Paradise (The Outer Limits)

Infobox Television episode
Title = Paradise
Series = The Outer Limits


Caption =
Season = 2
Episode = 17
Airdate = 16 June, 1996
Production = 39
Writer = Jonathan Walker & Chris Dickie
Director = Mario Azzopardi
Photographer =
Guests = Mel Harris as Dr. Christina Markham, Geraint Wyn Davies as Sheriff Grady Markham, Maxine Miller as Helen, Sebastian Spence as Young Gerry, Heather Hanson as Young Helen, Harold Gould as Gerry, April Telek as Lucy
Episode list = List of "The Outer Limits" episodes
Prev = The Deprogrammers
Next = The Light Brigade

"Paradise" is an episode of "The Outer Limits" television series. It first aired on 16 June, 1996, during the second season.

Introduction

Dr. Christina Markham and Sheriff Grady Markham have to investigate a spate of strange incidents involving young and apparently healthy women suddenly growing old and dying.

Opening Narration

:"It is said that through our children we obtain a kind of immortality. An unending chain of life in which mother and child are forever linked, carrying in turn the burden of humanity."

Plot

The deputy gets picked up by a young woman in a bar. After intercourse she starts to cry and tells him that something didn't work. Suddenly she grows old and dies.On the next day Dr. Christina Markham, the wife of the Sheriff, does the autopsy on the already strong decomposed body. Beside Alzheimer's and several kinds of cancer an strange anomalyin the uterus is found. Shortly afterwards a second female body is found similar decomposed like the first and is identified as an local woman which was over 70 years old. Both bodies show the same anomaly and both contain traces of sperms.

When Dr. Markham is visiting her mother which has Alzheimer's in a care center she hears her and a other old woman talking about 'going into the light' soon. The other woman, the mother of the deputy, disappears from the center and visits her son as a young woman. She leaves and also has intercourse with a stranger. Afterwards she returns to her son, tells him that 'it' didn't work, grows old and dies shorty afterwards.

In the night, Dr. Markham's mother runs away from the care center together with the brother of her dead husband which is taking care of her. She leads him to a meadow where she looks for a stone which is found fast. The stone starts to produce a swarm of light which rejuvenate both. After the confess their love to each other they have intercourse in the Markham house. Meanwhile the Sheriff and his wife figure out that the three dead woman and Dr. Markham's mother where arrested together 50 years ago for trespassing at the place where the second body was found. They start a search for her and her brother-in-law after finding them missing in the care center. They find them in their family house: he is already in his normal old age again but not older and still looks healthy enough, while she is still young but now in an advanced state of pregnancy.She explains that her three friends and her encountered an female glowing alien when they where young.

The alien told them that she and her species is dying and the four women allowed her to plant four alien eggs in their bodies so that the alien species has a chance to survive. Because the eggs need 50 years to mature the stone was left behind to rejuvenate the women long enough to receive and deliver the child. She states that she was successful while the other three failed because she and the child's father love each other. After giving birth to a human-looking baby-girl with help of her daughter she grows old again but stays alive and seems to be healed from Alzheimer's - a gift from the alien for the delivering of the baby. Dr. Markham, which can't get children by herself, will take care of the baby, which is her half-sister (or 'third'-sister when the alien egg is taken into account).

Closing Narration

:"The love of man and woman, the love of a mother and child. It is only from this places...that miracles can be born."

External links

*
* [http://www.scifi.com/outerlimits/episodes/season2/217paradise.html "Paradise (The Outer Limits)"] at Sci Fi