Masters of Science Fiction (TV Series)

The Discarded (2007)

John Hurt: Samswope

Quotes 

• Samswope : I am extremely whipped. Rilla never manifested herself for the KP shift. Lowly as though it may be, I worked both. Do I make myself pellucid? Eight detestable hours. I may have to kill that woman.

  Bedzyk : You're too late.

  Samswope : [Sam looks out the window, where body parts are floating]  Rilla? I was perturbed she didn't wish to do her garbage shift.

  [to his murmuring second head] 

  Samswope : Would you kindly be quiet! - Now, it seems, she *is* the garbage shift.

  [Sam looks down to the plant on the ground, whose trailing leaves had tripped him] 

  Samswope : Fortuitous I didn't knock over the plant.

  Bedzyk : Well, if you had, there'd have been two all-meat pizzas floating out there.

• Samswope : Come on, Bedzyk, it's not that bad. We'll find a landfall. We will. All in the fullness of time.

  Bedzyk : Ah, come on, Sam. We've been to all six terraformed types in the system. Some of them more than once. Always the same. 'Keep moving, scum, hit the road, get lost, and take this piece of junk with you.' If we had any sense, we'd fly this garbage scow right into the Sun. Better still, crash it right up there.

  [They look up at planet Earth] 

  Samswope : Ah, yes. Into the bosom of our succoring Mother Earth.

• Samswope : So, we're down to, what, 96?

  Bedzyk : 93.

  Samswope : Two-thirds of our original little party of discarded freaks dead and gone. It's tragic. Just tragic. We've been orbiting too long. What are you going to do?

  Bedzyk : What am *I* going to do?

  Samswope : In spite of your surly - or, I might even venture - taciturn nature, mon ami, you remain an imposing and, whether you like it or nay, a de facto executive figure aboard this enchanted scow, the mutant horrors of which hold you in the very highest esteem. And I suspect, beneath your snarls, you actually care what happens to them.

  Bedzyk : I'm just a passenger, pal. I'm just another steerage-class passenger, and I got my ticket to prove it.

  [He waves his grossly oversized left arm] 

• Samswope : They called the sickness what it really is: Random Idiopathic Genomic Mutation. The acronym RIGM, or riggum.

• Samswope : It's an emissary yacht from Earth Central!

• Bedzyk : All right, let's hail them. Attention, Earth vessel! Attention, Earth vessel, do you read me?

  [pause] 

  Bedzyk : What are they, deaf?

  Harmony Teet : Could be.

  Bedzyk : Attention, Earth vessel. Listen, guys, save yourselves the effort, okay? We are leaving Earth space.

  [No response] 

  Bedzyk : What is this?

  Harmony Teet : Maybe they're all dead and purple and full of maggots in there. Tongues hanging out, guts spilling out of their noses, eyeballs all -

  [She mimes protruding eyeballs] 

  Samswope : One can only hope.

  Bedzyk : I don't get it. They're here. We know they're here. Why won't they talk to us?

  Harmony Teet : [the "Gulag" suddenly rocks and Harmony mutters over her receiver-transmitter]  They're boarding us!

• Barney Curran : Do you think that Earth Central hates you? That we don't feel your pain? God, it's been 37 years! You, you have to believe we feel the guilt and torment of what the former generation did to you!

  Harmony Teet : Oh! That's why you never sent get well packages - or toilet paper?

  Samswope : Mr. Bedzyk and I have to tell our happy little band why you're here, Sheriff. So go ahead. By the way, I notice that you're a healthy, arrow-slim normal lad. Did they pick you preferentially to give us a little tweak of the antennae?

  [Curran opens his jacket to show that his chest is a mass of writhing, suppurating neurofibromas]