The Conversion

This is the best Outer Limits Episode ever. It is a morality tale as most episodes are. It is science fiction. It relies on two actors sitting at a restaurant table eating bean with bacon soup with a bare minimum of special effects. The writing is brilliant, and completely believable on a metaphorical, moral and quantum mechanical level. Usually such dialogue makes me cringe. This time it felt like the writer knew from first hand experience the quantum strangeness of existence. In a way it is like A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life, but without the cloying or Christian trappings.

Poor Henry is well aware this "angel" is probably just some fruitcake. The "angel" simply asserts things with dogmatic certainty, but never offering proof.

The writer teases you with bits of information. You become frustrated trying to piece all the tiny clues together to discover what this as all about. It is a very intelligent episode, not it the least corny.

What an episode. I remember seeing parts of it when it was first broadcast. I thought most of OL2 was very good but this episode is exceptional.

Another reviewer calls it It's a Good Life played forward. It is more than that. I like that it was set at Christmas.

The dialog the writers give us is exceptional and engaging. The acting is very good. They pull it all off as being believable and happening.

Acting and writing don't mesh without great directing that brings out the best of the script and the actors abilities.

It makes it hard for me to understand that this is the only directing credit Rebecca DeMornay has.

"Redemption follows not a change of body but a change of heart."

How ironic that this episode, which is all about how your actions affect others, relies heavily on a song that stole its most recognizable melody!

The episode itself has long been one of my favorites, since I saw its first airing when I was a teenager. I always hoped to be like Lucas, trying to help people when I could. In reality, it isn't as easy as on a TV show, especially when we don't have Lucas's special ability (which I won't spoil for you here). I just saw it again for the first time since that first airing when I was in high school, and 30 years later the end still makes me cry.

The only reason it loses a star in its ratings is because it uses that song that committed the crime of copyright infringement, theft, stealing someone else's creative work. That doesn't fit with the message of this episode.

A young businessman involved in financial manipulation ends up in prison, while his accomplices go unpunished and turn their back on him. After release from prison, he decides to retaliate, but things go wrong and he ends up seriously wounded and guilty of triple murder. On the run, a complete stranger approaches him and offers him a chance for redemption and a new beginning. The episode is very atmospheric and deals with the inner struggle of the individual between good and evil, selfishness and selflessness, instinct and self-control, material and spiritual. Although its mostly two men talking at the restaurant table, this is the best episode of the series so far, and it's unlikely they'll surpass it.

7,5/10

This story had such a profound effect on me. My drinking career ended in early 1997, but I think my recovery began 20 months earlier, when I saw this episode. I had to WANT a different life before I could be willing to take action. "The Conversion" inspired me to want it. I love that it's set around Christmas. I think there are subtle nods to "It's a Wonderful Life" and "A Christmas Carol," both stories of redemption. Every time I hear Enigma's "Return to Innocence," this episode flashes through my mind. I tear up every time I watch it.