The Man Who Was Never Born

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“The Man Who Was Never Born”

The Outer Limits episode

Episode no.

Season 1
Episode 6

Written by

Anthony Lawrence

Directed by

Leonard Horn

Guest stars

Martin Landau
Shirley Knight

Photographed by

Conrad Hall

Production no.

Original airdate

October 28, 1963

Episode chronology
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"The Sixth Finger"	"O.B.I.T."

List of The Outer Limits episodes

"The Man Who Was Never Born" is an episode of the original The Outer Limits television show. It first aired on 28 October 1963, during the first season.

1 Introduction
2 Opening narration
3 Plot
4 Closing narration
5 Cast
6 External links

[edit] Introduction

An astronaut returning to Earth finds himself flung 200 years into the future, where he finds the mutated remnants of humanity living on a ruined Earth.

[edit] Opening narration

Here, in the bright, clustered loneliness of the billion, billion stars, loneliness can be an exciting, voluntary thing, unlike the loneliness Man suffers on Earth. Here, deep in the starry nowhere, a man can be as one with space and time; preoccupied, yet not indifferent; anxious and yet at peace. His name is Joseph Reardon. He is, in this present year, thirty years old. This is the first time he has made this journey alone…

[edit] Plot

The astronaut, Joseph Reardon, lands on Earth only to find it a desolate and barren place. He meets Andro, a grotesque-looking creature who reveals that the year is now 2148 and the astronaut is almost 200 years into the future. Andro is one of the few survivors of a biological disaster brought on by a scientist called Bertram Cabot Jr.

Andro explains the situation and Reardon decides to see if he can return to his own time... and take Andro with him to show the future, and perhaps avoid it. While returning through the time rift, Reardon mysteriously vanishes from the capsule, leaving Andro to find a way to prevent his disastrous future from occurring. Andro uses his ability to immediately hypnotise anyone into seeing him as a normal human, and begins searching for some way to stop Cabot's work — even if it means, as a last resort, killing him.

It becomes clear that he has arrived too early. Bertram Cabot Jr. hasn't been born yet, and in fact his parents Noelle and Bertram Cabot Sr. are just about to be married. Andro, in his "human" guise, attempts to convince Cabot that he should not marry Noelle — with no success.

Andro begins to fall in love with Noelle. While attempting to kill Cabot with a revolver, he is too slow, is assaulted, and Andro's true appearance is discovered, resulting in his being forced to flee. Noelle follows him, and he explains his mission. Meanwhile Noelle confesses that she has fallen in love with Andro. She convinces him to take her with him to the future, thereby avoiding any possibility that she and Cabot will have a child. Unfortunately Andro disappears just as the ship arrives in "his" time — as he is The Man Who Was Never Born.

According to David J. Schow, there's an alternate, less harrowing ending featuring an extra character: the old man (Jack Raine).

[edit] Closing narration

It is said that if you move a single pebble on the beach, you set up a different pattern, and everything in the world is changed. It can also be said that love can change the future, if it is deep enough, true enough, and selfless enough. It can prevent a war, prohibit a plague, keep the whole world… whole.