The Man Who Was Never Born


"The Man Who Was Never Born" is an episode of the original The Outer Limits television show. It was first broadcast on October 28, 1963, during the first season. Its premise — preventing the birth of someone in the past to change the future — is echoed in the Terminator films.

Plot

After accidentally traveling through a time warp, astronaut Joseph Reardon arrives on Earth in the year 2148. He finds a desolate world and an erudite but grotesquely mutated survivor named Andro. Andro explains that a biological disaster was caused by Bertram Cabot Jr., an ambitious 20th century scientist who isolated and developed an alien viral symbiont microbe that physically altered the entire human race and rendered it sterile. Andro laments that mankind has no hope of survival after the last of his generation die off.
But Reardon is determined to return to the past via the same time warp, with Andro along as a living warning of what the future holds. During their journey through the time warp, Reardon slowly fades away and vanishes, but manages to give Andro a revolver and tells Andro to kill Cabot if he must to save humanity.
Now on Earth in the year 1963, and with the ability to make himself appear undeformed, Andro searches for Cabot and meets Noelle Anderson. It soon becomes clear that he has arrived too soon: Bertram Cabot Jr. has not yet been born, and Noelle will shortly marry Bertram Cabot, Sr. In the guise of a normal human, Andro tries unsuccessfully to convince Cabot not to marry Noelle.
Andro begins to fall in love with Noelle. While attempting to shoot Cabot during the couple's wedding ceremony, Andro hesitates and is assaulted by Cabot and the wedding party. Andro's true grotesque appearance is revealed and he flees. Noelle catches up to him and he explains his mission to her. She confesses that she has fallen in love with him and does not see his deformity. Noelle convinces Andro to take her with him to the future, thereby avoiding any possibility that she will have a child with Cabot.
However, the flow of time has been altered by Andro and Noelle's actions: because Bertram Cabot Jr. was never born, the symbiont was never created, and Andro was never born. Andro vanishes just as the spaceship arrives in 2148 A.D., leaving Noelle, weeping, to face the future alone. The final scene breaks the fourth wall by showing Noelle in her spaceship seat next to a similar empty seat, on a dimly illuminated stage instead of in the confines of a spaceship.

Cast

Production

The story's writer, Anthony Lawrence, said in an interview that the story was inspired by "...one of my old favorites, Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, the French version, which was a beautiful film. I was thinking of that film, and also just the idea that had always kind of fascinated me. Joseph Stefano loved the idea, and it had, as I remember, a lot of what I was feeling at the time. I always liked romantic stories, and this was a chance to do something that you really don't get to do very often in television. I gravitated toward that."