MAJOR JOHN SKOKES, UNDF (Robert Patrick), in Quality of Mercy and The Light Brigade episodes of The Outer Limits (1995) , fell prisoner-of-war in an all-out war that an alien, reptilian race waged against humanity. No one ever found out who those non-humans were or what humanity did to provoke in them a genocidal rage. And John Skokes would not fin...
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MAJOR JOHN SKOKES, UNDF (Robert Patrick), in Quality of Mercy and The Light Brigade episodes of The Outer Limits (1995) , fell prisoner-of-war in an all-out war that an alien, reptilian race waged against humanity. No one ever found out who those non-humans were or what humanity did to provoke in them a genocidal rage. And John Skokes would not find out, either.He was thrown into a cell with (as he thought) a female cadet undergoing some kind of transformation to alien form. Why the aliens were doing this, he didn't bother to consider. His repeated attempts to effect their escape and stop the transformation failed. And then he made a fatal mistake: he revealed to her the details of a key operation, in which the United Nations Defense Forces (UNDF) were about to make a last stand on the far side of the sun from Earth. Not only did this cadet betray him, but she blithely announced that the aliens were changing her back!We must presume that the aliens killed Major Skokes. And sent their female, who was of human size, to Earth disguised as Skokes. There (s)he returned to duty as a REcommissioned Prisoner Of War (RE-POW) and won an assignment to The Light Brigade, a battleship with a crew of six hundred and built to carry a single bomb powerful enough to wreck a planet. This spy was one of four survivors of a radiation barrage that cripped the ship and killed everyone else aboard. This new version of Skokes turned the ship around and finagled the other survivors into arming the weapon. Though she died in a final battle with a wet-behind-the-ears cadet (Will Wheaton), this same cadet made the fatal mistake of launching the weapon before realizing--too late--that the new target was Earth itself.Thus the aliens were avenged for whatever offense humanity had given, which is not treated in either of the two episodes.
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