The Outer Limits (TV Series) Breaking Point (2000) User Reviews

Time Travel Travails

[Hitchcoc · 8/10 · 20 August 2014]

I'd swear that some of the people who produced this show are about as cynical as it is possible to be. This is probably the fifth or sixth episode where a scientist who has made amazing discoveries is about to get the financial plug pulled. He has been working on time travel and is not being allowed to continue, even though he believes that he is on the brink of something great. Well, we know what's going to happen. He hops in the device and finds himself a couple days ahead of the date he entered. He goes home to his wife (an edgy, somewhat combative woman, quite beautiful) and finds her dead on the living room floor with a bullet hole in her chest. He doesn't know the cause but is afraid he may have been responsible. He hustles back to the machine and returns to the time he left. Now he has knowledge of the death and has decided to try to intervene. Of course, his wife thinks he is nuts. Since he has been fired, this adds to his image of instability. It is also obvious that their marriage is on the rocks and he frightens her. The fact is he has not been there for her and she is tired of it. She even calls his co-worker, who, of course, quotes the company line on the project. One other kicker is that our boy is incredibly jealous. One little problem is the awful security at the plant. Any dodo could break into the facility. Anyway, I won't inject any spoilers but wait for the finish and then look up the word "kismet."

It's one of the highlights of the sixth season.

[Foreverisacastironmess123 · 9/10 · 19 August 2016]

When they are done well, I love stories that involve time travel and all of the awesome weird paradoxical stuff that comes with it. And although this series did use the theme more than a few times, I always found this episode to be one of the better and more emotionally involving offerings. It's really about the classic concept of fate vs free will, and of how no matter what we do or how hard we may try to prevent tragic events from ever happening, the law of destiny, or balance, or whatever name we human beings try to give it, commands that it happen anyway, in one way or another... The story sees the distractingly gorgeous Rick Roberts as a driven scientist who has sorely neglected his restless wife and marriage over the years in favor of developing technology that could theoretically allow a person to travel back or forward in time. Just as his life's work is nearing its final stages he is fired from his own top secret project because of lack of results, and so he makes the fateful decision to prove that his creation works by dangerously trying it out himself, which luckily for him proves successful and transports him two days into the future, where he is soon shocked to discover that he's wanted for the murder of his wife. Returning home, he finds her dead body and sees a man driving away who, as he turns to look at him, is revealed to be - himself! Terrified at what the very-near future holds for his wife and unsure if it was he or a stranger who shot and killed her, plus also suffering from painful side effects of the unperfected time travel tech that seems to induce in him a dangerous burgeoning mental psychosis, he becomes irrationally determined to keep his wife safe in the present, not ever seeming to take into account that his aggressive behaviour is only serving to push her further away from him, and ever closer to the death that she seems destined to suffer... What I love is the juxtaposition of choice, fate, and the strong atmosphere of inevitability that works to dramatic effect here. I thought Rick Roberts and Laurie Holden were both good in their parts, you got that they'd once had a strong relationship, if one possibly built on him helping him to get through a dark period of depression in her life. He loves her and is even willing to go back to when he first met her and shoot his younger self, thereby erasing his own existence, which unbeknownst to him counts for nothing, and simply leads to a sadder kind of end for her altogether, as he was never there to help her on that night. Laurie Holden is really phenomenal in the heartbreaking closing scene, she has such a deep sadness in her beautiful tear-filled eyes, in my opinion is one of the more tragic endings they ever did. To really save the one he loved the most, all Andrew really had to do was simply let her go. Great episode that's still one of my favourites, engaging story-line, well acted characters, excellent use of an old theme and it has a kicker of an emotional finale that feels well earned. I guess we've just got to make the most of the time we have... Thanks, it's time to deja this vu.

Great acting by the lead

[bgaiv · 9/10 · 14 November 2021]

This isn't the most original plot (even for OL) but it does play out well. Rick Roberts really nailed his character arc from normal to crazed screaming man.

I stopped sweating the details of time travel plots long ago but I think this one pretty well makes sense.