Soldier

Harlan Ellison's story Soldier is probably the best known of The Outer Limits one. After all Ellison sued James Cameron and ended up with a story credit for The Terminator movies.

The opening scenes in the battlefield of the future has similarities as well as two fighting soldiers getting transported back to Earth of the past.

Qarlo Clobregnny (Michael Ansara) is captured and put in a padded cell as he is too prone to violence. Tom Kagan (Lloyd Nolan) is the linguist expert who comes to understand that Qarlo is speaking an evolved form of English. That he has been bred from war and is from Earth of the future.

Tom wants Qarlo to understand about humanity and love, not war. Tom even persuades his superior Paul Tanner to let him take Qarlo to his house. All the time the other soldier is also somewhere in Los Angeles.

There are some interesting concepts but it is stuck with limitations of 1960s television. It was odd how Tom offers Qarlo a cigarette and lighter when they first meet. Apart from giving this potential alien a cancer stick. I kept wondering what if Hannibal Lecter was there instead of Tom. Just how he would had used a lighter and a lit cigarette as a weapon. That is before a killing machine is taken to Tom's home and perfect family.

Much of the concepts remain unexplored as the story comes to an abrupt end.

A pair of earrings soldiers from Earth's future are caught up in a freak accident, and transported back to Earth, one of them, Quarlo Clobregnny is caught by The Authorities, Philologist Kagan is called in to try to break down the language barrier.

On the outside, you could easily mistake this for simply another man in a space suit sci fi drama, but this is a whole lot more.

It's well imagined, well realised, and Quarlo as a character has several different layers, he arrives with alien principles and beliefs, and one single strategy, to kill, he's essentially a human, without any humanity.

Kagan is equally interesting, was he well meaning, naive, daring, or a little cavalier? I'm not sure anyone would put their family at risk like that.

Some decent special effects for the time, and that battle ground set looked pretty good.

I have to comment on that much talked about moment, the first thing you do when you meet an alien, you give him a cigarette, obviously we're in more enlightenment times now, but that was just all kinds of wrong, but just remember the context.

A good start to series 2.

8/10.

I loved this episode, my uncle Allen Jaffe and Michael Ansara had mutual respect for one another. When I would visit him he would tell nearly endless stories about the people he worked with. He had fond words for Michael And are.

This particular episode I was allowed to stay up really late, for a young school boy, and watch him fight once again.

Lloyd Nolan was great at being the one who decodes Quarlo's speak. This was my introduction to the great series The Outer Limits. Between outer limits and twilight zone, we learned that alternate worlds and universes existed, at least on TV. These two shows also brought forth some of the greatest actors, writers, and other talent and produced a high quality show with little to no budget. There are many of my generation that still love to watch the show, I'm glad there are reruns and DVDs of these great shows.

Among the many accomplishments of Harlan Ellison was SOLDIER, his anti-war war story about a soldier from the future cast into the Past (our Present) and pursued through Time by an enemy soldier. Riveting stuff, Then and Now, and one of the many highlights of THE OUTER LIMITS (the original series). Ellison may be gone, now, but his Words (and DEEDS) will live Forever: he always took the Moral High Ground and never flinched, never gave an inch, even in the face of seemingly unbeatable odds. In a world where 90% of the Earth's population breathes polluted air (and drinks polluted water and eats tainted food) and 7 Million people die every year from breathing that pollution, Ellison was vital to our Understanding of what it is we should be standing for (and standing firmly AGAINST). He was and always will be an Inspiration to those of us whose voices mostly go unheard.

Quarlo__Kobrigny__Privt__RN_CN_TN_TO!

I saw this when broadcast in 1964 and retained scattered detail ever since. This episode led me to purchase the second season set of Outer Limits so I could check the accuracy of my memory. (Not perfect. I thought his last name was Kobrigniak but had his 'serial number' as close as intelligibility allows.

My point in this detail is that when I first saw Terminator on VHS tape rented from a video store in 1985, THIS is the association I flashed on. This was before the internet and IMDb so I had no way of knowing Harlan Ellison wrote the script for 'Soldier' but I did review the credits to see if I could determine a link between two stories where soldiers from an apocalyptic future are transported back in time to fight it out in "the present".

Harlan Ellison was a prolific Sci-Fi writer and produced a number of excellent stories both in print and for visual media but I was more into Asimov and barely knew his name in 1964. I don't think the way he does and some of his stories (I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream) leave me cold. However, though I may disagree with Ellison's view of many things, I think he got it right when he claimed credit for the idea behind Terminator. The details are different and the franchise has evolved into a time travel conundrum that writers are still playing with in Sara Conner Chronicles, but where else have you heard of the basic premise?

The future in the 40s, 50s, and early 60s was almost always a bright utopia. ("The Marching Morons" not withstanding) This is not true in 'Soldier' and I think the similarities with Terminator are to many to ignore.

Ellison probably should not get a credit saying "based on" but certainly you might describe The Terminator as "inspired by a story by Harlan Ellison". Cameron would have been 10 years old when this played on TV. Maybe he did not 'memorize' it the way I did seeing that broadcast at age 17, but I'll bet he saw it...even if he does not really remember doing so. Memory works that way. "Inspired by".