Few scripts are as personal as The Outer Limits episode that has garnered Sam Egan a Gemini nomination for best writing in a dramatic series. His story, ‘Tribunal,’ is based to a large extent on his father’s experiences in Auschwitz. The son of two survivors, Egan grew up hearing tales of both his parents’ trials and tribulations in the concentration camp.

A time-travel tale, the story bounces from the camp to the modern-day u.s., where the son of two survivors hunts down the Nazi responsible for the death of his father’s first wife and daughter.

The story was a major departure both for Egan, who says he rarely writes so personally, and for The Outer Limits, which concentrates mainly on science-fiction themes.

Egan, the most prolific of the Outer Limits writers (with 16 scripts to his credit) and a series exec producer for four years, was well aware of the departure: ‘Rarely have we done episodes with this kind of gravitas,’ he says, but such was the reaction to ‘Tribunal’ that it was chosen to be the series’ 100th episode.

‘This was quite a departure for me and rarely does one get the opportunity to explore something as personal as a family tragedy. It was cathartic for me and for my father, who came up for filming and ended up acting as a de facto adviser. He was on set for the filming and found it incredibly moving and very life-affirming and validating that his son had gone to the trouble of re-enacting that drama. He found it extremely positive, and the survivor community that he is part of on seeing the show had similar reactions.’

As for the future, Egan anticipates a return to The Outer Limits (aac/mgm/Showtime/Trilogy) as a result of one channel’s overtures to mgm to pick up the show for a return season.

He is also working on other projects. One, which he is working on with Tribunal director Mario Azzopardi, is a series called Coliseum, set in Rome in 95 ad, that’s at the rudimentary stage (Egan says he is writing the bible and devising the visual presentation). Egan is also working on ‘the return of Quincy as a movie-of-the-week. We’ve got a script, we’re just waiting for a green light.’ *