"
Demon with a Glass Hand" is a widely referenced episode of
The Outer LimitsThe Outer Limits is an American television series that aired on ABC from 1963 to 1965. Similar in style to the earlier The Twilight Zone with more science fiction than fantasy stories, The Outer Limits is an anthology of discrete story episodes, sometimes with a plot twist at the end.The series was...
television series, the second to be based on a script by
Harlan EllisonHarlan Jay Ellison is an American writer. He has written in many genres, but principally science fiction.His published works include over 1000 short stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays, essays, and a wide range of criticism covering not only literature, but film, television, and print media...
, which Ellison wrote specifically with actor
Robert CulpRobert Martin Culp is an American actor and scriptwriter, perhaps best known for his work in television. Culp earned an international reputation for his role as Kelly Robinson on I Spy , the espionage series, where he and co-star Bill Cosby played a pair of secret agents and for playing Ray...
in mind for the lead role. It originally aired on 17 October 1964, and was the fifth episode of the second season.
"Through all the legends of ancient peoples — AssyriaAssyria was a civilization centered on the Upper Tigris river, in Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times in history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur...
n, BabyloniaBabylonia was a civilization in Lower Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged when Hammurabi created an empire out of the territories of the former kingdoms of Sumer and Akkad...
n, SumerSumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Iraq . It is the earliest known civilization in the world and is known as the Cradle of Civilization...
ican, SemiticIn linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages....
— runs the saga of the Eternal Man, the one who never dies, called by various names in various times, but historically known as GilgameshGilgamesh, also known as Bilgameṣ in the earliest text, was the son of Lugalbanda and the fifth king of Uruk , ruling circa 2700 BC, according to the Sumerian king list...
, the one who has never tasted death...
"
Demon with a Glass Hand" is a widely referenced episode of
The Outer LimitsThe Outer Limits is an American television series that aired on ABC from 1963 to 1965. Similar in style to the earlier The Twilight Zone with more science fiction than fantasy stories, The Outer Limits is an anthology of discrete story episodes, sometimes with a plot twist at the end.The series was...
television series, the second to be based on a script by
Harlan EllisonHarlan Jay Ellison is an American writer. He has written in many genres, but principally science fiction.His published works include over 1000 short stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays, essays, and a wide range of criticism covering not only literature, but film, television, and print media...
, which Ellison wrote specifically with actor
Robert CulpRobert Martin Culp is an American actor and scriptwriter, perhaps best known for his work in television. Culp earned an international reputation for his role as Kelly Robinson on I Spy , the espionage series, where he and co-star Bill Cosby played a pair of secret agents and for playing Ray...
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 — AssyriaAssyria was a civilization centered on the Upper Tigris river, in Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times in history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur...
n, BabyloniaBabylonia was a civilization in Lower Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged when Hammurabi created an empire out of the territories of the former kingdoms of Sumer and Akkad...
n, SumerSumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Iraq . It is the earliest known civilization in the world and is known as the Cradle of Civilization...
ican, SemiticIn linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages....
— runs the saga of the Eternal Man, the one who never dies, called by various names in various times, but historically known as GilgameshGilgamesh, also known as Bilgameṣ in the earliest text, was the son of Lugalbanda and the fifth king of Uruk , ruling circa 2700 BC, according to the Sumerian king list...
, the one who has never tasted death... the hero who strides through the centuries..."
(Narrator
Vic PerrinVic Perrin was an American actor and voice artist. He is best remembered as the "Control Voice" in the original version of the TV series The Outer Limits ....
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 Consuela Biros (
Arlene MartelArlene Martel is an American actress and acting coach. Prior to 1964, she was frequently billed as Arline Sax, Arlene Sax, or sometimes as Tasha 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 1000 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 Consuela 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 1200 years of lonely vigil.
Closing narration
"Like the Eternal Man of Babylonian legend, like Gilgamesh, one thousand plus two hundred years stretches before Trent. Without love. Without friendship. Alone: neither man nor machine, waiting. Waiting for the day he will be called to free the humans who gave him mobility. Movement — but not life."
