Patient Zero (The Outer Limits)

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“Patient Zero”

The Outer Limits episode

Episode no.

Season 7
Episode 2

Written by

James Crocker

Directed by

Mario Azzopardi

Guest stars

Michael Rooker as Beckett, Tanya Allen as Amy Barrett, David Cubitt as Faber, Patrick McManus as Dr. Mendel

Production no.

134

Original airdate

23 March 2001

Episode chronology
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"Family Values"	"A New Life"

List of The Outer Limits episodes

"Patient Zero" is an episode of The Outer Limits television show. It first aired on 23 March 2001, during the seventh season.

1 Opening narration
2 Plot
3 Closing narration
4 External links

[edit] Opening narration

Can the fate of mankind hinge on a single act or are we helpless to change our destiny ?

[edit] Plot

An epidemic has broken out across earth, and most of humanity has been killed by a virus. The virus began with patient zero, a woman who comes into contact with the three DNA strands necessary for this virus to come into existence. A soldier, Colonel Beckett, is sent back in time to kill her and prevent the virus from forming.

Beckett becomes attached to the woman and decides not to kill her, but instead to simply keep her from making the contacts necessary to form the virus. In the revised timeline, Beckett himself becomes patient zero - in his attempt to protect the woman, he himself contracts all three strains and becomes sick. A fellow soldier arrives from the future, and Beckett is given the chance to sacrifice himself when his friend administers a fatal dose of poison. Since Beckett dies before the disease reaches its contagious stage (and the woman never develops the disease at all), the plague is stopped before it starts - in the new history, there never was an epidemic, all of the disease's former victims (including Beckett's family) are now alive, and humanity survives without ever contracting the virus.