The Sixth Finger

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The Outer Limits episode
“The Sixth Finger”

Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 5
Guest star(s)	David McCallum Jill Haworth Edward Mulhare
Writer(s)	Ellis St. Joseph
Director	James Goldstone
Cinematographer	John M. Nickolaus
Production no.	11
Original airdate	October 14, 1963
Episode chronology
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“The Man With the Power”	“The Man Who Was Never Born”

"The Sixth Finger" is an episode of the original The Outer Limits television show. It first aired on 14 October 1963, during the first season.

1 Introduction
2 Opening narration
3 Plot synopsis
4 Closing narration
5 Quote
6 Possible sources of inspiration
7 Cast
8 External links and references

[edit] Introduction

A scientist develops the means to advance the evolution of man by hundreds of thousands of years.

[edit] Opening narration

"Where are we going? Life, the timeless mysterious gift, is still evolving. What wonders, or terrors, does evolution hold in store for us in the next ten thousand years? In a million? In six million?"

[edit] Plot synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Set in a remote Welsh mining town, the plot involves a renegade scientist who discovers how to affect the speed of evolutionary mutation. A disgruntled local miner, who volunteers for the experiment, enables the professor to create a being with enhanced mental capabilities, who has also grown a "sixth finger" on each hand. But when the mutation process begins to operate independently of the professor's influence, the mutant miner takes control of the experiment. Now equipped with superior intelligence and powers of thought that are capable of great destruction, such as telekinesis, the miner decides to take revenge on the mining town he loathes.

[edit] Closing narration

"An experiment too soon, too swift. And yet may we not still hope to discover a method by which within one generation the whole human race could be rendered intelligent, beyond hatred, revenge, or the desire for power. Is that not after all the ultimate goal of evolution?"

[edit] Quote

"The human race has a gift, Professor, a gift that sets it above all the other creatures that abound upon this planet: the gift of thought, of reasoning, of understanding. The highly-developed brain. But the human race has ceased to develop. It struggles for petty comfort and false security; there is no time for thought. Soon there will be no time for reasoning, and Man will lose sight of the truth!"

David McCallum as Gwyllm Griffiths

[edit] Possible sources of inspiration

There is a curious connection between this episode and George Bernard Shaw's play Back to Methuselah. The final act of the show contains this exchange between Cathy Evans and Gwyllm Griffiths:

Gwyllm (appearing in Mathers' lab, to Cathy): Don't be afraid!

Cathy: What have you done?

Gwyllm: I was going to destroy everyone. But suddenly...

(cue Dominic Frontiere's gentle theme with harp and vibraphone)

...it no longer mattered. I evolved beyond hatred or revenge or even the desire for power. I could feel myself reaching that stage in the dim future of mankind when the mind will cast off the hamperings of the flesh and become all thought and no matter. A vortex of pure intelligence in space. It is the goal of evolution: Man's final destiny is to become what he imagined in the beginning, when he first learned the idea of the angels.

(and a moment later, when he's seated in the target chamber of Professor Mathers' evolution machine:)

Gwyllm: Now must I break the last barrier between the flesh and the spirit!

Bits of this dialogue seem to be lifted practically verbatim from Lilith's final speech in Shaw's Back To Methuselah:

"[A]fter passing a million goals they press on to the goal of redemption from the flesh, to the vortex freed from matter, to the whirlpool in pure intelligence that, when the world began, was a whirlpool in pure force. And though all that they have done seems but the first hour of the infinite work of creation, yet I will not supersede them until they have forded this last stream that lies between flesh and spirit, and disentangled their life from the matter that has always mocked it. . .

I am Lilith: I brought life into the whirlpool of force, and compelled my enemy, Matter, to obey a living soul. But in enslaving Life's enemy I made him Life's master; for that is the end of all slavery; and now I shall see the slave set free and the enemy reconciled, the whirlpool become all life and no matter. And because these infants that call themselves ancients are reaching out towards that, I will have patience with them still; though I know well that when they attain it they shall become one with me and supersede me, and Lilith will be only a legend and a lay that has lost its meaning. Of Life only is there no end; and though of its million starry mansions many are empty and many still unbuilt, and though its vast domain is as yet unbearably desert, my seed shall one day fill it and master its matter to its uttermost confines. And for what may be beyond, the eyesight of Lilith is too short. It is enough that there is a beyond."