Cast
- Robert Culp
Robert Martin Culp is an American actor and scriptwriter, perhaps best known for his work in television. Culp earned an international reputation for his role as Kelly Robinson on I Spy , the espionage series, where he and co-star Bill Cosby played a pair of secret agents and for playing Ray...
as Trent
- Arlene Martel
Arlene Martel is an American actress and acting coach. Prior to 1964, she was frequently billed as Arline Sax, Arlene Sax, or sometimes as Tasha Martel....
as Consuelo Biros
- Abraham Sofaer
Abraham Sofaer was a stage actor of Burmese-Jewish descent who became a familiar supporting player on film and television in his later years. He was born in Rangoon, Burma...
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
The 18th Writers Guild of America Awards, given on 23 March, 1966, honored the best film and television writers of 1965.-Film:*Best Written American Comedy:**A Thousand Clowns - Herb Gardner*Best Written American Drama:**The Pawnbroker - Morton S...
- 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. JustmanRobert Harris "Bob" Justman was an American television producer, director and production manager. He worked on many television series including Lassie, The Life of Riley, Adventures of Superman, The Outer Limits, Then Came Bronson and Mission: Impossible.- Career :Bob Justman was one of the...
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 BuildingThe Bradbury Building is an architectural landmark in Los Angeles, California. The building was built in 1893 and is located at 304 South Broadway in downtown Los Angeles.-History:...
, the same location used for the final scenes of
Blade RunnerBlade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick...
and a closing scene in the 1950 film noir classic
D.O.A.D.O.A. , a film noir drama film directed by Rudolph Maté, is considered a classic of the genre. The frantically-paced plot revolves around a doomed man's quest to find out who has poisoned him – and why – before he dies.Leo C...
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
compos non mentis."
Adaptation and non-sequel
A
graphic novelA graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using the comics form. The term is employed in a broad manner, encompassing non-fiction works and thematically linked short stories as well as fictional stories across a number of genres.Graphic novels are typically...
adaptation, illustrated by
Marshall RogersMarshall Rogers was an American comic-book artist best-known for his work at Marvel and DC Comics in the 1970s, particularly as one of the key illustrators of the character Batman...
, was published by
DC ComicsDC Comics is one of the largest and most popular American comic book and related media companies, along with Marvel Comics. It is the publishing division of DC Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary company of Warner Bros. Entertainment...
January 1986. It was the fifth title of the
DC Science Fiction Graphic Novel series.
During the run of
Babylon 5Babylon 5 is an American science fiction television series created, produced and largely written by J. Michael Straczynski. The show centers on the Babylon 5 space station: a focal point for politics, diplomacy, and conflict during the years 2257–2262...
, series creator
J. Michael StraczynskiJoseph Michael Straczynski , known professionally as J. Michael Straczynski and informally as Joe Straczynski or JMS, is an American writer/producer. He works in a variety of media, including films, television series, novels, short stories, comic books, and radio dramas...
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 SteacyKen Steacy is a Canadian comics artist and writer best known for his work on the Now Comics comic book series of Astro Boy and of the Comico comic series of Jonny Quest, as well as his graphic novel collaborations with Harlan Ellison and Dean Motter .In 1990 DC Comics published Steacy's...
.
Plagiarism
Ellison brought suit against
The TerminatorThe Terminator is a 1984 science fiction action film directed and co-written by James Cameron and distributed by the independent film studio Orion Pictures. It features Arnold Schwarzenegger as The Terminator, Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor and Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese. The film was followed by...
production company
HemdaleHemdale may refer to:*Hemdale, an American death metal band.*Hemdale Film Corporation, a film studio of the 1980s headed by John Daly and Derek Gibson....
and distributor
Orion PicturesOrion Pictures Corporation was an American company that produced movies from 1978 until 1998. It was formed in 1978 as a joint venture between Warner Bros. and three former top-level executives of United Artists called Orion Pictures Company. Never a large motion picture producer, Orion achieved a...
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 VoltaireCabaret Voltaire may refer to:*Cabaret Voltaire , a Swiss cabaret founded in 1916, distinguished by the involvement of Dada artists*Cabaret Voltaire , a British industrial/techno musical group...
sampled "Demon with a Glass Hand" extensively in the 1992 song "Soulenoid". The sample "There's 70 billion people of Earth... Where are they hiding?" is also used in "Yashar", a track from their 1982 album
2x45.
External links