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"Demon with a Glass Hand" is an episode of The Outer Limits television series, the second to be based on a script by Harlan Ellison, which Ellison wrote specifically with actor Robert Culp in mind for the lead role. It originally aired on 17 October 1964, and was the fifth episode of the second season.

Opening narration

"Through all the legends of ancient peoples — Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerian, Semitic — runs the saga of the Eternal Man, the one who never dies, called by various names in various times, but historically known as Gilgamesh, the one who has never tasted death... the hero who strides through the centuries..."

(Narrator Vic Perrin mistakenly says "Sumerican" instead of "Sumerian".)

Synopsis

Trent is a man with no memory of his life before the past ten days. His left hand has been replaced by an advanced computer shaped like his missing hand and protected by some transparent material. Three fingers are missing; the computer tells him they must be reattached before it can tell Trent what is going on. Trent is being hunted by a handful of humanoid aliens called the Kyben; they have the missing appendages. The action takes place in a large rundown office building. In his deadly game of hide-and-seek, he enlists the help of Consuelo Biros (Arlene Martel), a beautiful, frightened woman who works there.

For reasons unknown to him, Trent was sent into the past via a "time mirror", located in the building. A captured Kyben tells Trent that he and they are from a thousand years in the future. In that future, Earth has been conquered by the Kyben, but all the surviving humans except Trent have mysteriously vanished. The aliens are being obliterated by a "radioactive plague" that is killing all intelligent life on the planet, apparently unleashed by the humans in a last-ditch effort to repel the invasion. In a desperate attempt to find a cure for the plague and to extract whatever knowledge is stored in the hand-computer, the Kyben have followed him back in time with the missing fingers.

Eventually, Trent defeats all of his Kyben pursuers (by ripping off the medallion-shaped devices they wear to anchor them in the past), destroys the mirror, and recovers the three fingers. With the computer now whole, he learns the terrible truth: he is not a man, he is a robot. The human survivors have been digitally encoded onto a gold-copper alloy wire wrapped around the solenoid in his thorax. Immune to disease, he must protect his precious cargo for 200 years after the Kyben invasion, by which time the plague will have dissipated. Then he will resurrect the human race.

Tragically, Trent had thought he was a man; he and Consuelo had begun to develop feelings for each other. With the truth revealed, she leaves him, pity mixed with horror in her eyes. Trent is left to face 1,200 years of lonely vigil.

Cast

• Robert Culp as Trent
• Arlene Martel as Consuelo Biros
• Abraham Sofaer as Arch
• Bill Hart as Durn
• Rex Holman as Battle
• Robert Fortier as Budge
• Wally Rose as Kyben #1
• Fred Krone as Kyben #2

Awards

The teleplay by Harlan Ellison won several major awards:

• 1965 Writers Guild of America Awards - Outstanding Script for a Television Anthology
• 1972 Georges Melies Fantasy Film Award - Outstanding Cinematic Achievement in Science Fiction Television

Production

As originally written by Ellison, the episode depicted a sprawling, cross-country chase between the Kyben and Trent. Because this would have been prohibitively expensive, producer Robert H. Justman suggested that Ellison rewrite the episode, containing most of the action in a single structure. Ellison agreed, realizing that the change from a linear pursuit to a vertical climb, ascending as the action developed, would make for heightened tension. Most of this episode was shot in the Bradbury Building, the same location used for the final scenes of Blade Runner and a closing scene in the 1950 film noir classic D.O.A.

Ellison's friendship with Robert Culp dates from the production of this episode. He found Culp to be very intelligent, quite a contrast from most actors, whom he described as "dips—strictly non compos mentis."

There are rather obvious - and huge - holes in the plot which Ellison never clarifies. If the time morror is necessary to bring the Kyben - and presumably Trent - into the past and back, like "One end of a rubber band stretched tight", as a Kyben soldier describes it, how did the mirror get here in the first place? And Trent, now very alone at the end of the drama, must (according to the narrator) go on through the centuries until he can finally resurrect mankind. Only, that means he will be there at the beginning of the war. And he will have to survive it. And he will also be there when he is also being sent back in time, meaning he will be existing in two places simultaneously, creating a wonderful, and impossible, paradox. He will, in effect, be journeying to the past while at the same time existing in the future, making the entire story moot, since he will have the wire with the Human race with him and can simply wait for the plague to kill off the Kyben, then restore Humanity. Not very plausible, if you stop to think about it. But it still makes for a good story and remains a classic.

Adaptation and non-sequel

A graphic novel adaptation, illustrated by Marshall Rogers, was published by DC Comics January 1986. It was the fifth title of the DC Science Fiction Graphic Novel series.

During the run of Babylon 5, series creator J. Michael Straczynski often said that Ellison would write a sequel to this story (possibly called "Demon in the Dust" or "Demon on the Run") as an episode. Ellison was a creative consultant on the series, but has since said that he never had any such intentions and it was just his friend Straczynski's wishful thinking.

However this directly contradicts a quote he made in a behind-the-scene book about Babylon 5 written during that show's third season.

“I want very much to write this script and Joe very much wants it, and I think it probably will get written during this next season, but one never knows. I don't want to promise because if you promise, then all of a sudden fans on the internet start screaming, 'Well, where is it, where is it? Why doesn't he do it, why isn't he doing it? He's late again, he's late again.' And then I have to get cranky, go to their house and nail their heads to a coffee table!”

In addition to "Demon With A Glass Hand", Ellison has written other stories set against the backdrop of the "Earth-Kyba War" He adapted five of these — "Run For the Stars", "Life Hutch", "The Untouchable Adolescents", "Trojan Hearse", and "Sleeping Dogs" — into the graphic novel Night and the Enemy (1987), illustrated by Ken Steacy.

Plagiarism

Ellison brought suit against The Terminator production company Hemdale and distributor Orion Pictures for plagiarism of this episode and another, "Soldier". According to The Los Angeles Times, the parties settled the lawsuit for an undisclosed amount, and an acknowledgement of Ellison's work in the credits of Terminator.

Sampling

The electronica band Cabaret Voltaire sampled "Demon with a Glass Hand" extensively in the 1992 song "Soulenoid". The sample "The 70 billion people of Earth, where are they hiding?" is also used in "Yashar", a track from their 1982 album 2x45.

Footnotes

1. The Outer Limits: The Official Companion, by David J. Schow and Jeffrey Frentzen, 1986, Ace Science Fiction
2. Bassom, David (1996), Creating Babylon 5. Boxtree. ISBN 0-7522-0841-1.
3. ^ "IT'S MINE All Very Well and Good, but Don't Hassle the T-1000". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2009-08-22.

External links

• Template:Tv.com episode
• scifilm.org synopsis

• The Outer Limits (1963 TV series) episodes
• 1964 television episodes
• Screenplays by Harlan Ellison