The Outer Limits: Final Appeal

Work Title: The Outer Limits: Final Appeal
Medium: TV Episode
Episode Title: Final Appeal
Year: 2000
Writer(s): Sam Egan
"Original" Writer: Yes Own work?: No
Summary:

Dr. Givens is a time traveler, on trial for her life in the year 2076. Technology has been outlawed - her time machine is in opposition to those rules. This is a story about the dangers and hopes of technology - an ethical debate.

  • Self-Written?: 1
  • Source Name:
  • Source URL:
Era/Year of Portrayal: distant_future
Distinctive characteristics of the world in portrayal:

2076. Technology has been outlawed after tremendous gains in technology - the dead could be brought back to life, full body transplants had been accomplished. However, three fourths of humanity was killed in a nuclear war, at some point in the 20th century, resulting in the anti-technology laws.

Technology

  • Name of portrayed presence-evoking technology: time machine
  • Description of the technology: The time machine is a group of machines, connected to each other by wires. It looks like about 5 desktop computers attached to each other. It has a remote control that the user inputs time and date into. Upon using the remote, the user opens a portal. Stepping into the portal is stepping backwards or forwards in time. Presence in another time period is then accomplished.
  • Nature of task or activity: The first Dr. Givens traveled in time to kill men who were later convicted of killing women. She was an avenger. The second Dr. Givens (there are many plot twists and turns) travels in time to learn about humanity. Ezekial, a man who uses the machine, uses it to escape the future.
  • Performance of the Technology: works well.
  • Description of creator(s): The orginal Dr. Theresa Givens created to time travel device in the 1990s. She is white, female and a scientist.
  • Major goal(s) of creator(s): To avenge the deaths of innocent women - later, to save humanity.
  • Description of users of technology: 2 women, both Dr. Givens, white, female, in their 30's. One man, white, 30's. all scientists.
  • Type(s) of presence experience in the portrayal: spatial_presence
  • Description of presence experience: Usually unpleasent. One woman travels through time with a gun, confronting killers and shooting them. Another travels through time to find humanity decimated by illness, and ill prepared due to lack of technology. The man travels in time to escape future/present day, choosing to live in 1876. The experience of traveling through time, actualling using the machine, is unexplained.
  • User awareness of technology during experience: yes.
  • Valence of experience: unpleasant - everywhere they go they witness the worst parts of people.
  • Specific responses: thier knowledgeof the future is unsettling. one woman challenges present day people to change it.
Long-term consequences:

many plot twists and turns later, the story ends bittersweetly. The laws are overturned to allow technology to be used again, in hopes of saving humanity from the terrible plague of the future. However, a cold fusion bomb kills almost everyone in the story, immediatly after the judgement is rendered. Ezekial does not want technology to be brought back; in the 24th century, humanity is destroyed by aliens after technology enables humans to colinize other planets.

Other:

This is a very cool episode about the ethics of technology, and hoped for and unexpected consequences.

Coder name: Amanda Scheiner
Coder email: amandags@temple.edu
Coder affiliation: Temple University