polish resistance fighters, it could be about anybody, and that's the point.

We hate what we fear, and we fear what we don't understand.

One of the best episodes

[mbritton1776 · 9/10 · 12 June 2023]

Promised Land actually made me cry. There is so much division and hatred in our country right now and the women making peace moved me.

I really liked the previous episode this was a follow-up to, and missed the woman who led them out of the slave camps, but the new female leader ably filled her shoes.

I also wonder if they are the only humans left and the only aliens left, will their future hold alien/human offspring?

Also funny note: I have a knack for recognizing actors even with heavy prosthetics or makeup on. I knew within the first few minutes the grandpa alien was Rene Auberjonois of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Outer Limits is great for recognizing guest stars!