InAlienable (2007)

Walter Koenig: Dr. Shilling

Quotes 

• Shilling : I read your report. You can't compare one diseased animal to another. That monkey might have lasted three months longer regardless! Your proof is flawed. Can you even remember the last time you were published in The New England Journal of Medicine?

  Eric Norris : No. But I bet you do. Month, day, hour. Position of the Earth, the Moon.

  Shilling : Whatever humor you think you're finding at my expense has its own very steep charge. You'll find that out when your keys don't fit here any longer.

• Shilling : Norris's friend found a foreign organism attached to a piece of the meteor, and he gave it to him. According to what Norris told him, the thing has gotten inside of him and is growing at an accelerated pace. Norris believes that it is some sort of alien parasite that's determined to free itself and, in the process, kill him.

  Gerhard : Didn't I see this on X Files?

• Shilling : It didn't arrive in a spaceship, for God's sakes. It was a meteor. A shooting star. A chunk of rock. I saw what was left of it after it burned up. We will never know where it came from or whatever it was; there are no more.

  Dr. Magee : And isn't that enough to try to preserve it? Or, at least, what it's become?

• [after the federal science team has watched the reunion of Eric and his alien son, Benjamin, during which Eric persuades Benjamin to walk and to smile, Gerhard also smiles] 

  Gerhard : Imagine that. Just like any father and son.

  Shilling : And you can train lizards to slither through hoops.

• [Shilling visits Norris in the army hospital, where Norris has been restrained and gagged] 

  Shilling : What have you hoped to accomplish? Did you think you were going to sneak down the back staircase with your little freak and disappear into the night? Is that what you thought? And by the way, after your midnight visit, Benjamin became quite violent. He tried to kill people. Did considerable damage. Is there any end to your talent for causing pain and suffering?

• Shilling : [to the FBI / medical team]  It appears that I have been drafted by our government. I am no longer an advisor to this team. In the matter of Benjamin, the mad little monster, I am now in charge. That information will remain in this room. Our new marching orders are these. The creature is a viable threat. It's a danger to us all and must be dealt with accordingly. It's growing and gaining strength exponentially. We need to push an aggressive testing regimen that will show us how it's happening.

  [the team are looking uneasy and unhappy with these instructions. Benjamin is writhing in his cage] 

  Shilling : Hopefully, it'll survive. If it doesn't, so be it. Better to err on the side of the intrepid.

• Shilling : [speaking viciously to Eric Norris]  I loved Miriam. She should have been my wife. Adam should have been my son. She loved me. She did. Until you showed up.

• Shilling : And still, I was living with it. And you know why? Because before the accident, she confessed to me that she wasn't happy in her marriage. That she made a mistake. That she should never have left me for you. But before we could act on it, before we could smooth that bump in the road, you took her from me for the second time.

  [Eric's jaw has been working, but he remains silent] 

  Shilling : When you killed her, Eric, my dear friend, you killed the last hope I'll ever have.

  Eric Norris : [whispering, with tears in his eyes]  I'm sorry, Frederick. I've been sorry every minute for the last eight years of my life.

  Shilling : I don't know. Can you ever get even with someone for the loss of a loved one? Maybe not. But seeing you here, in this courtroom, knowing that you're going to lose, knowing that this monster you so pathetically call your son is going to be taken from you forever...

  [He stands up and speaks bitterly] 

  Shilling : Well, I guess that's as close as payback will ever come for me.

• [Shilling is on the witness stand] 

  Shilling : Dr. Norris lost his wife and son in an automobile accident eight years ago. He's never been able to let that go.

  Attorney Barry : In what way, sir?

  Shilling : He's a sullen, detached man, with very few friends.

  Howard Ellis : Objection, your Honor!

  Judge Deville : Overrruled.

  Attorney Barry : And yet you've kept him on all these years. Why is that?

  Shilling : Well, actually, those are probably good qualities to have in a research scientist.

• Shilling : [feigning pity]  He's trying to make of this alien creature a child to replace the son that he lost. In his own mind, I truly believe he thinks that this parasite is his real child.

  Attorney Barry : Wouldn't you consider that to be extremely unhealthy reasoning?

  Shilling : I feel for the man. I understand his grief. The loss of loved ones is a terrible thing. And yes, that can distort one's sense of reality.

  [Eric closes his eyes in incredulous disbelief] 

  Shilling : And that's the reason why I keep him on. Because without me, he'd have nowhere else to go.