Line #4 Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S4E20Nightmare


1	-->'''The Control Voice:''' While some prisoners of war show bravery beyond the call of duty, others succumb to an enemy often more formidable than the one which captured them.
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3	Earth is at war with a planet called Ebon. A crew is given a mission to send a bomb powerful enough to destroy a planet to Ebon in an attempt to win the war, but get captured by the Ebonites and locked in a room with the bomb. The crew never actually see the Ebonites, just hear their voice, but everyone experiences various forms of physical and psychological torture with high tech devices, including being mutilated (which is healed afterwards) and being made to hallucinate loved ones appearing. The crew is interrogated about their mission, ordered to teach the Ebonites how to arm the bomb so they can use it for themselves, and begin to grow paranoid when the Ebonites imply one or more of the crew betrayed them. Eventually, one of the crew reaches his breaking point and kills another, believing he was the traitor. It's then revealed that the crew was on Earth all along, with their General explaining they were being tested to see how they stand up to stress and interrogation. Unfortunately, at the same time, the creator of the bomb, believing that they were all going to die, had set the bomb to go off, hoping to take the Ebonites with them. With the bomb unable to be deactivated, it explodes, presumably wiping out Earth.
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5	-->'''The Control Voice:''' In our efforts to plumb the depths of our psychological endurance, we may do more than drive ourselves to the breaking point... we may destroy the very world we're seeking to protect.
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7	!!Tropes:
8	* TheBadGuyWins: [[HoistByHisOwnPetard Due to the humans inadvertently destroying themselves and their planet]], the Ebonites win the war [[WinsByDoingAbsolutelyNothing without even having to do anything]].
9	* BinarySuns: The Ebonites' solar system is said to have two suns.
10	* DarkAndTroubledPast: It turns out that every member of the crew has one. Part of the experiment consists of the supposed Ebonites playing upon their pasts while interrogating them.
11	* DownerEnding: Even worse than [[Recap/TheOuterLimits1963S1E10Nightmare the 1963 original]]. In this case, it's one of the revival series' many {{Cruel Twist Ending}}s.
12	* EarthAllAlong: The crew finds out that they were on Earth the whole time and that their interrogation was a psychological experiment.
13	* {{Gaslighting}}: The military uses elaborate special effects to imitate the Ebonites' capabilities.
14	* GoneHorriblyRight: The interrogation experiment showed the crew's psychological endurance alright; unfortunately, it resulted in Naguchi being stabbed in the stomach while O'Keefe sets the device to blow and take the earth with it.
15	* IrrevocableOrder: Upon learning the device was going to go off, the general told his men to stop it before it was too late, but O'Keefe revealed she had given it the final command, so there was no turning it off.
16	* {{Irony}}: As the narration [[LampshadeHanging points out]], the General's experiment ends up destroying the very world he was seeking to protect.
17	* LaserGuidedKarma: The General ends up receiving severe repercussions for his interrogation experiment. This was probably to counter the KarmaHoudini ending of the original.
18	* TheMole: One of the experiment's tactics was making the crew think there was a traitor in the ranks'. Unfortunately, when they made it look like it was Naguchi, it resulted in Valentine stabbing him in the stomach.
19	* MyGodWhatHaveIDone:
20	** Despite not saying anything, after learning that Naguchi wasn't a traitor, Valentine is visible shook up over stabbing him.
21	** After realizing that she set the device to blow on Earth, O'Keefe spends her final moments in grief over it.
22	* NothingIsScarier: What exactly the Ebonites look like is not shown.
23	* NotQuiteDead: At first, it looked like Chaumsky had been killed during her interrogation, but turned out to be a simulated corpse.
24	* OnlySaneMan: After Chaumsky found out about the experiment, she begged the General to stop, but she was ignored. Turns out they should've listened to her.
25	* TakingYouWithMe: At the end of the experiment, TheStoic O'Keefe [[NotSoStoic has reached]] [[BreakTheHaughty her breaking point even more than the others]] and ends up setting the EarthShatteringKaboom device to blow, believing that she and the others were going to die in enemy territory, unaware they were really on Earth.

Context Recap / TheOuterLimits1995S4E20Nightmare