This was the 6th episode of The Outer Limits (Season 1) and was shown in October 1963. It is considered by most, to be one of the very best episodes of the show, which broadcast from 1963-1965 on ABC. The show was revived in 1995 but was cancelled in 2002.
The story begins with intrepid astronaut ‘Captain Joseph Reardon’ as he returns to Earth after a deep-space mission. He finds himself landing on a seemingly alien landscape. As he explores he meets a creature that is malformed and misshapen. ‘Reardon’ asks where he is and the creature, ‘Andro’ (Martin Landau) explains that this is Earth in 2149 after it has been devastated by a scientist ‘Bertram Cabot Jr.’ (from his own time) working on an extra-terrestrial organism and producing a viral symbiont in, that altered the human race, prevented reproduction and blighted the environment creating this alien wasteland. ‘Reardon’ postulates that he has been transported here through a ‘‘time-concussion’’.
‘Andro’ takes the astronaut to a library which contains ( in book form) the sum history of the human race. He explains that once he dies then that is the end of the human race. It is hopeless, he opines. However, ‘Reardon’ proposes, that ‘Andro’ return with him in his spaceship to the point where he experienced the ‘’time-concussion’’ and go back and stop ‘Cabot Jr.’ from creating the symbiont and destroying the world.
However, as they re-enter the space-time anomaly ‘Reardon’ suddenly begins to fade out of existence. As he is being erased he tells ‘Andro’ to stop at nothing to prevent ‘Cabot Jr.’ and kill him, to save countless lives, if there is no other way. The deformed ‘Andro’ arrives back on Earth and after an unpleasant brief encounter with a young woman in the woods finds his way to where ‘Bertram Cabot’ has been living. He is able to disguise himself through hypnotic suggestion.
But ‘Cabot’ has left. However the woman he saw in the woods is living there and he finds out that she is engaged to be married to ‘Cabot’. ‘Andro’ is attracted to her. But he then realises that she is the mother to be of his target and that ‘Cabot Jr.’ has yet to be born. ‘Andro’ has arrived before his target has even been born. A change of approach is necessary. So ‘Andro’ after meeting her fiance tries to persuade him not to marry ‘Noelle’ but ‘Cabot Sr.’ rejects his pleas and responds that ‘Andro’ must be a fool or a madman, the way he is talking.
The wedding is about to take place and ‘Andro’ must act to prevent it. He pulls out the gun he had taken from ‘Reardon’ and aims it. He is spotted, stopped and a confrontation ensues. ‘Andro’ escapes with Noelle and they run to the woods. He explains the real purpose of his mission and reveals himself to ‘Noelle’. However, ‘Noelle’ is not shocked. On the contrary she has already seen through this outward appearance and into his soul. She has fallen in love with ‘Andro’ and asks that he take her with him, back to the future.
They make towards the spaceship and are pursued by a gun-toting posse (the torch bearing lynch mob from ‘Frankenstein’ has been upgraded) led by the angry ex-fiancé, ‘Bertram Cabot’. They just make it and head for the space-time anomaly. However, as they enter the portal ‘Andro’ begins to fade away just like ‘Reardon’ and the closing scene is ‘Noelle’, crying, completely alone in the spaceship and in space, surrounded by darkness. We know that the future of Earth is now safe but that is of little comfort to ‘Noelle’ who has lost her love and of course not forgetting the son who was never born. That timeline has ceased to exist just like ‘Reardon’ and ‘Andro’ have and of course she can never return to her previous Earth. Hers is the real sacrifice.
This episode is itself much like a symbiont combining the tropes of time travel and horror with resonances that anyone familiar with ‘The Time Essential’, ‘La Jetee’ and ‘Twelve Monkeys’ will notice immediately. A man returns to the past to stop a future apocalypse. In all three and in ‘The Man Who Was Never Born’ he returns not to the anticipated time but is off by some way and is (once he starts alerting people to the danger and wailing like a modern-day Cassandra) confronted by vested interests, who view him, as either a fool or a madman, or both.
All time-travellers know too much about the future and it is obviously unpalatable news to all concerned as it usually involves both the elimination of an innocent in the present and a terrible glimpse into the end of humanity. But he cannot prove any of it. It is just his testimony. Therefore, logically, he is either a rambling fool or a rambling madman. In this time-travelling scenario the truth doesn’t set you free, but, it almost always, gets you killed. It’s a suicide mission.
But there is some consolation for our hero whilst still alive. For he almost always falls in love and is undoubtedly happy for a short time. In ‘La Jetee’ our hero returns to the past to be with his love even though it results in his death. Although of course he has secured the future of the world after the nuclear holocaust. In TMWWNB ‘Andro’ (Archaic Greek for Man and the hero in ‘La Jetee’ is known as ‘The Man’) returns and falls in love with the mother of mankind’s Nemesis, ‘Bertram Cabot Jr.’ whom he is there to assassinate. In ‘Terminator’ we go one stage further as the returning time-travelling future soldier not only falls in love with the woman (who will this time give birth to the Saviour of humanity) but is, the father and creator of the Saviour of Mankind. Religious symbolism anyone?
Of course in ‘Twelve Monkeys’ there is a romantic relationship between ‘James Cole’ and ‘Doctor Railly’ even though she had in the beginning called ‘Cole’: ‘‘mentally divergent’’ which reminds one of the scene where ‘Andro’ is talking to ‘Bertram Cabot’ on the porch, trying obliquely to stop him from marrying ‘Noelle’ and creating the Nemesis of Mankind. The same sentiments are forthcoming from ‘Cabot Sr.’ which we would, almost certainly reiterate, had it not been for our privileged position as viewer.
What is more striking for me is the idea of a biological, man-made virus being created and then used to destroy humanity which is the central theme in TMWWNB and ‘Twelve Monkeys’. We of course never see ‘Bertram Cabot Jr.’ as the rogue scientist but could he not have been the scientist, Dr Peters, in ‘Twelve Monkeys’ ?! Born in 1964 and the year is 1996 in the film. 32 years old and working on that symbiont?
Anthony Lawrence the writer of TMWWNB has said in an interview that the origin of the story was inspired by French poet and filmmaker, Jean Cocteau’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ (1946). This is perfectly illustrated in the scene which introduces the episode as ‘Noelle’ sees ‘Andro’ in his original form and is scared out of her wits. Who wouldn’t be? Most of the episode after ‘Andro’ meets ‘Noelle’ at the Boarding House plays itself out just like the fairy-tale as she ‘sees’ beneath the disfigurement that ‘Andro’ has been inflicted with (by her future, evil, wizard, son) into his heart and soul, which are pure and noble. The performance by Martin Landau is exceptional. The signs are everywhere from the earlier cultural references to great writers in the future library with ‘Capt Reardon’, the gentle and respectful handling of a toad and his refusal to kill at the wedding ceremony.
But who really is ‘The Beast’ ? On the surface it seems obviously to be ‘Andro’ but if we look deeper, then the clue and the answer resides categorically, in the title: ‘The Man Who Was Never Born’, for it can only now be Bertram Cabot Jr. He never becomes the scientist that creates the apocalyptic agent of our destruction. Yet is not science itself both beautiful and monstrous? A double-edged sword that can both protect humanity and destroy us? As ‘Andro’ earlier explained to ‘Reardon’ in the library: we went into space to explore the Universe and returned with an interstellar microbe that a scientist then altered into a deadly symbiont. Isn’t that the real monster? The monster that Mary Shelley warned us of 200 years ago? A Modern Prometheus in the form of the modern-day scientist who will stop at nothing to fulfill his mission, even if that places the whole world and all of humanity in existential jeopardy.
Marc Barham
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