The Outer Limits Season 1 quotes

[opening narration] Night comes too soon on the battlefield. For some men it comes permanently, their eyes never open to the light of day. But for this man, fighting this war, there is never total darkness. The spidery beams of light in the sky are the descendants of the modern laser beam -- heat rays that sear through tungsten, steel and flesh as though they were cheesecloth. And this soldier must go against those weapons. His name is Qarlo, and he is a foot soldier, the ultimate infantryman. Trained from birth by the state, he has never known love, or closeness, or warmth. He is geared for only one purpose: to kill the enemy. And the enemy waits for him.

[Act One narration] Time is fluid. The waters of forever close — and passage may not be completed. The present and the future are for a moment united. And the Enemy, half-today, half-tomorrow, is locked between…

[closing narration] From the darkest of all pits, from the soul of man, come the darkest questions. Did the soldier finally come to care for those he protected? Or was it just his instinct? Questions from the dark pit, but no answers, for answers lie in the future. Is it a future in which men are machines born to kill? Or is there time for us? Time. All the time in the world. But is that enough?

[opening narration] The most brilliant planet in our solar system is Venus, named for the Greek Love-Goddess. It is closer to Earth than any other planet — twenty-eight million miles away. Until sometime in the last half of the twentieth century it is still a planet shrouded in mystery, enveloped in a heavy blanket of clouds and steam. Because its surface temperature was believed to be several times that of Earth's, it was not thought possible for Man to reach Venus and come back... until one day, somebody did it.

[to his wife] I love you more than anything in this world... You're the only "world" I can discover over and over again, every time I come home to you, every time I'm close to you. You're the best of all possible worlds.

[closing narration] The eternal, never-ceasing search for knowledge often leads to dark and dangerous places. Sometimes it demands risks not only of those who are searching, but of others who love them. These, in their own special way, know that knowledge is never wasted, nor is love.

[opening narration] Since the first living thing gazed upward through the darkness, man has seldom been content merely to be born, to endure, and to die. With a curious fervor he has struggled to unlock the mysteries of creation and of the world in which he lives. Sometimes he has won. Sometimes he has lost. And sometimes, in the tumbling torrents of space and time, he has brief glimpses of a world he never even dreams.

[closing narration] Paradoxically, man's endless search for knowledge has often plundered his courage and warped his vision, so that he has faced the unknown with terror rather than awe, and probed the darkness with a scream rather than a light. Yet there have always been men who have touched the texture of tomorrow with understanding and courage. Through these men, we may yet touch the stars.

[opening narration] As far back as men have recorded their history, veils have been lowered to disclose a vast new reality — rents in the fabric of Man's awareness. And somewhere, in the endless search of the curious mind, lies the next vision, the next key to his infinite capacity...

What difference does it make, whether it's 20 minutes or 20 years, since neither amounts to the faintest echo of the tiniest whisper in the thunder of time?

But don't you see, you'll be doing exactly what you say your fighting: killing. Using force because your certain your right.

But it wouldn't be the same thing because we'd be advocating nothing, forcing nothing. Now there are many stong men in the world today fighting for tolerance, compassion, wisdom, for your right to be different, to be wrong even. They wouldn't be touched. Only the dogmatists, the infallible.

But that's trying to play God. You just can't do that.

Why not if God's too busy? Who to say its not his will, that we're not his agents?

[closing narration] Some success, some failure, but either way the gnawing hunger to know is never sated, and the road to the unknown continues to be dark and strange.

[opening narration] Through all the legends of ancient peoples — Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerican, Semetic — runs the saga of the Eternal Man, the one who never dies, called by various names in various times, but historically known as Gilgamesh, the man who has never tasted death ... the hero who strides through the centuries ...

I'm prepared to die.

How prepared? Why not give yourself a couple of minutes?

We all knew we would die when we came on this mission. It was worth it.

You can stay alive in this time.

I don't care about that. Helping my race is more important.

Bargain week on patriots.

Call it what you like. I'm not afraid to die.

Really? Then why are you whispering? You Kyben were always super patriots, especially when you bombed Earth from ten miles out. How does your patriotism sit with burning women and children alive?

That's war.

So's this.

[closing narration] Like the Eternal Man of Babylonian legend, like Gilgamesh, one thousand plus two hundred years stretches before Trent. Without love. Without friendship. Alone: neither man nor machine, waiting. Waiting for the day he will be called to free the humans who gave him mobility. Movement, but not life.