Plot
Strong, a former member of Army intelligence, tries to convince the members of the committee that a number of different alien invasions of Earth are occurring, and demands an official investigation and response to the threats. His evidence comes from incidents in previous episodes of the first season:
- the experiments of Simon Kress in "The Sandkings"
- an attempt to take over and impersonate the crew of a spacecraft returning to Earth in "The Voyage Home"
- the alien parasite in "Caught in the Act"
- the alien enzyme able to absorb and imitate living and non-living matter in "If These Walls Could Talk"
- the aliens posing as religious messengers in "Corner of the Eye"
Strong also believes that the committee itself has been infiltrated by one or more aliens posing as humans (see "Birthright"). The episode "The New Breed" is also referenced, though as counter-evidence that bizarre occurrences from this episode were a result of uncontrolled experiment, and not a result of alien interference.
During the long and stressful meeting it appears that the committee chairman, Thornwell, is an infiltrator because of his opposition to Strong's evidence and claims.
The committee adjourns for a private conference to discuss their decision. Upon returning they announce that Strong's evidence and claims of multiple alien invasions have been rejected. In response Strong grabs a gun from a guard and kills Chairmen Thornwell — believing him to be the one blocking further investigation and hoping to expose his alien nature by injuring him.
However, Thornwell was privately arguing in support of Strong and was outvoted. Almost all other committee members were the infiltrators, and the death of Thornwell has opened them the way for a complete takeover of the committee's activities.
The episode ends with the infiltrators wondering if any of the other alien species will pose a threat to their plans, musing that "anything is possible".
Read more about this topic: The Voice Of Reason (The Outer Limits)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickens ... with the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)