Stitch in Time

Stitch in Time

Infobox Television episode
Title = Stitch in Time
Series = The Outer Limits


Caption =
Season = 2
Episode = 1
Airdate = 14 January, 1996
Production = 23
Writer = Steven Barnes
Director = Mario Azzopardi
Photographer =
Guests = Amanda Plummer as Dr. Theresa Givens, Michelle Forbes as FBI Agent Jamie Pratt, Gary Jones as Duncan, Kendall Cross as Allison, Andrew Airlie as FBI Agent Corey, Adrian Hughes as Warren, Brian Arnold as Newscaster
Episode list = List of "The Outer Limits" episodes
Prev = The Voice of Reason
Next = Resurrection

"Stitch in Time" is an episode of "The Outer Limits". It first aired on 14 January 1996, and was the first episode of the second season. Amanda Plummer won an Emmy for her appearance in this episode.

Introduction

FBI agent Jamie Pratt investigates a series of murders spanning a period of forty years — all committed with the same gun.

Opening narration

"We all struggle to define ourselves; to live our lives with some sense of balance, with one foot in the past, and the other reaching... for an uncertain future."

Plot

The gun is traced to Dr. Theresa Givens, a former employee at a top-secret government project. Mysteriously, Givens was only five years old at the time of the first murder, and the gun hadn't even been manufactured.

As it turns out, Dr. Givens has used a property of developing fetal human brains to create a time machine and has been traveling back through time to kill condemned serial killers before they strike, all to prepare herself (mentally) for one final journey to stop the man who had kidnapped and raped her for five days when she was a teenager; the event having left her mentally scarred all her life.

Another angle of the episode is the rapidly deteriorating physical health of Dr. Givens. Already mentally scarred from the start from the trauma of her youth, Dr. Givens's physical health declines through the episode. FBI agent Jamie Pratt finally uncovers the truth and Givens eventually discloses to Agent Pratt that an unfortunate side-effect of altering time for the time traveler is the sudden merging of two completely different time streams into the brain at once upon return which, over time, has a visible physical impact (causing nosebleeds) and presumably will become fatal given enough occurrences.

Dr. Givens herself explains at the end that she is finally making the journey to change her past for fear that she will not survive much longer, but Pratt is pulled back in time with Dr. Givens. She assists in stopping the kidnapping and rescues the young Theresa, but the elder Dr. Givens is fatally wounded and dies. Agent Pratt returns to a world where Dr. Givens never experienced the traumatic incident of Theresa of the previous time line. But without that trauma, Dr. Givens was never motivated to travel back through time and preemptively murder known serial killers, one of whom eventually murdered a close friend of Agent Pratt (at the beginning of the episode this friend was dead, then alive later in the episode thanks to a temporal excursion by Dr. Givens, now dead again).

In the end, Agent Pratt tracks down the decidedly healthier-looking Dr. Theresa Givens in the new time line, who -- despite lacking the motivation of preventing a traumatic event of her past -- has also built a time machine (which she knew was possible because she had seen her older self use one as a 15 year-old girl).

The episode closes with Agent Pratt traveling back to 1980 and shooting the serial killer who would murder her best friend in the future.

Closing narration

"Our yesterdays are like a string of pearls -- unbroken -- unchanging. But if we could change our past, would that also change who we are?"

Ethical issues the episode raises

Is it okay to kill someone who you "know" will commit a murder when he or she is still an innocent child? If not, then what if (as in this episode), you only travel back and kill murderers "after" they have been found guilty and executed in the future?

Reference to other episodes

This episode is also mentioned in the clip show "Final Appeal", where the "second" Dr. Givens is on trial for using technology (specifically the time travel device) in a world that has banned technology.

External links

* [http://www.scifi.com/outerlimits/episodes/season2/201stitch.html "Stitch in Time"] at Sci Fi
* [http://www.tv.com/a-stitch-in-time/episode/21445/summary.html Episode at tv.com]


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