Afterlife

Unfortunately I have to fill this out a bit to put it up to 10 lines. So before I start; can I just say that Clancy Brown is probably the most underrated actor working in films at the moment. He has that wonderful ability to shift from gentleness to menace without effort - as he does so well here. Right I can start the comment now.... If we ever encounter intelligent life outside our planet, who will be the real 'Monsters'? The aliens or us? Stories asking this question are few and far between. They have to creep out under the radar in series such as this. I've just watched the flawed and bloated 'Spiderman 3'. It is supposed to have cost over $200 million dollars. I wonder how much this cost to make? I wish that, just for once, Hollywood would produce something as intelligent, tight and, dare we say, subversive as this excellent episode. Fat chance.

I liked this episode, I really like the message, but I won't rehash the storyline. The story is well written and well acted by the main character, Clancy Brown as Sergeant Linden Styles. I knocked a couple stars off because I found Barbara Garrick's acting, as Dr. Kersaw, to be stilted, especially in the last scene. However, I have seen her in other shows where she was fine, not sure what happened here.

Make sure you see the final scene, where the message is clear. I would have liked it to be more strongly delivered with some kind of consequence, but maybe that is best left to our imagination.

Linden Stiles struggles to retain his humanity after he is convicted of a murder he didn't commit. When asked to make a frightful choice: accept execution or become the subject of a secret military experiment -- he chooses to live. As the experiment progresses, Stiles fights the dehumanizing influence of injected DNA from an alien lifeform. The attending doctor is troubled by a growing awareness of the inhumanity of the experiment itself, of the men in charge and of her own role. Using his preter-natural strength, Stiles escapes. Then, hunted by his former compatriots, he faces a decision even more difficult than the one that set him on such a tragic course.

This was one of my favourites episodes of the new version The Outer Limits. I have to admit I was not consistent with my viewership with the series so there was many episodes I it did not have a chance to see. The message of this episode is the moral ambiguity of our governments will do to create the ultimate weapon of war whatever the consequences.

This is very similar to an episode from the original series. It tells the story of a man being executed by lethal injection for the murders of several people. After being pronounced dead by the attending physician, he is awakened. He is given a choice. Take the final lethal dose, or be part of an experiment by the military. Since he realizes that the former would be suicide, he accepts the terms, although he is damned either way. It becomes obvious early on that he never committed the murders for which he was convicted and he clings to his faith. He is injected with a series of substances by a pretty young army doctor with whom he feels an affinity. The process is agonizing. The military authorities are totally insensitive to his plight, seeing him as just another lab rat. He is defiant all the way as his body is transformed into an alien form (the DNA was collected from a previous extra-terrestrial encounter). The story is gripping, as a relationship develops between the man and the doctor. It portrays the government as a fearful, kill first and ask questions later entity. This may be the best episode of the series; it not, it certainly stands out.

The episode belongs to the best of the series. It clearly shows how evil and stupid people can be, when they let themselves be guided by the fear of the unknown at the expense of reason and objectivity.

Quite a nice touch to see how judgment is passed on them in the end.