For fans of the ancient TV show, “The Outer Limits,” we knew it eventually had to happen. In that black-and-white classic, the announcer stated “we control your TV set,” at the opening, and then “we return control of your TV set to you,” at the closing, or words to that effect. In between was a show that consisted of scripts rejected by the Twilight Zone. Nothing memorable, but entertaining enough. There’s a new version of The Outer Limits on cable but I’ve never watched it. You can never recapture the magic.

It was a scary thought in the ‘60s that “they” could take control of our TV sets. If they could do that, they could do anything. Freedom meant watching whatever you wanted, not having your TV viewing dictated by them. The TV was part of a man’s castle and they had no right to tamper with it. We never knew for sure who “they” were, but figured it could be the Red Chinese, or maybe aliens were controlling TV signals from their spacecraft.

Imagine my shock during a Mariners game last week when they really did take control of my TV set. Not only couldn’t I watch the game, I couldn’t watch anything but what they wanted me to watch. Not just on the broadcast stations, but on the cable channels as well. How did they get control?

The screen was blank except for some rolling script and a disembodied voice saying it was an Amber Alert. Someone has been kidnapped and we were supposed to quit watching the Mariners game and help find the kidnapped person. It seems that some mother freaked out when doctors were going to partially disembowel her baby (for his own good, of course), so she kidnapped the kid from the hospital. Any parent who has had a seriously ill child in the hospital has had similar thoughts. Good for her, I thought. She’s got spunk.

But I felt it was my duty as a citizen to help find this well-intentioned criminal, otherwise they might never let the Mariners game resume. So I looked out my picture window onto bucolic Methamphetamine Lane. Nope, no crazed woman kidnapper there. That made sense, as the kidnapping occurred in Seattle. The chances of the woman bringing the baby to our little island paradise seemed slim. So why did I have to quit watching the Mariners game, other than the fact they said so?

Presumably “they” are our elected representatives, who must have passed another warm and fuzzy-sounding bill that brought us the Amber Alert. Why, everyone favors finding kidnapped children, so why not take over everyone’s television set? The logic is so obvious that only a few cranky old coots would object.

With our government’s penchant for looking out for our own welfare, it’s doubtful the Amber alert will be confined to kidnappers. Pretty soon they’ll be taking over our TV sets to tell us things we should know, like it’s election day so send in your ballot, or even things we should do. The government says we’re all too fat, so they’ll take over our TVs until we do 10 pushups and 100 jumping jacks, as reported by our interactive TVs. Then we can watch the Mariners game.

Everything they warned us about in The Outer Limits is coming true. I now return control of this newspaper to you.