Apr
30
Last weekend I picked up two old episodes of “The Outer Limits” — “Demon With a Glass Hand” and “Soldier” — at a comic book convention. Those two episodes apparently served as the inspiration for the first “Terminator” film. In fact, the writer of both eps, Harlan Ellison, sued “Terminator” writer-director James Cameron for aping his ideas. There was an out-of-court settlement, and now the “Terminator” films acknowledge the works of Harlan Ellison in the credits. So I was curious how similar those episodes were to Cameron’s breakout film. Did he borrow Ellison’s ideas wholesale?
The answer is no. Ellison was off his nut in filing suit against Cameron. The similarities between those two episodes and “The Terminator” are superficial at best. Both eps use time travel as a plot device, not unlike “The Terminator,” but that’s not exactly a concept Ellison came up with on his own. For the most part, the episodes have virtually nothing to do with Cameron’s film.
“Demon With a Glass Hand” is about a man who’s being pursued by time-traveling spacemen. He has, as you may have guessed, a glass hand, but it’s missing a few fingers. The hand also talks to him, telling him that if he can reattach the amputated digits, it’ll be possessed with omnipotence. Fortunately, the spacemen who are chasing him around an abandoned building have brought the severed fingers with them. So each time he easily dispatches one of the spacemen by ripping off the medallions they’re wearing and sending them back to the future(!), he gets another finger back. Anyway, at the very end, he reattaches the last finger and discovers that he’s actually a robot — zomg! Doesn’t that sound EXACTLY like the plot of “The Terminator?” No…?
“Soldier,” on the other [glass] hand, is about a battle-hardened trooper from the future who’s accidentally sent to our present. He’s quickly arrested for disintegrating a police car with his ray gun. The police bring in a linguist to decipher the soldier’s strange futuristic dialect. After nearly being killed in a misunderstanding about “good touching” vs. “bad touching,” the linguist has the soldier released into his custody. And in what seems like a the perfect setup for an ’80s sitcom, the soldier moves in with the linguist’s family, where he tries to make “think-speak” with their housecat, MacBeth. Another soldier then materializes in our present, breaks into the lingust’s home and is transported back to the future with the PTSD soldier who talks to cats. Doesn’t that sound EXACTLY like the plot of “The Terminator?” No…?!
The only elements that those two episodes share with “The Terminator” are a robot who looks human and a soldier from a war-torn future coming to our present. The expressions of those elements, however, are vastly different. The Terminator, for one thing, knows he’s a cyborg. What’s more, he’s not made out of glass, nor does he talk to his hand. Also, Resistance fighter Kyle Reese speaks fluent English and doesn’t become a houseguest for a suburban middle-class family; he’s even slightly more emotionally adjusted for someone who grew up after the apocalypse. I was absolutely stunned as I watched these two episodes. Ellison really had no case here. I can see where Cameron drew some inspiration from “The Outer Limits,” but the episodes in question have about as much in common with “The Terminator” as they do with “Back to the Future.”
I lost a little bit of respect for Harlan Ellison while watching these two episodes, and not because they’ve aged poorly. I always knew that he was a bit of a crank, but I used to think of him as a mad genius. Now I just think he wants to take credit where credit isn’t due.
-Brad Lohan
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