| "Her Pilgrim Soul" | |||||||
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| The Twilight Zone episode | |||||||
 Scene from Her Pilgrim Soul |
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| Episode no. | Season 1 Episode 12a |
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| Written by | Alan Brennert | ||||||
| Directed by | Wes Craven | ||||||
| Guest stars | Kristoffer Tabori : Kevin Drayton Anne Twomey : Nola Granville Gary Cole : Daniel Wendy Girard : Carol Katherine Wallach : Susan Richard McGonagle : Lester Betsy Licon : Nola (age 5) Danica McKellar : Nola (age 10) Robin Ward : Narrator |
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| Original airdate | December 13, 1985 | ||||||
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| List of Twilight Zone episodes | |||||||
Her Pilgrim Soul is the first segment of the twelfth episode from the first season (1985-1986) of the television series The New Twilight Zone.
Contents |
Synopsis
Two scientists create a holographic projector. One day a fetus appears in the projector. The two watch as the fetus matures into a woman, growing at a rate of ten years a day. They find out that Nola, as she calls herself, was once a young woman who lived in the early twentieth century. They debate over whether or not Nola is a real human soul somehow reintegrated into their hologram generator.
Kevin, the lead scientist, begins to fall in love with this impossible creation. He begins spending more time at the lab than at home, his home life deteriorating over the few days. She discusses with Kevin about her father and how he tried to keep her burgeoning intellectual desires from flourishing. They talk about the wonderful authors, like Yeats. During day five, an adult Nola describes her pregnancy and relives a miscarriage of losing a baby girl. The other scientist, Dan, later discovers the miscarriage was the cause of Nola's death, and that Robert, Nola's husband in life, never forgave himself for her passing.
As the holographic Nola ages and nears her farewell, she uses a voice modifier machine to call Kevin's wife, Carol. Posing as Kevin, Nola tells her to come pick him up. In the final conversation between Kevin and Nola, it is revealed that Kevin is a reincarnation of Robert. He brings out the Yeats book and reads a passage. As they tearfully acknowledge the passage, Nola fades away as Kevin's wife enters the lab. They have an emotional reunion. Carol is then quite surprised and delighted as a child's toy ball, as real and substantive as anything, bounces out of the holographic chamber and lands in her hands.
Closing narration
| “ | And bending down beside the glowing bars, murmur, a little sadly, how love fled and paced upon the mountains overhead and hid her face among a crowd of stars. A variation on William Butler Yeats to all those who have loved and lost, and loved again, on Earth or...in the Twilight Zone. | ” |
Notes
The title is a literary allusion to When You Are Old, a poem by William Butler Yeats.
This story was made into a one-act stage musical by Alan Menken and paired with James Tiptree, Jr's "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" as a stage production titled Weird Romance: Two One Act Musicals of Speculative Fiction. The James Tiptree Jr. story "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" was made into an episode of the short-lived SCI FI Channel anthology series Welcome to Paradox.
There is an obvious error made in the first half of this episode. One scientist remarks that she is aging at the age of ten months every hour, or 10 years a day. Based on the math, she should be aging at 20 years a day.
Syndication
This episode was stretched into a one-hour run time for syndication, as recently shown on the Chiller TV network.
External links
See also
References
- Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)
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