Heartwarming / The Outer Limits (1995)

• The ending of "Alien Shop". For a while (despite what the titular alien says in the beginning of the episode), we are led to believe that he is a malicious Evil Mentor to anyone who comes in and buys anything from his Bazaar of the Bizarre. However, at the end, it is revealed that he only wants to teach people lessons, and will ensure that the lessons he teaches won't end up hurting anyone. In particular, the guy who was given the wallet reforms and takes a legitimate job to take care of his wife and his newborn baby.
• "I Hear You Calling": A woman witnesses a mysterious man zapping people with a ray and apparently reducing them to ash. Horrified, she enters a cat-and-mouse game with the man, trying to escape. The man catches up to her and explains that he is an alien, removing people who have contracted a deadly alien virus to prevent it from spreading to the rest of Earth's people. He says that she has the virus and must be removed. She sadly agrees to sacrifice herself for the sake of humanity. The alien is shocked and explains that she isn't going to die. He was literally removing the infected people; his ray isn't a disintegrator, it's a teleporter. The infected people are sent to his home planet, where the environment arrests the virus as long as they stay. He explains that she and the other infected people will be inducted as citizens and allowed to get jobs, play, and love. Delighted, she takes his hand and they teleport away, the ash forming an outline of them Holding Hands.
• "Worlds Apart": The astronaut playing "Someone To Watch Over Me" over the radio as a final farewell to his wife after accepting that he can't be rescued. Also, his wife's new beau did everything he could to rescue the astronaut without any hint of jealousy. There's a powerful scene where the astronaut reports on the radio that his life raft is being attacked by a giant jellyfish-like creature. The husband (a marine biologist) tells him to abandon the raft and swim away. Everyone in mission control gets suspicious of him, but the astronaut decides to trust him and jumps into the water. It turned out to be the right thing to do, as the monster drags the raft into the water but ignores him.
• "The Conversion": The mysterious stranger (implied to be an angel) teaching the criminal compassion, then switching bodies with him and letting himself get arrested in the criminal's place. The criminal is so moved by being given a second chance that he gives a huge stack of money to a guy who lost his daughter's college fund, then apparently begins Walking the Earth to help others in need. The stranger in the criminal's body is then shown helping his fellow inmates.
• "Tribunal": The Holocaust survivor being reunited with his daughter, who's been saved from being gassed after his son rescued her with a time travel device from being killed in 1944. Even better, the son is the one to save his father. His father was removed from the camp on orders of a guard to be put in a work party. His son, while carrying away his sister, ordered his father to be put on the party.
• "Stasis": Eric and Larissa finally being united. Dominick saving the day with a Big Damn Heroes rescue at the end, considering he was jealous of Eric for getting together with Larissa.
• "Dark Child": First, when Laura is worried that she's getting old, her daughter Tammy says she is beautiful. Laura visits a woman in the asylum who claims to have been abducted and says she believes her. In the twist, Tammy's father is revealed to be an evil alien, and tries to convince Tammy to join him. With Laura's help, Tammy rejects him and she and Laura defeat and kill him. Tammy begins to angst, especially since her father's true form was hideous and worries that she will be like him, but Laura says she is beautiful and they go home.
  The Control Voice: (closing narration) Fear can be a powerful and driving emotion but it is no match for the love between mother and child.
• "Dark Matters": Long story short, the heroes win, Everyone Lives (I think, at least everyone plot significant), the ghosts of the crews of the wrecked ships are able to move on, Paul makes up with his dead brother and a happy ending coupled with a Moment of Awesome.
• "Promised Land": Rebecca taking a moment to honor Prisoner 98843 (the protagonist of "The Camp", who apparently died off-screen between these episodes) and adopting her Cute Mute daughter. The daughter writing in the dirt to communicate that her name is Tali. After several battles between the humans and aliens, brought on by a misunderstanding because they cannot understand each other's language and assume that the other is an evil invader, Rebecca goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge after Tali is injured, but realizes that she was wrong when she sees the alien mother trying to shield her child. The episode ends with the aliens using their technology to heal Tali, then she and the alien child play.
  The Control Voice: (closing narration) It is one of the great mysteries of existence, how the smallest drop of understanding can cleanse a sea of mistrust and hate.
