Probably my favourite _Outer Limits_ episode. I'm always a sucker for time
travel and time paradox stories, and this one had some important social
themes (dealing with the trauma of rape, how society deals with repeat
sexual offenders, capital punishment, abortion rights, the use of fetal
tissue in research...). The acting was a big factor in the success of the
episode. The scientist is played by Amanda Plummer and the cop by Michelle
Forbes (Ensign Ro Laren to us Trekkies).
SPOILERS BELOW:
At 10:55 PM 22/7/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Did anyone see _The Outer Limits_ this weekend? It's about a female
>scientists who invents a time machine and uses it to go back to the past
>and kill convicted sexual criminals before they kill their first victim.
>Another woman, police officer, tracks her down just before the scientist
>goes back to kill the man that raped her as a teenager.
>
>If anyone seen it, please tell me what you think.
>
>Marina
I think Amanda Plummer especially did a great acting job. A scientific
genius, but one obsessed and in endless pain from being held prisoner and
raped repeatedly as a young teen. Her killing of serial rapist/killers
to-be did not help her with her personal pain; ironically it multiplied
because she still remembered every possible universe she destroyed. She was
only saving others from the similar pain.
When she finally took the step that erased/prevented her own pain, she
"un-saved" all those other women, and restored the cop's pain at the murder
of her best friend.
So in this story, the time-travel paradox is not about the fate of the
planet or of the galaxy, but the pain of rape victims and those who love them.
Howard
Scott & Aronoff Translation & Editorial Services
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
alterego@alterego.montreal.qc.ca
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