Control Voice quotes from The Outer Limits

[opening narration] In northern Greenland, the mountains stand like a wall along Victoria Channel, whose straight course marks the line of the great Baffin Fault. Until recently, not even the Eskimos ventured into this arctic waste; but, today, as in other lonely places of the world, the land is dominated by those instruments of detection which stand as a grim reminder of Man's fear of Man. This is Point TABU, a name given this predominantly underground base by a young officer who explained that the letters in TABU stood for 'Total Abandonment of Better Understanding'. Some two hundred men and a few women make this their permanent residence. Their task is to maintain a constant alert against enemy attack, and be prepared to respond to it, devastatingly.

[closing narration] A weapon? No, only an instrument: neither good nor evil until men put it to use. And then like so many of man's inventions, it can be used either to save lives or destroy them, to make men sane or to drive them mad, to increase human understanding or to betray it. But it will be men that make the choice. By itself the instrument is nothing until you add the human factor.

[opening narration] Rocks: silent, inanimate objects torn from the Earth's ancient crust. Yielding up to man over the long centuries all that is in know of the planet on which we live withholding from man forever their veiled secrets of the nature of matter and cosmic catastrophe, the secrets of other worlds in the vastness of the universe, of other forms of life, of strange organisms beyond the imagination of man.

[closing narration] Two black crystalline rocks: unclassifiable. Objects on the border between the living and the nonliving. A reminder of the thin line that separates the animate from the inanimate. Something to ponder on. Something to stay the hand when it reaches out innocently for the whitened pebble, the veined stone, the dead unmoving rocks of our planet.

[opening narration] A war between worlds has long been dreaded. Throughout recent history, Man, convinced that life on other planets would be as anxious and belligerent as life on his own, has gravely predicted that some dreadful form of combat would inevitably take place between our world and that of someone else. And Man was right. To the eternal credit of the peoples of this planet Earth, history shall be able to proclaim loudly and justly that in this war between Unified Earth and the planet Ebon, Ebon struck first. Ebon: Its form of life unknown, its way of life unpredictable. To the fighting troops of Earth, a black question mark at the end of a dark, foreboding journey.

[closing narration] The exploration of human behavior under simulated conditions of stress is a commonplace component of the machinery called war. So long as Man anticipates and prepares for combat, be it with neighboring nations or with our neighbors in space, these unreal games must be played, and there are only real men to play them. According to established military procedure, the results of the Ebon maneuvers will be recorded in books and fed into computers for the edification and enlightenment of all the strategists of the future. Perhaps they will learn something.

[opening narration] His name is Warren Edgar Morley. For the past six months, he has guarded this gate from eight in the morning until six at night, at which time he is replaced by another just like himself. These are the last few moments of his life.

[closing narration] The Conservation of Energy Law... a principle which states that energy can be changed in form but that it cannot be either created or destroyed. And this is true of all energy... the energy of genius, of madness, of the heart, of the atom. And so it must be lived with. It must be controlled, channeled for good, held isolated from evil, and somehow lived with, peaceably.

[opening narration] The mind of man has always longed to know what lies beyond the world we live in. Explorers have ventured into the deeps and the heights. Of these explorers some are scientists, some are mystics. Each is driven by a different purpose. The one thing they share in common is a wish to cross the Borderlands that lie beyond the Outer Limits.

[closing narration] There are worlds beyond and worlds within which the explorer must explore, but there is one power which seems to transcend space and time, life and death. It is a deeply human power which holds us safe and together when all other forces combine to tear us apart. We call it the power of love.

[opening narration] In man's dark and troubled history, there are vestiges of strange Gods. This stone statue was once such a god a thousand years gone by in the central mountains of Pan-America. Today, new gods have emerged: the god of power, the god of money. The Republic of San Blas lies west of the Orinoco Basin, slightly north of the equator. Its principle exports are coffee, copra, mahogany, mace and saffron. In a hundred odd years, the reigns of government have changed many times in blood and fire and death. The last of these revolutions was led by General Juan Mecurio, the most absolute and powerful ruler of them all. Only the Indians who live close to old gods in the volcanic uplands are unimpressed. They have seen the coming of conquistadors with the power of their guns and flashing flags, the revolutionaries with the power of their zeal and willingness to die, the Americans with the power of their money and bulldozers with their summer houseboats in the crater lake of Ali Papa with their gadgets and machines and devices.

[Act One narration] Moving through the deep, protected only by a tank of air and a hunting spear, the scientist/explorer descends beyond the San Blas shelf; but, all unknown to him, the observer is, himself, observed. Hidden in the sinuous rills of seaweed, sightless eyes, blind for centuries, stare out of the abyss. The legendary creature of the deep, sensing through neuro-receptors in its skin, becomes aware of the alien invader - Man...

[Act Four narration] Stressed and strained by constant drilling of ultrasonic beams, the concrete face of the dam cracks and falls. Ten million tons of pressure build towards ultimate collapse...

[closing narration] The forces of nature will not submit to injustice. No man has the right, nor will the checks and balances of the universe permit him to place his fellows under the harsh yoke of repression. Nor may he again place the forces of nature under the triple yoke of vanity, greed and ambition. In the words of Shelley, "here lies your tyrant who would rule the world immortal".

[opening narration] Throughout history, compassionate minds have pondered the dark and disturbing question: what is society to do with those members who are a threat to society, those malcontents and misfits whose behavior undermines and destroys the foundations of civilization? Different ages have found different answers. Misfits have been burned, branded and banished. Today, on this planet Earth, the criminal is incarcerated in humane institutions.....or he is executed. Other planets use other methods. This is the story of how the perfectionist rulers of the planet Zanti attempted to solve the problem of the Zanti misfits.