- Corpus Earthling
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"Corpus Earthling" The Outer Limits episode Episode no. Season 1
Episode 9Directed by Gerd Oswald Written by Orin Borsten (teleplay)
Louis Charbonneau (story)Cinematography by Conrad Hall Production code 16 Original air date November 18, 1963 Guest stars Episode chronology ← Previous
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"Nightmare"List of The Outer Limits episodes "Corpus Earthling" is an episode of the original The Outer Limits television show. It first aired on 18 November 1963, during the first season.
Contents
Introduction
A surgeon with a steel plate in his head as a result of a war injury suddenly finds himself hearing strange voices discussing global conquest.
Opening narration
“ Rocks: silent, inanimate objects torn from the Earth's ancient crust. Yielding up to man over the long centuries all that is known of the planet on which we live withholding from man forever their veiled secrets of the nature of matter and cosmic catastrophe, the secrets of other worlds in the vastness of the universe, of other forms of life, of strange organisms beyond the imagination of man. ” Plot
Intelligent parasitic extraterrestrials that resemble Terran rocks, with the intention of enslaving the human race, find a hideout in geologist Dr Jonas Temple's lab. Although undetected by ordinary humans, another scientist Dr. Paul Cameron (with a surgically-implanted metal plate in his skull) is able to "hear" the Alien Rocks communicate while discussing their plans. Aware that he can hear them, (they refer to him as "the listener") the Alien Rocks realize he's a threat and they compel him to kill himself by jumping from the lab window, he is saved when Laurie returns, breaking the Alien Rocks mind control.
Thinking he's going crazy, Paul goes on a vacation to Mexico with his wife Laurie. Dr.Temple, now controlled by one of the Alien Rocks, pursues them.
In Mexico, Laurie is also possessed and commanded by the Alien Rocks. Fighting for his life, Paul is forced to shoot them both (though it is not clear that his wife dies), forcing the Alien Rocks to evacuate the bodies they inhabit. He starts a fire, and the Alien Rocks are presumably killed.
Closing narration
“ Two black crystalline rocks: unclassifiable. Objects on the border between the living and the nonliving. A reminder of the thin line that separates the animate from the inanimate. Something to ponder on. Something to stay the hand when it reaches out innocently for the whitened pebble, the veined stone, the dead unmoving rocks of our planet. ” Background
Adapted from Louis Charbonneau's novel 'Corpus Earthling' first published by Zenith books in 1960. In the novel, Paul is an unmarried university instructor with amourous desires for Laurie, one of his students. He is a latent telepath who has been compelled, on at least three occasions, toward suicide by an Alien force that calls him "the listener". The invaders were brought to Earth with the first geological samples from Mars.(the story is set post 1990). Dr Temple, who diagnoses Paul as schizophrenic after he reveals he hears voices, is the first to be possessed when he touches the Alien Rocks with his tongue. At the end, after killing the aliens,(the first one he burns up after it escapes from its dead human host into the body of a sand crab.) he finds a telepathic girlfriend. (source - The Outer Limits:The Official Companion (1986), page 157.)
Cast
- Robert Culp – as Dr. Paul Cameron
- Salome Jens – as Laurie Cameron
- Barry Atwater – as Dr. Jonas Temple
- David Garner – as Ralph
- Ken Renard – as Caretaker
- Robert Johnson – as voice of Alien Rocks (uncredited)
External links
- "Corpus Earthling" appreciation by Mark Holcomb
- "Corpus Earthling" at TV.com
Categories:- The Outer Limits (1963 TV series) episodes
- 1963 television episodes
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