In the Blood (The Outer Limits)

"In the Blood" is an episode of The Outer Limits television show. It was first broadcast on 6 July 2001, during the show's seventh and final season.

Plot introduction

The episode opens with Callie Whitehorse Landau (Irene Bedard), an astrophysicist of Navajo heritage, and her husband Alec (Cameron Daddo), an expert in space medicine, discussing their recent loss of their unborn child "Amanda", to a spontaneous abortion. Shortly after this scene, they are visited by NASA Flight Crew Director James Dreeden (Greg Evigan) and are asked to embark on an astounding exploratory mission through an apparent rip in time and space. Along with Dr. Louisa Kennedy (Helene Joy), a navigation expert, the small team of four passes through a quantum hole torn into the very fabric of the universe and enter another continuum, a trans-space just beneath its surface. It is unlike anything the crew has ever seen — but for Callie, trans-space triggers vivid hallucinations and a powerful realization that their presence has caused a serious imbalance in the universal order. Dreeden is determined to return to Earth with their startling discoveries, but Callie is convinced the survey ship's re-entry could have disastrous consequences for all of humanity.

Opening narration

Plot

Immediately after crossing into the alternate universe which the crew members call "trans-space", their ship, the Copernicus, has difficulty coping with altered gravity waves and bizarre particles (called "gravitons") which appear to contain 5 nuclei. Callie appears to be ill to the other three crew members while the ship is being tossed by gravity waves. Although she states that she feels well, her husband, a physician performs an examination and discovers that she is pregnant. In the meantime, the crew sees a number of stars floating in space which appear dark.

Shortly later, Callie sees a vision of her grandmother that implies that the order of the universe has been altered by their intervention. After this hallucination Callie realizes that the gravitons with five nuclei are similar to white blood cells and hypothesizes that they may be part of a subatomic immune system protecting the dimension of trans-space from alien objects.

During an attempt to retrieve one of many large, floating "rocks" in trans-space, Callie receives another hallucination from her grandmother, who discusses with some vagueness the natural order of the world. When Callie's hallucination ends, she attempts in vain to stop the team from retrieving the rock. However, by the time she reacts, the rock has already been beamed on board and a wave of energy appears to rush toward the ship. The ship stabilizes, but Callie appears somewhat disoriented. She postulates further, that the floating rocks act as red blood cells and that trans-space is acting as an organic, living entity. She believes her pregnancy has given her a special insight into the nature of trans-space. Subsequently, Dr. Louisa Kennedy realizes that the "dark stars" that the crew has been studying are in the conformation of a double helix. Dr. Kennedy also notes that dark stars and large masses in trans-space correlate in location with some stars and planets respectively, in their own universe. Callie and Dr. Kennedy both reach the conclusion that trans-space is somehow the force that creates life in their own universe.

The ship's crew decides to leave trans-space, but has difficulty planning the escape route due to the energy requirements of maintaining the ship's shield against the graviton particles and simultaneously creating an energy particle beam to reopen a rift into normal space. Dreeden commands the crew to enter an escape pod and plans to use a nuclear reaction to open the rift. However, Callie fears that this might somehow poison "trans-space" and therefore, poison the source for all life in the universe. She sabotages the mission, launching the escape pod with the other three crew members and uses the particle beam to open a rift so that the escape pod can return to their own universe.

Since she has diverted energy from the shields, the ship collapses. The final scene shows the collapsed ship becoming one of the floating rocks or trans-space. This image is morphed into an image of a planet. The closing narration implies that Callie and the ship have become a living planet in the normal universe.

Closing narration

Cast

• Irene Bedard as Callie Landau, an astrophysicist
• Cameron Daddo as Alec Landau, a space medicine expert
• Greg Evigan as James Dreeden, the Flight Crew Director
• Helene Joy as Dr. Louisa Kennedy, a navigation expert

External links

• Episode on Hulu
• "In the Blood" at the Internet Movie Database