The Outer Limits (New Series)

Shot in the head by an armed robber 35 year old Ben Kohler's (Sam Robards) only chance of survival according to Dr. Jennifer Martinez (Elizabeth Pena) is an experimental cerebral chip (CC12). The earlier generations of this chip have killed 25% of the humans it was tested on but Martinez convinces the medical chief to authorize the surgery in order to save Ben's life. As the surgery is proceeding in another part of town a man with a long crescent shaped scar on his head is coming out of the shower and suddenly throws his hands to his head and collapses in pain. Ben is released from the hospital one month later after a complete recovery. Back in his own small apartment Ben has a realistic and horrifying vision. Peering out of someone else's eyes he is chasing a woman through the woods and sees a hand reach out to attack her. Later Ben has a second vision where he sees the woman again but this time she is dead. Along with the visions Ben hears a strange haunting voice calling out to him. Ben phones police detective Wilson who confirms that there has been a real homicide such as Ben described but police hadn't yet given the story to the press. Wilson suspects Ben is the killer and traces the call to Ben's apartment. Afraid of the police Ben turns to Jennifer for help. He witnesses another woman's murder and again the killer speaks to Ben taunting him. Ben and Jennifer realize the chip receives and broadcasts signals so the killer must be one of Jennifer's former patients. With a little detective work Ben and Jennifer think the killer must be Howard Haas (Stephen Shellen) an earlier recipient of the chip. They race to Haas' house where they discover the body of a woman in a bathtub. Suddenly Haas appears knocks Ben out cold and takes Jennifer hostage. The police arrive at the scene and take Ben into custody. His story sounds preposterous but the records confirm that Ben was in the hospital at the time of the murders. Another vision leads Ben to the sleazy motel where Haas is holding Jennifer at knife point. Ben takes some tranquilizers to calm his adrenaline so that Haas can't read signals emitted from Ben's chip. With the CC12 monitor device in hand Ben comes to Jennifer's rescue. Pressing down the button on the monitor Ben sacrifices himself as he and Haas are thrown back and they both go into cardiac arrest.

Adam (Jake McKinnon) is a powerful and generally good-natured robot. One evening while his creator a university professor named Dr. Link (Don Mackay) adjusts his programming Adam goes wild. He assaults and kills Dr. Link destroying the lab in the process. Accused of the murder Adam goes quietly into police custody. When Dr. Link's daughter Mina (Cyndy Preston) reads about her father's death she contacts Detective Barclay (Eric Schneider) who is in charge of the case and they visit Adam in his cell. The robot replays his memory of the previous night for them but finds no record of his outburst. Mina tells him that Dr. Link is dead and asks Adam to keep searching for the missing information. She needs it for the hearing which will determine if Adam is so dangerous should he be destroyed. Mina hires Thurman Cutler (Leonard Nimoy) a washed up civil liberties attorney to argue in favor of Adam. It soon becomes apparent however that Cutler is more interested in his own notoriety than in justice. He wants to convince the judge that this machine has legal rights and deserves a murder trial. This can only mean a media circus. The hearing proves eventful. One of the security guards perjures himself trying to make Adam appear dangerous. An experiment performed on Adam's hardware causes the robot to go berserk in the courtroom. Though traumatic for everyone present the experiment stimulates Adam's memory so that he remembers having killed Dr. Link. Mention of the funding for Adam makes Cutler suspicious of its source. Cutler and Mina discover that a defense contractor had been funding Dr. Link's work. At that point Col. Birch (Nathaniel Deveausx) who has been watching the hearing closely reveals to Cutler that Adam was being retrofitted for military purposes -- he's being turned into a killing machine. The robot's gentle side was interfering with the conversion so Dr. Link was trying to obliterate it. The military fears that if the case goes to trial all this information would appear in the press and national security would be in jeopardy. Birch threatens to ruin Cutler if he continues. The next day Cutler tells Adam that he will do his best to get a murder trial but that he probably won't be able to defend him. The robot shows the court his memory sequence of Dr. Link's death and the crowd is timid. Adam describes the dream-like state he was in when Dr. Link was trying to obliterate it. The military fears that if the case goes to trial all this information would appear in the press and national security would be in jeopardy. Birch threatens to ruin Cutler if he continues. They wait nervously to hear the outcome. Mina is so frightened she wants Adam to run away with her. He wants very much to be accepted as human and feels that will happen only if he acts with dignity and faces his fate. The judge rules that the robot will have his murder trial. As they leave the courtroom the waiting crowd rushes toward Adam. In the process they knock Col. Birch down in the street directly in the path of a speeding police van. The driver tries to brake but skids toward Birch. Adam seeing this breaks free of his police escort pushes Birch to safety and is hit by the van. This act of human bravery kills him.

Reporter Carter Jones (Ally Sheedy) is on her way to work when her cellular phone picks up a suspicious conversation about the removal of a controversial author. Her journalistic curiosity piqued Carter investigates despite the objections of her boss and the police. As a result she finds herself in a deadly game of cat and mouse involving a strange man (Michael Sarrazin) with violet eyes an ill-fated cruise and people who disappear leaving behind only a pile of purple ash. Can Carter get to the bottom of these mysterious disappearances? Or will she be the next to vanish?

Dr. Sam Stein (Mark Hamill) has always lived for his work. His dedication has paid off with the development of the Computer Aided Visual Environment system or CAVE which allows doctors to jack-in directly to the brain of patients. When an accident puts his colleague Rachael Carter (Deborah Farentino) in a coma Stein decides to use CAVE for his own purposes reaching into Rachael's brain to tell her what he couldn't while she was conscious: that he loves her. Stein discovers however that love takes strange turns when it enters CAVE's virtual world and that the complexities of the human heart are not easily translated into bits and bytes.

After flashbacks of an alien abduction drives him to the brink of suicide Eddie Wexler (Michael O'Keefe) finds himself at a mental institute where Dr. Sherrick (Stephen McHattie) is using a controversial technique to treat those who believe they have been abducted by extraterrestrials. Eddie and some of the other patients are suspicious of Sherrick and his methods which forces patients to re-live their abductions in the memory chamber. Some even think that their abductors have infiltrated the institute. Is this just a paranoid delusion or is there an alien face behind the doctor's mask?

Actor Robert Patrick returns for this first-ever The Outer Limits sequel a follow-up to last year's 'Quality of Mercy.' On a desperate mission a young Cadet (Wil Wheaton) learns the difference between heroic ideals and the bitter realities of war. The only survivors on a crippled battle cruiser - Earth's last hope for victory and survivors - are the Cadet the weapons Chief (Graham Greene) and Major John Skokes (Patrick) a repatriated prisoner of war. Exposed to fatal doses of radiation when their fleet was wiped out by the aliens they fight illness and death to launch a preemptive strike. As the awesome responsibility for success descends on him the Cadet learns that fear is not his only enemy.