| "The Man Who Was Never Born" | |
|---|---|
| Series The Outer Limits Season 1, Episode 6 | |
| |
| Air date | October 28th, 1963 |
| Writers | Anthony Lawrence |
| Director | Leonard Horn |
| Producers | Leslie Stevens; Joseph Stefano; Leon Chooluck |
| Starring | Vic Perrin; Martin Landau; Shirley Knight; John Considine; Maxine Stuart; Karl Held |
| Episode guide | |
| Previous "The Sixth Finger" |
Next "O.B.I.T." |
The Man Who Was Never Born" (original title: "Cry of the Unborn") is an episode of the original The Outer Limits television show. It first aired on 28 October 1963, during the first season.
Introduction[]
An astronaut returning to Earth finds himself flung into the distant future, where he finds the mutated remnants of humanity living on a ruined Earth.
Opening narration[]
Here, in the bright, clustered loneliness of the billion, billion stars, loneliness can be an exciting, voluntary thing, unlike the loneliness Man suffers on Earth. Here, deep in the starry nowhere, a man can be as one with space and time; preoccupied, yet not indifferent; anxious and yet at peace. His name is Joseph Reardon. He is, in this present year, thirty years old. This is the first time he has made this journey alone...
Plot Critique[]
The astronaut, Joseph Reardon,as a plot device prop lands on Earth only to find it a desolate and barren place. He meets Andro, a creature (once human) who is stricken with a disfiguring disease,that leave humanity also sterile by a biological disaster. Andro reveals that the year is now 2148 A.D. and the astronaut has been accidently sent to the future.How sterile humans survive to the year 2148 is unclear.And how the biological disaster.leeds to a barren wasteland,is also unclear.It is also,unclear as if there anything,other than a single corridor of books,beneath the wastelands above.Nor is it clear,if Andro is alone or there are others.None are scene,due casting budgetting.
Andro is one of the few survivors of a biological disaster brought on by a scientist called Bertram Cabot, Jr. Andro explains the situation and Reardon decides to see if he can return to his own time ... and take Andro with him to show the future, and perhaps avoid it. While returning through the time rift, Reardon is killed,being his presense is nolonger needed, leaving Andro to find a way to prevent his disastrous future from occurring.Somehow,Andro lands the ship,without crashing it and toward,the correct place and time.Incredible ?Yes.
Andro can project himself as a normal human; and uses this ability to hide among the normal humans of this time.He uses,this ability to project,cash into the hands of landlady Mrs.MacKluskey.Andro ,pretending to be a prpfessor begin searching for some way to stop Cabot's work — even if it means, as a last resort, assassinating him. It becomes clear that he has arrived too early. Bertram Cabot, Jr. has not been born yet, and in fact his parents Noelle and Bertram Cabot, Sr. are just about to be married. Andro, in his "human" guise, attempts to convince Cabot that he should not marry Noelle — with no success. Andro begins to fall in love with Noelle. While attempting to kill Cabot with a revolver, he hesitates, is assaulted, and Andro's true appearance is discovered, forcing him to flee. Noelle follows him, and he explains his mission. Meanwhile Noelle confesses that she has fallen in love with Andro.Obviously,Andro can also mesmerize others with illusion powers and this must be the case here. She convinces him to take her with him to the future, thereby avoiding any possibility that she and Cabot will have a child. Unfortunately, the flow of time having been altered through his actions, Andro disappears just as the ship arrives in "his" time — as he is The Man Who Was Never Born. How time knows to erase Andro,as it did with Joseph Readon is never explained.Did Andro's coming to the past erase Captain Readon,is never explainned,as actions erase himself in the future is explainned?It is never explainned or even hinted at,that neither Captain Readon dissappearing in the beginning or Andro dissappearing,will undo everything presented for the past hour.Nor is it clear,that this story is some sort of weird mobeus time loop.Captain Readon actions place in the future,changing his past,allowing Andro to enter the past in his ship alone,so could ultimately dissappear when entering the future.Andro is never born,so Joseph Readon's comes into existance,so can enter into the future.The story spends allot of time,on an unconvincing beauty and the beast love story,with the Grandfather Paradox,used as a framing plot device.Also,Andro's deformity,is unconvincing as the sterility bit causing the future,that Readon discovers.
Closing narration[]
It is said that if you move a single pebble on the beach, you set up a different pattern, and everything in the world is changed. It can also be said that love can change the future, if it is deep enough, true enough, and selfless enough. It can prevent a war, prohibit a plague, keep the whole world... whole.
