Skip to main content

story identification - TV show episode with a woman in a park who keeps "dreaming" of doctors around her



Back in the mid/late 90s I saw a show where a woman and man were having a picnic in a beautiful park. The woman fell asleep and woke up with (maybe) doctors around her that told her everything was okay and to close her eyes. She woke back up at the picnic with the man, and thought she had a bad dream. Then things started “glitching” in the park, kind of like when the holodeck malfunctions in Star Trek.


She then wakes back up with several people around her (maybe doctors) who say she’s in shock and dying. After she dies, the (maybe doctors) say something like “she’s the third one this week” or something like that. The camera pans out and shows that everyone was in a giant building or maybe a ship, and she had been plugged in some kind of machine like The Matrix.



Answer



This is the 1985 Twilight Zone story, "Dreams for Sale."





Per Wikipedia:



On an idyllic outdoor picnic with her husband, their daughters, and their dog, a woman becomes confused and disoriented when her vision stutters and events begin repeating themselves. Eventually, her reality become so distorted with repeating images and sounds that she screams. Waking in a dream-making machine, she discovers she is in the future, alongside hundreds of others. They are all in a sterile, industrial indoor environment. A technician explains to her that she was in a Dreamatron, which is a "Fully Interactive Dream Machine," and it was running a "Country Picnic" program.



He fixes the circuit board for her dream bay and tells her to relax and enjoy her last six minutes before returning to work. Still confused, she returns to her dream world and relaxes again. She tries to tell her husband about her "dream" but forgets it almost straight away. She asks her fantasy husband if she can stay with him there forever. He tells her that yes she can and that he wants her to stay forever, too. Meanwhile, the machine burns out before the technicians can disconnect her, trapping her in the alternate reality forever.


They note, "At least she died happy."



Here is the image of the giant building in the future, which I found impressively creepy when I first saw this story.


Factory


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...
Post a Comment
Read more

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.
Post a Comment
Read more

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.
Post a Comment
Read more

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...
Post a Comment
Read more