Afterlife (The Outer Limits)

"Afterlife"
The Outer Limits episode
Episode no. Season 2
Episode 15
Directed by Mario Azzopardi
Written by John F. Whelpley
Production code 37
Original air date 19 May 1996
Guest stars

Clancy Brown as Linden Stiles, Garvin Cross as Hawkes, Richard Leacock as Taylor, Barbara Garrick as Dr. Ellen Kersaw, Alan Rachins as Mr. Maculhaney, Duncan Fraser as General Post

Episode chronology
← Previous
"The Heist"
Next →
"The Deprogrammers"
List of The Outer Limits episodes

"Afterlife" is an episode of The Outer Limits television series. It first aired on 19 May 1996, during the second season.

Contents

Introduction

A criminal wrongly convicted of murder is given a choice: to be the subject of a dangerous experiment with alien DNA, or the death penalty.

Opening narration

When the machinations of fear collide with man's inventive genius the result can be both irreversible and terrifying.

Plot

Stiles is a man wrongly convicted of murdering eleven people. He is offered a choice between execution and cooperating with an experiment. His religious beliefs don't allow him to choose execution, which would amount to suicide, so he is forced into participating in a genetic experiment to splice his genes with extraterrestrial DNA.

As a result Stiles changes into what appears to be a horrific monster with enhanced senses and mental capacity. His captors allow him to escape so that they may hunt him down. When the end comes near for Stiles, the tables turn as aliens resembling the now completely mutated Stiles appear. The aliens and Stiles beam away, leaving his pursuers to realize that they were being tested by the aliens and that they had failed the test.

Closing narration

Can the true reason we so fear the unknown be that we know ourselves...too well?

External links

Season 2 of The Outer Limits (1995-2002)

Stitch in TimeResurrectionUnnatural SelectionI Hear You CallingMind Over MatterBeyond the VeilFirst AnniversaryStraight and NarrowTrial by FireWorlds ApartThe RefugeInconstant MoonFrom WithinThe Heist • Afterlife • The DeprogrammersParadiseThe Light BrigadeFalling StarOut of BodyVanishing ActThe Sentence

List of The Outer Limits episodes: Original Series (1963-1965)The New Series (1995-2002)