Headscratchers / The Outer Limits (1995)

• When circumstances lead the protagonist of "Think Like a Dinosaur" to believe that teleportation is a form of murder, he faces a To Be Lawful or Good decision: defy the aliens and lose the opportunity his family so desperately needs, or obey them and have the death of an innocent human being on his conscience. The problem: the opportunity his family would get is to be teleported. So either i) teleportation is murder, in which case he should tell the aliens where to go stuff their "opportunity"; or ii) teleportation isn't murder, in which case, no harm, no foul. Either way, where is the moral dilemma?
  • The main character Michael evidently believes that as long as the person is incinerated at the same time transportation takes place, the person simply wakes up at the receiving end and it isn't murder. The problem only arose when the subject wasn't incinerated and thought they were a different person to the one on the other side. The epilogue that takes place two years later shows that Michael is still working as the teleport operator; if he thought it was murder, he wouldn't continue (and wouldn't consider using the teleporter on his daughter).
• In "Double Helix" Dr. Nodel has discovered a way to turn on Introns in human DNA. He starts experimenting on himself and then other humans. This eventually leads him to discovering an alien spacecraft. The episode spins this as a positive result of unrestrained scientific enquiry, but until the end, all he seemed to be doing was setting up his own cult with himself as leader.
• The Revival's season finale Clip Shows. Not because of the cheapness or how the plots are paper-thin, but because of the Continuity Snarl and Shoot the Shaggy Dog aspects. Often times, the episodes used for "backstory" have contradictory backstories and/or resolutions of their own, which can kill the suspension of disbelief if you can't forget how the episodes actually turned out. Then there's the fact that every Clip Show episode is a Shoot the Shaggy Dog story for the protagonists if not all of humanity, which turns Earn Your Happy Ending or Bittersweet Ending episodes into more Shoot the Shaggy Dog stories by extension.
  • Actually, the clip show episode "Better Luck Next Time" ended with the protagonists winning. Sure, they needed to do a Heroic Sacrifice, but they won.
  • I think the clips were always given different contexts than in the episodes they came from so they could all be in the same continuity.
• In"Music of the Spheres", only young people could hear the perfect music in the strange noise, and all of the teenagers were being transformed. By the end of the episode, transformation somehow became a free choice for anyone. Did I miss something?
  • There is a mention of adapting the transformation signal to allow anyone to transform, in the montage of global preparations for the sun's shift.
  • Actually, the father mentions that a series of hormonal injections was developed allowing older people to achieve the transformation, if they want it.
• If "Lithia" consists of only women, where are the children from?
  • Two words: semen cryopreservation.
  • On their technical level? Or is it Schizo Tech?
    • It's probably related to how they kept the man cryogenically preserved for all that time. It's not really clear where the power to keep him preserved came from either, but if you accept that he stayed a popsicle all that time, you may as well accept that they also managed to preserve a ton of semen.
  • Also how did they make sure all the babies were female? Or were they-am I forgetting something?
    • All of the male children died within weeks of birth as the Scourge which killed all men remained in the atmosphere.
    • Ah okay, thanks.
• Regarding the 1996 episode "First Anniversary", which concerned Glamour Failure of aquatic aliens who disguised themselves as human women, does anyone agree with the idea (suggested in YouTube's comments for the video) that the aliens' true form was more like Worzel Gummidge with burnt skin and black padding? (I added this to Special Effects Failure).
• The alien invaders' plan in "Quality of Mercy" has a massive flaw in it: They have no proof that what Skokes told Bree is the truth. Since he believes he's giving her hope in a seemingly hopeless situation, he could be pulling that story out of his ass for all they know.

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