Production[]
The final scene, filmed on M.G.M.s Backlot but cut due to timing reasons, was to follow on from the shot of Noelle alone in Andro's spaceship, She awakes, as if from a dream, on a grassy bank and calls out for Andro who is nowhere in sight, then a kindly middle aged man riding an air-car appears.This ending,actually makes more sence,than one aired.
MAN: Could I help you?
NOELLE: (after a pause) What is this place?
MAN: It is London (smiles) That is if you follow this road, you will come to the Old Town.
NOELLE: And the time?
MAN: The time?
NOELLE: The year?
MAN:(a smile then) Twenty-one-forty-eight. Are you lost?
NOELLE:(pauses) No, just alone.
The Old Man was played by Jack Raine.
Cast[]
- Martin Landau – as Andro
- Shirley Knight – as Noelle Anderson
- Karl Held – as Captain Joseph Reardon
- John Considine – as Bertram Cabot
- Maxine Stuart – as Mrs. McCluskey
- Marlowe Jensen - as Minister
Legacy[]
The story's origin is revealed in an interview with the its writer, Anthony Lawrence[2]:
Q: How did “The Man Who Was Never Born” come about?
A: I had this idea in my mind, a kind of a beauty and the beast idea, and so it kind of developed from that, because that was one of my old favorites, Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, the French version, which was a beautiful film. I was thinking of that film, and also just the idea that had always kind of fascinated me. Joseph Stefano loved the idea, and it had [in it], as I remember, a lot of what I was feeling at the time. I always liked romantic stories, and this was a chance to do something that you really don’t get to do very often in television. I gravitated toward that.
Q: Did Stefano, the show’s producer, contribute to the script of “The Man Who Was Never Born”?
A: Not much to that. [...]
The plot for this episode is markedly similar to the movie Twelve Monkeys, that was based on the 1962 French short film La jetée by Chris Marker. The protagonist of both stories travels back in time in an attempt to prevent a biological holocaust that has destroyed mankind in his time. See also, the 1990s Outer Limits episode, "Patient Zero".
Synopsis[]
"The Outer Limits" The Man Who Was Never born Earth awaits a terrible fate in the far future, so a 20th Century astronaut and a typically hideously malformed future Earthling go back in time hoping to change history. They target a beautiful young woman just before she gives birth to the scientist who created the bio-warfare agent which ravages the future Earth and all humans. But how can the repulsive Andro succeed when he's likely to be shot on sight ?He can,but the ending leeds to his own destruction,in this tright Grandfather Paradox Beauty and Beast love story.
Cast[]
Principal Cast[]
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Vic Perrin | Control voice |
Guest Stars[]
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Martin Landau | Andro |
| Shirley Knight | Noel Anderson |
| John Considine | Lieutenant Bertram Cabot |
| Karl Held | Captain Joseph Reardon |
| Jack Raine | Old man |
| Marlowe Jensen | Minister |
Notes & Trivia[]
- Copyright holder: ©1964 Daystar-Villa Di Stefano-U.A.
- First sci-fi directing work for Leonard Horn.
- Jack Raine appears in a scene that was deleted from the original broadcast.
- Marlowe Jensen is uncredited for his participation in this episode.
Allusions[]
- There are no allusions available for this episode at this time. Be the first to add some! Just click on the edit tab under the section heading and start typing. An allusion is an incidental reference made to a character, person, event or other miscellaneous piece of media that can be found somewhere in the episode itself. In most cases, this refers to characters or events from previous episodes.
Bloopers[]
- There are no bloopers available for this episode at this time. Be the first to add some! Just click on the edit tab under the section heading and start typing. A blooper is any revealing mistake that can be found within the episode that the production crew may have missed during editing. This can range from inconsistent lines of dialogue to visible production equipment in the shot to mis-spoken lines of dialogue, or... dare we say it? A wardrobe malfunction.
Quotes[]
- There are no quotes available for this episode at this time. Be the first to add some! Just click on the edit tab under the section heading and start typing. The preferred format for quotes is an asterisk, followed by the character's name (bold and hyper-linked), semi-colon then the quote itself (without quotation marks. Quotes should be separated by four elipses (....) unless multiple quotes are used between characters as part of a conversation.
See also[]
External Links[]
- "The Man Who Was Never Born" at IMDB
- "The Man Who Was Never Born" at the TV IV
- "The Man Who Was Never Born" at TV.com guide
- "The Man Who Was Never Born" at TV Rage.com
References[]