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The Revelations of Becka Paulson

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Episode no.
  
Season 3 Episode 15

Production code
  
59

Directed by
  
Steven Weber

Original air date
  
6 June 1997

Written by
  
Brad Wright, Story by Stephen King

"The Revelations of 'Becka Paulson" is an episode of The Outer Limits. It first aired on 6 June 1997, during the third season.

Contents

Introduction

Becka Paulson accidentally shoots herself in the head while searching her closet for Christmas decorations. The bullet lodges in her brain, and begins to have some strange effects.

Plot

In a stroke of 'luck', the bullet does not kill Becka, but her severe brain damage causes her to begin to hallucinate that the picture of a tuxedoed stranger on top of the TV, who calls himself the "8-by-10 Man" (in the original story it was a picture of Jesus), is talking to her.

Under the advice of the 8-by-10 Man, Becka eventually decides to kill her worthless husband, and in a bit of "damaged savantry", rigs the television (using instructions from the 8-by-10 Man) to deliver a fatal electrical pulse to whoever touches the knob. Becka, in the end, tricks her husband into touching it, but as he begins to be fatally electrocuted, she finally realizes just what she's done and tries to save him. All she does is alter the circuit by touching him, and the two fall dead, the victims of a tragic quirk of fate.

Trivia

  • The episode is based on the short story "The Revelations of Becka Paulson" by Stephen King, first published in 1984.
  • The character Becka Paulson is also in the Stephen King novel The Tommyknockers (1987), in which she kills her husband in much the same way. However, in The Tommyknockers Becka Paulson's powers come from a strange alien craft lodged in the ground in the Maine wilderness.
  • References

    The Revelations of Becka Paulson Wikipedia