Final Exam

An unbalanced young man has broken the code leading to the discovery of cold fusion. Up to this time it has been merely theoretical. He shows up during some final exams for some Masters and PhD students. He locks the door and takes a device out of a bag. It has capabilities of a fifty megaton weapon that will wipe out the city. He has made a list of five people who he feels have mistreated him. A psychologist/scientist is brought in to try to negotiate with him, but he is so irrational that the man is stopped at every juncture. He doesn't seem to care how many victims there may be. He sends out a device that is detonated and kills several men who are trying to disarm it. The task is to figure him out. Meanwhile he gets a wish. One of the men on his list is brought out on the quad and executed as he watches. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. A group of military commandos is trying to tunnel up under the weapon, but their efforts are circumvented. This is a suspenseful, intense drama where the implications are devastating. As is usually the case, the writers put an exclamation point at the end.

From the beginning we know that this will be a suspenseful episode. A young boy barricades himself armed in a university classroom and takes the students hostage, he claims to have built a cold fusion bomb that will explode if the authorities do not bring a group of people who he considers his enemies to the establishment. And execute them in cold blood in front of him. This exciting episode has the advantage of having the masterful direction of Mario Azzopardi, who previously directed the best chapters of this series. The plot, besides being absolutely topical, is wonderfully written and has a disturbing ending. A little masterpiece.

Another excellent Outer Limits mini-movie that feels like it could be expanded into a feature length film.

It's almost weird how rarely nuclear blackmail scenarios occur in movies and tv considering how provocative they are. Maybe because they are just too provocative, too scary, too plausible.

The scariest one that seemed pretty plausible remains Special Bulletin (1983). This OL episode is much less plausible primarily because it relies on technology that's probably impossible, and this one kid is a loner that gets a LOT done.

Still, this works better than ever because the theme isn't really about the "cold fusion" nuclear device, it's actually about the Fermi Paradox of all things. There's nobody out there because inevitably intelligent life learns enough through inexorable scientific discoveries that it destroys itself.

It also works in a somewhat less grandiose manner in that the ever increasing power of computer and other technologies makes it more and more possible for some small group to do some crazy James Bond supervillain scheme.