Episode no. Season 6
Episode 14 Original air date July 7, 2000 | Directed by Steve Anker | |
Written by Alan Katz and Scott Nimerfro | ||
"Abaddon" is the fourteenth episode of the sixth season of The Outer Limits television show. It was first broadcast on July 7, 2000.
Contents
Plot
It's late in the 23rd century and the aging interplanetary hauling vehicle Pequod is on a ten-year reclamation project on behalf of 'The Company', the corporation that has run North America since 2102. While in theory everyone owns stock in The Company, in reality humans work for the company and quality of life has suffered. The crew, which includes Capt. Ira Merit (Keith David), telemetry officer Gwen Hutchinson (Jill Teed), payload specialist Augie Berger (Byron Lucas), paramedic Curtis Sandoval (Max Martini), systems technician Isabella Bixel (Allixandra East) and The Company's Man, Gordon Knight (Dion Luther), is tucked away in hyper-sleep when the ship comes across a mysterious object floating through space. Awakened from their artificial slumber, they retrieve the pod and are shocked to discover the body of Virgil Nygard (Corbin Bernsen), supposedly executed 150 years earlier for leading his militia in the slaughter of more than a million people. They are even more shocked to discover that Nygard is alive.
The crew are at odds over what to do with Nygard; while everyone agrees that he is a murderer, the pod he was in is made of a valuable and now rare material. The Company Man, Knight wants to keep the pod and doesn't care what happens to Nygard. Hutchinson and Bixel don't want Nygard on the ship. And the drug-using Sandoval doesn't care what happens to him. To further complicate matters, the ship isn't where it should be and it appears one of the crew deliberately sent it to pick up Nygard's pod. Bixel is murdered while investigating why the ship was millions of miles off-course and the survivors begin to wonder who among them is a follower of this mass-murderer. For his part, Nygard says The Company, which wanted to access valuable mineral deposits under his people's land, framed him and that he only fought to survive. Now, he says, he plans to return to Earth to lead his persecuted followers to freedom. As tensions mount, the survivors must ask themselves: is he telling the truth or is this a ruse concocted by a homicidal maniac and his mysterious ally? And is it more evil to kill some to save many, or to be put in a position where that choice is necessary at all?
Trivia
Per the title, Abaddon means "A place of destruction" and in the Book of Revelation he is the king of tormenting locusts and the angel of the bottomless pit.