Lithia (The Outer Limits)

"Lithia"
The Outer Limits episode
Episode no. Season 4
Episode 17
Directed by Helen Shaver
Written by Sam Egan
Production code 79
Original air date 3 July 1998
Guest appearance(s)

David Keith as Maj. Jason Mercer, Jenny-Lynn Hutcheson as Nomi

Episode chronology

"Lithia" is an episode of The Outer Limits (new series) television show. It was first aired on 3 July 1998, during the fourth season.

Introduction

Major Jason Mercer wakes from a cryonically frozen state to find that he is the only male left alive.

Opening narration

“ Evolution teaches that the failure of a species to adapt will result in extinction. But could an entire gender fall victim to the same immutable loss? ”

Plot

"Lithia" is set in 2055, in a world populated only by women. Almost all the previous population was killed years earlier in a war, followed by a plague that killed the remaining men.

The women are living in a commune, and seem to be living full and happy lives, although they must work very hard, lacking some of the technology of the past. Neighboring villages have many of the resources, all in control of a council governing their use and trade. When a neighboring village refuses to defy the council and trade electricity prior to completion of an impact study, Mercer tells the women living in his commune that they must make sure that they have enough resources for themselves. Their leader tells him that kind of thinking is what led to war, she being the only woman old enough to remember. Intrigued by her memory, children ask her to tell of the man she loved before the war.

Mercer becomes aggressive and proceeds to steal electricity from a rival village, enlisting help from a woman he becomes romantically involved with. Unfortunately, this leads to the deaths of several different women when the other village first tries to stop him, then tries to get the better of a prisoner trade with the woman who helped Mercer. After the funeral of the women from the village, it is revealed that the council was responsible for unfreezing eleven other men and attempting to integrate them into their society, but each attempt resulted in a similar tragedy. Moments before Mercer is refrozen, Hera, the leader of Lithia, calls him by his first name, Jason. Pleading for his life as he is about to be refrozen, Mercer is confused as to how she would know that, but, as she looks at her locket containing a picture of Mercer, we realize that he is the same Jason whom she loved before he was initially frozen during the war.

Closing narration

“ The differences between men and women have been debated among philosophers since recorded history began. If indeed males are, by their nature the aggressor, it is this quality that may one day be their undoing. ”

Trivia

The premise of this episode highly resembles the 1984 Polish science fiction comedy film Sexmission (Seksmisja), in which two cryogenically frozen men wake up to find themselves the only males left on Earth, after a nuclear and biological war wiped out all men, allowing only women to survive. Similarly to "Lithia", the women in Sexmission deem the males to be a harmful and destructive interference to their society.

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