The Twilight Zone (TV Series) Cold Fusion (2003) User Reviews

This one will screw with your mind.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 15 February 2022]

Dr. Paul Thorson is sent to an Arctic base to check in on Dr. Chandler (Ian McShane) and his stafff, as authorities have been unable to communicate with the base for days. It seems that Chandler is working on some ultimate power device. When Thorson arrives, he finds everyone on the base...but they seem insane and it is because Chandler apparently has been messing with their minds. But what REALLY is going on here?!

The atmosphere of the episode (much like the remake of "The Thing") is the best thing about the show. As for the plot...well, it just seems confusing and weird. Worth seeing but far from great.

"This isn't a puzzle you can solve with logic."

[classicsoncall · 7/10 · 28 March 2023]

More so than most Twilight Zone stories, this one has an intensely psychological element going for it with the character of Dr. Paul Thorson (Sean Patrick Flanery), assigned to investigate a scientific project in Alaska dubbed 'Gemini'. When he arrives, it appears as if the only survivors of a twelve person team have gone crazy, while most of the rest ran off into the subfreezing wilderness. Quite soon, Thorson encounters the voice of the unseen Dr. Chandler, who's locked behind an impenetrable steel door, offering different instructions to the three members of the science team working on Gemini. Slowly losing his own mind, Thorson shoots Corporal Gordon (Gordon Michael Woolvett), mathematician Morgan (Nancy Sorel), and Commander Skyles (Keith Hamilton Cobb). Each of them evaporate into nothingness, as the dial on the locking mechanism to the Gemini chamber spins open to reveal Chandler (Ian McShane). Seemingly mad as a hatter as well, Chandler is shot by Thorson, and in so doing, it's revealed that Thorson in reality shot himself as the leader of the Gemini project. It's a rather mind numbing conclusion that doesn't hold up under a microscope, but given the irony of the ending, it appeared to be right at home in The Twilight Zone.

The Big Freeze

[kapelusznik18 · 5/10 · 24 April 2015]

***SPOILERS*** With communications mysteriously cut off from the US military top secret research base in Northern Alaska the top physicist of the super secret Gemini Project Dr.Paul Thorson, Sean Patrick, is flown in by helicopter to investigate. It soon becomes apparent that the survivors of the base camp, the others just walked outside into the freezing -40 below temperature and froze to death, seemed to have lost their minds. There's Cpl.Gordon, Gordon Michael Woolvett, who keeps banging at the locked tight security door, where the Gemini Proget is kept, claiming that if he doesn't brake in and stop the project from being activated it will be the end of all life on earth!

Checking out the remaining crew Dr. Thorson finds them to be no saner then the whacked out Cap. Gordon. There's mathematician Morgan, Nancy Sorel, who just mindlessly doodles on a blackboard numbers and formulas that make no logic or sense, to Dr. Thorson, at all. Then there's the commander of the base itself Skyles, Kieth Hamilton Cobb, who sits behind his desk watching the cartoon channel and playing video games for hours at a stretch!

***SPOILERS***It's when the secret locked door is finally opened after Cpl. Gordon got shot in a struggle with Dr. Thorson, who later ended up shooting both Morgan & Skyles, that the shocking truth was finally reviled to him by the person in charge of the project the bug eyed looking suffering from sleep deprivation Dr. Chandler,Ian McShane, himself. A truth so mind boggling that in order to shut him up Dr. Thorson lost it and indistinctly shot Dr. Chandler dead! And with that not only did Dr. Thorson put an end to Dr. Chandler and the Gemini Project but to himself as well!

The Thing Redux

[Hitchcoc · 8/10 · 11 July 2017]

There have been many films that use the arctic as a base from "The Thing from Another Planet" to its sequel, to "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms." There's a kind of isolation that can't be reproduced in other places. The intense cold outside makes everyone claustrophobic. The interrelationships are carved out of people's psyches where their intense belief in a kind of result take away their humanity to some extent. In this one, a man is sent to try to get a project back on track. What started out as a means of helping humanity has become a bomb that could end life on earth. Like a couple of the aforementioned films, reality gets tossed aside. While there are some flaws here, this was a very entertaining offering.