Episode
The Outer Limits: Final Exam
Overview
Dr. John Martin (Brett Cullen), a negotiator for the Department of Energy Nuclear Response Team, is called in when a disgruntled grad student takes hostages at a university. The student, Seth Todtman (Peter Stebbings) claims to have invented a cold-fusion bomb and is threatening to detonate it, killing millions, unless the government brings him five people on a list and kills them for him. Martin's colleagues dismiss Todtman as a crank, until a sample device he provides goes off with megaton force, wiping out a DOE team and the top-secret facility where they work. Faced with an impossible choice, Martin meets with Todtman face to face and tries to understand the logic behind his rage at the people he wants killed: cruel foster parents, corrupt professors, a heartless librarian. As the clock ticks, Martin tries to reason with Todtman while the military tries to find a way to disarm the device.
Details
- Series
- The Outer Limits
- Season
- Season 4
- Episode
- Episode 16
- Air date
- 1998-06-05
- Runtime
- 45 min
Episode context
Final Exam is Episode 16 in Season 4 of The Outer Limits. It aired on 1998-06-05. The runtime is 45 min.
Previous / Next
Episode 15: Mary 25
Charlie Bouton's (Tom Butler) last project for the Innobotics Corporation was a sexy female companion robot named Valerie 23. It almost put the company out of business when it went berserk and attacked someone. So, his bosses are skeptical when he and scientist Melburn Ross (Michael Shanks) introduce Mary 25 (Sophia Shinas), a nanny robot adapted from the earlier model. In order to overcome their doubts, Charlie proposes letting the robot take care of his own children - a move that is met by serious resistance from his wife Teryl (Cynthia Geary) and his children Brad and Brook. From the beginning, there are problems. Unlike the human nanny, Carmen, Mary doesn't grasp the subtleties of child care and Melburn must fine tune her. But, Melburn sees that the problems go beyond Mary's programming. Charlie is smitten with his inorganic creation and has begun to abuse Teryl - a woman with whom Melburn was once romantically involved.
Episode 17: Lithia
It is 2055 and the post-apocalyptic world is populated exclusively by women; all the men were killed in the Great War and the Scourge that followed. Into this matriarchy comes Major Jason Mercer (David Keith), who was cryogenically frozen forty years earlier and now awakened in Lithia. Lithia is a small agricultural enclave overseen by a group of women that include the regal elder Hera (Julie Harris), Ariel (Claire Rankin), Miranda (Nadia Capone) and Pele (Kirsten Williamson). Mercer's arrival sparks a debate about the nature of men among some women and revives long-dormant sexual feelings in others. The debate intensifies as Mercer, seeing the enclave's poverty and primitive tools, begins to repair the community's broken machines and pushes Miranda, the group's trade representative to barter with Hyacinth, a neighboring community, for electricity to run the machines. Over the objections of the elders, Mercer gets the machines running.
More episodes from this season
Episode 14: To Tell the Truth
Dr. Larry Chambers (Gregory Harrison) helped build the colony on the Janus Five. He and fellow scientist Amanda Harper (Kimberly Huffman) run computer simulations that show the planet's star will flash over in a matter of days, emitting waves of deadly radiation, so Dr. Chambers urges evacuation. This is not a popular recommendation, especially among the colony's leaders who include council chairman Franklin Murdock (William Atherton), security head Montgomery Bennett (Alan Scarfe) and Amanda's father, Ian Harper (Ken Pogue). They point out that Chambers has been wrong before - the colony had to be moved at great cost after he warned of deadly volcanic activity - and suggest that his judgment has been clouded by the death of his wife Elise. When that doesn't stop Chambers, Murdock and Bennett discredit him by falsely accusing him of being one of the aliens who originally inhabited the planet.
Episode 18: Monster
The four people gathered in the top-secret research facility seem at first to have nothing in common: Ford Maddox (Harry Hamlin) is a former spy, Rachel Sanders (Nicole Deboer) is a nurse, Roger Beckersly (Aaron Pearl) is an Army Ranger and Louise McDonnaugh (Bridget O'Sullivan) is a computer programmer. What has brought them together is their telekinetic ability, a talent that Mr. Brown (Robert Guillaume), a CIA project head, hopes to exploit through the use of Teeks, devices that amplify telekinetic power. At first, Brown tries these individual's talents out on simple tasks - moving or crushing a granite block with their minds - but soon his true intentions are revealed. Their first real assignment, says Brown, is to use their powers to kill a Balkan terrorist leader and war criminal. Rachel objects to the assignment on moral grounds, but Brown forces her to take part by threatening to send her brother to jail for life.
Episode 13: The Joining
When a transport ship crashed and wiped out the colony on Venus, Capt. Miles Davidow (C. Thomas Howell) was the sole survivor. But, after he's rescued by a team that includes his fiancee, Kate Girard (Amanda Tapping) and Scott Perkins (Jeffrey Jones), it soon becomes clear that Davidow did not escape unscathed. Removed from the high radiation atmosphere of Venus, his body is reacting to the Earth's air like that of a chemotherapy patient. When doctors give him the radiation his body seems to crave, strange things start to happen. Davidow's body begins to spawn duplicate parts - a hand, a torso and more from wounds that miraculously heal. In spite of this, Miles and Kate get married while he's still in isolation, but his time on Venus and the strange creatures he encountered there have had a profound change on Miles.
