"The Sandkings" is a 1995 Canadian-American television film based on the 1979 novella Sandkings by George R. R. Martin, and the first episode of the revived 1960s science-fiction television series The Outer Limits. It premiered on 26 March 1995 on Showtime and features three generations of the Bridges acting family: Beau, his father Lloyd, and son Dylan. Kim Coates and Helen Shaver also star. The episode garnered five Gemini Award nominations. One of these was in the category of Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Dramatic Program or Mini-Series for Beau Bridges' leading role as Simon Kress, which also garnered nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series and the CableACE Award for Best Actor in a Dramatic Series. Plot Dr. Simon Kress' (Beau Bridges) research for the government on Martian life is aborted because one of his specimens escaped his lab and almost made it to the surface. However, Kress does not agree with the abandonment of the project and decides to continue his experiments in his barn. He steals some sand containing Martian eggs from his lab and creates a makeshift incubator to hatch more of the Martian lifeforms. Kress' obsession with the project causes his relationship with his wife Cathy (Helen Shaver) to break down. The family dog, Cowboy, gets eaten after stepping into their territory, having been awoken by their digging. The sandkings evolve into two distinct groups, a white group and a red group, and they settle on opposite sides of their glass enclosure. Kress comes to believe that he is a god to his sandkings when the white group builds a sand structure that resembles his face. He smashes the sand structure of the red group who did not do the same, one of them getting loose and stinging him. He kills his former supervisor Dave Stockley (Kim Coates) by tossing him into the enclosure, where the sandkings then devour him. Later, he finds himself in the basement with the red sandkings, who have made a nest with the face of Stockley. He breaks a gas pipe to cause an explosion in an attempt to kill all of the sandkings. In the ending of the episode, a colony of sandkings is shown surviving in the wilderness. Aftermath The Sandkings thrived after their escape from Kress' home laboratory. Fragments from the episode are included