• In "Feasibility Study," an entire neighborhood is transported to another planet ruled by the Triunes, a physically weak and incredibly lazy race that is seeking a species to enslave. The Triunes have teleported this group of Earthlings to their world in the titular feasibility study—if the humans prove able to survive on their world, all of mankind will be taken and trapped in eternal servitude. Sarah, a rebellious teenage girl who has a strained relationship with her father Joshua, comes across a member of the last alien race the Triunes tried to capture; that race contracted a fatal disease that turns their bodies to stone. Sarah is inadvertently infected, as the disease spreads through physical contact. This gives Joshua an idea, which he shares at a gathering of the townspeople in their church: if he and the rest of the humans deliberately infect themselves, the Triunes will think that they aren't feasible, thus keeping the Earth safe. The neighbors are reluctant, and for a few moments, Joshua is the only one who takes Sarah's hand...until the neighborhood priest walks forward and takes Joshua's, infecting himself. A young black man then joins them, followed by a mother and her son. Gradually, the entire community joins together, sacrificing themselves, but saving humanity.
  • The episode is a remake of a TOS episode which, despite differing in some details, has the same plot and is equally Heartwarming.
• "Vanishing Act": Jon Cryer keeps shifting ahead through time 10 years each day, seeing everything he knew fade around him while his loved ones dedicate their lives to trying to help him, including a son he never witnessed growing up. By the end of the episode the aliens responsible for the sporadic time jumps send him back to his original time after the problem is communicated to them. He runs up to his young-again wife's house to hug her and notes that it will be a good year.
  • Although whether or not his return will alter their mutual history enough that the son he sired and met across four consecutive time-jumps won't even be conceived is left hanging...
• "Sarcophagus": An archaeologist team led by a bickering couple discovers an alien in suspended animation in a cave. The revived alien is a quite friendly being, but the rest of the team betrays the couple, intending to kill them to keep the profits from the discovery for themselves. The alien defends the couple who befriended him and the crooks are killed in a cave-in that unfortunately traps them. The experience makes the couple fall in love with each other again. As thanks for helping him, the alien decides to sacrifice himself by putting the couple in suspended animation so that they can survive (there was only enough for two people). A thousand years later, the cave is rediscovered and the couple revived. Although the alien is long dead, his people arrived and befriended humanity. The Earth is now a paradise for the couple to enjoy.
• "From Within": Neil Patrick Harris plays Howie, a mentally challenged man who, because of his disability, is immune to the parasites that infect his sister (and the rest of the town). At the end, he dynamites the entrance of the mine (despite his (unknown to him) reinfected (he had helped cure her earlier) sister telling him not to) where the parasites came from and, since sunlight is fatal to the parasites, they die and the townspeople are cured. It ends with the townspeople praising Harris's character and patting him on the back.
  • Earlier, his sister, Sheila, under the influence of the parasite, berates her brother as a useless idiot and how she's wasted her life caring for him. She's ready to leave but ends up passing out on the couch from the effects of the parasite (or drinking too much alcohol). Looking at her for a long moment, Howie puts a blanket over her and gives her a hug, somehow understanding she isn't herself and still unconditionally loving her.
  • When he manages to cure her, Sheila is horrified at what she said and makes it clear she loves Howie no matter what.
    Howie: So I'm still your hero?
    Sheila: Oh, yes, you're still my hero. More than ever.
• In "Abduction," five high schoolers (the jock Ray, the popular girl Danielle, the nerd Jason, the religious girl Brianna, and the loner Cody) are taken to a replica of their high school. A massive green-skinned alien says they have been chosen for an experiment: In five hours, they must vote on which of them will be killed or all of them die. After hours of bickering, loner Cody shocks them by voting for religious Brianna, who is killed. The other three vanish as Cody confesses he was jealous of them all and planned to shoot the other four students. The alien reveals this was all to show Cody the consequences of such actions. He sends them back to moments before their abduction with Brianna alive again. While the other three are happy, Cody goes to the principal's office to turn in the gun, taking advantage of this second chance.
  • It's not just Cody as it's indicated the others are changed as well. Danielle admits she was playing a role and now ready to be herself, Ray is prepared to stand up to his controlling dad, and Jason is inspired to be more confident as well.
• Episodes such as "Tribunal", "Gettysburg" and "Time to Time" feature the Time Travel Institute which seeks to correct problems created by time travellers. Its' existence and the presence of benevolent aliens/mysterious forces seeking to help mankind in some episodes giving hope in regard to the various Downer and Cruel Twist Endings of the series such as final 'Final Appeal'.

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