Episode 19: Sarcophagus
The archeological team has just about given up on finding anything significant in this remote corner of Alaska when Natalie Grainger (Lisa Zane) stumbles upon what appears to be a burial mound. Inside, the team discovers a number of human skeletons, including one dressed in a strange metallic tunic and preserved in an amber cocoon. When Natalie's husband, Curtis (David Cubitt), touches the cocoon, something amazing happens. He begins to see through the eyes of the creature whose bones were contained in amber, an alien with fearsome claws and teeth. This psychic connection also provides a jolt of energy that liquefies the cocoon and initiates the reconstitution of flesh on the alien's bones. As the creature begins to come back to life, some of the team, including Emmet Harley (Robert Picardo) want to call in a big corporate lab in order to cash in on their discovery.
Episode 12: Fear Itself
For as long as he can remember, Bernard Selden (AYRE GROSS) has been haunted by a paralyzing fear. It started when he was six, when he set a fire that killed his four-year-old sister and today, at 27, the fear clings to him like a blanket. But, Dr. Adam Pike (Jeffrey Demunn) has hope for a cure. He has diagnosed Bernard's condition and believes that if he can isolate the part of the brain responsible for fear, the amyglada, he can cure him. The series of injections and radiation designed to build a layer of calcium around the amyglada produces stunning results; Bernard's fear recedes. He even starts a relationship with his neighbor Lisa (Tanya Allen). But there are side effects. Now, Bernard can use his brain to make others feel the kind of crippling fear he used to feel. He is still a prisoner of the past, haunted by images of Mr. Wilkes (Alex Diakun), the owner of the foster home where Bernard's sister died.
Episode 20: Nightmare
The battle cruiser Tango Bravo, under the command of Capt. Roger Kimbro (Maurice Dean Wint), is captured by the enemy Ebonites as it attempts to deploy a mysterious high-powered military device on planet N-1-8-4. Imprisoned inside a large bronze dome, the crew is addressed by The Voice, an unseen Ebonite interrogator, which demands they reveal the secrets of the device. When they resist, The Voice works on them individually in isolation, probing their weaknesses and testing their loyalty to one another. Capt. Kimbro is greeted by an all-to-real replica of a comrade he abandoned to die. Lt. Christopher Valentine (Cameron Graham) is played a fake tape of Kimbro disparaging his ability as a soldier. Dr. Elayna Chomski (Brandy Ledford) doesn't return from her interrogation at all, and when Maj. Ronald Naguchi (Robin Shou) goes for his, he finds her body dead, ripped open and suspended in liquid. Who will be the first to snap? Kimbro? Valentine? Naguchi?
Episode 11: The Vaccine
It has been three months since the doomsday cult unleashed the genetically engineered Berlin C virus, and today most of the world is dead or dying. Among the living are a group of hospital patients and their nurse, Marie Alexander (Maria Conchita Alonso), who have survived because they were already under quarantine when the virus struck. They are running out of food and fuel when a soldier arrives with a new vaccine from the Center for Disease Control. But, there's only enough for three doses and it will take three days for the vaccine culture to develop enough to be effective. It falls to Marie to maintain order until the vaccine is ready, and to decide who will get injected.
Episode 21: Promised Land
Dlavan (Rene Auberjonois) and his family are Tsal-Khan, offspring of the handful of aliens who remained on Earth after a bitter war of conquest with the human race. Today they live on a tightly guarded farm where they must grow all their own food, since their forebears poisoned all the plants during the war with mankind. Most of the aliens believe that the human race was wiped out in the war, but there is a group of humans in the woods near the farm. This group, is led by Rebecca (Caroline Goodall), escaped from the alien's robot run camps and includes David (Joseph Kell), Ruth (Jane Sowerby) and the mute, orphaned child Tali (Jessica Harmon). They are desperately hungry and have seen their children die from eating poisoned fruit. So, when they spot Dlavan's grandson Ma'al, wandering in the woods, they follow him home to the farm. After they see the well-fed aliens, Rebecca leads the group to raid the farm for food.
Episode 10: Identity Crisis
Captain Cotter McCoy (Lou Diamond Phillips) is the first of a new breed of soldier. As part of a top secret program overseen by Dr. Greg Olander (Robert Joy), General Langston Chase (Dale Wilson), and Cotter's friend, Colonel Pete Butler (Scott Kraft), the contents of McCoy's brain can be temporarily transferred into an android version of himself. This process creates a virtually indestructible fighting machine with the smarts and experience of a human being. But, one day something goes wrong. During the transfer, the real McCoy's body is blasted with electricity, stopping his heart, inflicting serious brain damage and leaving Cotter's mind trapped in the android body. To make matters worse, the interface between his mind and the android body is flawed. McCoy's motor control is already beginning to break down and the interface will likely collapse within 12 hours.
Episode 22: The Balance of Nature
Dr. Noah Phillips (Maurice Godin) was desperate to save his 30-year-old wife, Meredith (Lisa Maris), from a premature death from cancer. He broke the rules and tried out an experimental treatment he had developed with his partner Dr. Don Kingsly (Andrew Airlee). The Cellular Regressor, designed to reverse the effect of age and disease on cells, restored Meredith's health, but only temporarily. After a few minutes, the cancer returned with a vengeance, killing her instantly. Devastated by Meredith's death and his research funds cut off, Noah retires at age 35 to a small town, where he moves next door to a couple in their 60s, Barbara (Barbara Rush) and Greg Matheson (Harve Presnell).