Memories
"Mary McNeal, dealer in dreams and memories to whom the recovering of past lives is the greatest good she can render to a forgetful humanity. 8:57 P.M., and Mary McNeal makes another attempt to discover a previous life. However, the journey she is about to take is to another place. A land whose borders are defined by the region we call — the Twilight Zone."
Mary McNeal (Barbara Stock) is a hypnotherapist who specializes in the art of past-life regression, using her skills in hypnotic suggestion to help people trigger memories of lives they once had, but can never do the same thing to herself. After boring herself to sleep through this exact method, Mary discovers, while on a house call, that she has entered an alternate universe where reincarnation is real, since everyone around her can remember the former lives they had. Accepting that her current line of work is useless in her current predicament, Mary tries to get a new job, but having no past lives and no skills other than hypnotism leaves her struggling. She also learns that some people whose current lives are utterly miserable are gradually killing themselves, leading Mary to theorize that she may actually have a new career after all.
Tropes
- Alternate Universe: Mary is transported to one where reincarnation exists, and everyone can remember their past lives. The fact that she doesn't have any previous lives at all stumps the employment clinic when she goes to get a new job.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: For a long time, Mary has believed that if everyone remembered their past lives, they would be kinder to each other, as they would be able to remember being less fortunate than they are now. The next morning, she wakes up in an alternate universe where everyone remembers all their past lives, and they're utterly miserable because of this. Many of them are depressed because they keep getting weighed down by memories of grudges and traumatic experiences that happened to them decades or centuries earlier, while others are miserable because their past lives were happy and full in contrast to their current ones. It's gotten to be such a problem that the law of this world freely offers people the chance to kill themselves so they can be reincarnated into a newer, better life.
- Bookends: In the opening scene, Mary uses hypnosis to regress her latest patient, Lorraine Gustin, to one of her past lives: a dressmaker whose shop was raided and burned by British soldiers during the American Revolution. In the final scene, Mary uses hypnosis to help her latest patient, Ruth Gordon, forget all of her past lives so that she can make the life she has now happier.
- Crapsack World: Mary ends up in an alternate universe where reincarnation is real. She soon learns that society has grown stagnant in this world because it's increasingly difficult for people to cope with memories of their past lives. Jim Sinclair, the worker at the employee office who talks to her, tells her that many people are traumatized by tragedies and consumed by the need for revenge from incidents that occurred lifetimes ago. He belongs to a group that believes the only way their society can survive is for everyone to forget their past lives and focus on building better lives in the present. Being a hypnotherapist, Mary is able to facilitate this through hypnosis, putting this world on the path to a brighter tomorrow.
- Driven to Suicide: At one point, Mary talks to a homeless woman on the street, who is letting herself succumb to exposure so she can reincarnate into a newer and better life. She tells Mary that the law in this universe allows people to legally commit suicide if they aren't happy in their current lives, with some killing themselves because they can't handle the pain and grief that they suffered in their past lives, while others do so in the hope that their next life will be better.
- In Spite of a Nail: The history of the alternate universe is extremely similar to the regular one, in spite of the fact that people have always been able to remember their past lives. For instance, Jim asks Mary if she was one of the Borgias, Attila the Hun, Lady MacBeth, or Adolf Hitler in one of her past lives. He also mentions that mass murders in Russia, Uganda, and Guyana (seemingly the Jonestown massacre) are rather common. It's only in recent years that history has diverged in any significant way, as the burden that everyone feels because of their past lives is causing society to break down.
- Nice Girl: Mary is undoubtedly one of the nicest and most gentle therapists ever seen on TV. She embodies human compassion and uses hypnotism to help people with miserable lives in the present day flash back to lives that were more pleasurable solely to make them happy and unveil hidden traumas. When she learns that she's wound up in a world where reincarnation is real and people remember their past lives, she doesn't get upset that her skills are useless and goes to get another job. In the end, after learning that the law allows people to kill themselves to reincarnate into a better life, Mary is able to go to work as a progression therapist, using hypnosis to help people forget their past lives so they can have better ones in the present.
- Past-Life Memories: Since reincarnation is real in the alternate universe, everyone has the ability to recall their past lives. The memories of these lives include past grudges, traumas, and every stressful event they've experienced. If their current life sucks, they're legally allowed to kill themselves so they can potentially reincarnate into a new one.
- "Ray of Hope" Ending: Mary is still stuck in the alternate universe and may never be able to get back home, but she's able to keep doing what she does best and use hypnosis to help those in the alternate universe forget about their miserable past lives and focus on making the ones they have now better, slowly-but-surely helping this universe's stagnant society become functional once again.
- Reincarnation: Mary ends up in an alternate universe where it's real, as everyone there is able to remember the details of their past lives as if they happened to them personally. Occasionally, peoples' souls go out of circulation for a time before being reborn again. New souls are created, but such people often have a vacant look compared to people with past lives.
- The Unreveal: The way that boring herself to sleep through her own hypnosis tapes sends Mary to an alternate universe is left unrevealed.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Jim and his group from the alternate universe. They claim to be "undecided" in their alignment with the government, and they wind up abducting Mary and nearly overdosing her with truth serum to learn if she's the "chosen one" they've been searching for. They also take the time to apologize to Mary for putting her through the ordeal and call an ambulance for the homeless woman she attempted to help, and they only go after her at all because they want her to help the people of their struggling society forget their past lives and cease all the death and mayhem.
"Mary McNeal, who set out on a voyage of discovery that brought her home again by a most curious route. Now appointed guardian of doors best kept sealed, in the mirror, mirror world — of the Twilight Zone."
