I won't pretend this is one of the great Outer Limits episodes. There aren't many of those, but some avoid total failure by holding interest to the end. "Wolf 359" is one that had always intrigued me, mostly because it manages to sustain the weird feeling that the show occasionally evokes. I must have seen a syndicated version with edits because seeing it again there is more to it than I'd remembered. The concept of replicating a tiny part of a planet nearly 8 light years from Earth is fascinating (as long as you don't think too much about how anyone could know enough about the planet's properties to attempt this in the first place). What happens to make the episode interesting is just fine--but then the old problem of what producers of the show called "the bear" knocks it all down a few notches. The budget was pretty limited, but it's too bad a malevolent being from a distant planet ends up looking like a cheaply designed "ghost". The music and the good actors help to keep us watching, so we can suspend disbelief. Still, we can wish they'd come up with something a little creepier than this particular "creature".
