Vanishing Act (The Outer Limits)

"Vanishing Act"
The Outer Limits episode
Episode no.	Season 2 Episode 21
Directed by	Jonathan Glassner
Written by	Chris Dickie
Production code	43
Original air date	21 July 1996
Guest actors
Brennan Kotowich Jon Cryer Richard Ian Cox Jessica Lundy Dean McDermott Eric Schneider R. Nelson Brown Lenno Britos

"Vanishing Act" is an episode of The Outer Limits television series. It first aired on 21 July 1996, during the second season.

Introduction

Trevor McPhee makes a quick trip to the shops, but after a strange experience he returns home to find that ten years have passed.

Opening narration

Our lives follow a long and winding path through time. But what happens if we're forced off the course of our own destiny?

Plot

An alien race that has no concept of time uses wormholes to find planets with living creatures and enter them as hosts. When the host is asleep, they use a wormhole to abduct them and transport them to their home world where they can learn everything the host has experienced. However, since the aliens have no concept of the passage of time, they aren't realizing that each time they return their host — Trevor — home, they are returning him 10 years later each time (due to the effects of relativistic time dilation), putting him further out of touch with everything he loves. At the end they remove the connection and send him back to the night he first left; he has his life back, and nobody knows what happened, except Trevor, who retains the memory of his experiences.

Closing narration

Life is, at best, an uncertain path. Perhaps, we should be grateful with what we have, for even these riches may disappear along the way.

Cast

• Brennan Kotowich as young Mark McPhee
• Jon Cryer as Trevor McPhee
• Richard Ian Cox as Mark McPhee
• Jessica Lundy as Theresa McPhee
• Dean McDermott as Ray Carter
• Eric Schneider as Dr. Golden
• R. Nelson Brown as Bartender
• Lenno Britos as Man in Bathroom

External links

• "Vanishing Act" at TV.com
• "Vanishing Act" at Sci Fi