Joyride
Nitcentral's Bulletin Brash Reflections:
Outer Limits:
Season Five:
Joyride
Theodore Harris's first time in space, in 1963, didn't go quite as planned. Alone in his Mercury capsule, he panicked and aborted the mission when a mysterious violet light penetrated the cockpit and began to envelop his body. In the investigation that followed, no evidence could be found to support his story, leaving a blot on Harris's NASA record and his life in ruins. Now at age 63, he knows he can never make amends with his estranged wife, Madelaine, but he feels that he could clear his name if he could just get back to where he saw the light. When NASA turns him down, Harris is recruited by Carlton Powers, a self-made billionaire who plans to privatize space travel and thinks Harris's presence on the inaugural flight will help him sell the service. Harris and Power are joined on the flight by Martin Reese, a skeptical tabloid reporter, Lil Vaughn, an eccentric fashion mogul and Ty and Barbara Chafey, young newlyweds who won a contest to travel on the space plane. None of the passengers know, however, that Harris has reprogrammed the flight plan to take the flight to the site of the close encounter that shattered the young man's life.
Once reaching the exact location at which he initially made contact with the alien entity by inevitably launching himself to the position via a space suit's propelling apparatus, the elderly former astronaut has the opportunity to again communicate with the alien entity. He discovers how they only intended to observe, not intervene. To make amends, they return him to the moment at which his life was drastically altered but without this experience so that he may have a second chance.
By D. Stuart, The Outer Limits moderator on Tuesday, January 18, 2000 - 5:08 pm: My nitpicks are as numerically proceeds:
1) At some point one, one of the shuttle's cockpit's computer screens displays the words auto lock with lock spelled as lok--minus the obvious cee.
2) The younger astronaut at the conclusion is, in my humble opinion, too young to bear the rank of colonel.
By Tim McCree (Tim_m) on Friday, December 22, 2023 - 5:42 am:Te episode ends with Harris returned to his 1963 body, but with is future memories intact.
I'm surprised he didn't head for Dallas, on November 22nd of that year, to try and stop the assassination of JFK.