The Borderland

Scientists attempt to open a doorway into another dimension but lack enough electrical power to do so. However, the lead scientist's left hand has "changed polarity" and been turned into a second right hand when it momentarily is pulled into the gap.

When the scientists prove to a local tycoon that a psychic promising to put him in contact with his dead son is a fraud, he grants them access to the city power plant for one hour so they can succeed. The tycoon hopes they can reach "the other side" and contact his son. But the jilted psychic and her associate have other plans.

One of the weakest episodes in season 1, "The Borderland" make no sense: there is no reason for the scientists to believe that they can contact anyone on the "other side", let alone the tycoon's dead son, and in fact this subplot is never resolved; the script is unbearably talky and padded, full of pointless pseudoscientific jargon; and there's no reason for the psychic and her friend to show up inside the power plant except that it's necessary to the plot that they do so (how did they even know this experiment was happening today? Don't they have any security in this building?). Reportedly this one was one of the first episodes filmed but it's easy to see why it was held back until late in the season.

I was about eleven years old when The Outer Limits first aired on ABC back in 1963, and to this day it remains my favorite and, for me, the most influential television series I have ever watched. Many of the episodes (e.g., The Galaxy Being, The Sixth Finger, Production and Decay of Strange Particles) scared me almost to death back then and still make my skin crawl (a little) if I happen to catch one on cable today, but the Borderland had a different effect: With its jargon-filled dialog ("polarity ... REVERSED!") about magnetic fields, electric power, antimatter, and the like, its many stock-footage shots of the apparatus of a massive power plant, and its stunning, over-the-top visual effects, it left me awestruck, and succeeded in inspiring a profound curiosity about electricity, magnetism, matter, energy, space, and time. It made me want to be a physicist, and indeed, 15 years later I earned a Ph.D. in that field. Whoever said watching TV dulls the mind?

During a séance conducted by the trickster Mrs. Palmer and her assistant Mr. Price, the scientists Ian and Eva Fraser and their assistant Dr. Russell expose the fraud to the millionaire Dwight Hartley, who hired Mrs. Palmer to contact his dead son Dion from the beyond, and to his Managing Director Benson Sawyer. Dr. Fraser explains that he has discovered a process to contacts the fourth dimension and shows his two right hands to prove his experiment. Now he needs a large amount of energy to go further in his experiment. Hartley promises to finance the project provided Dr. Palmer seeks out Dion in the other dimension. However, Benson is a corrupt man that has an arrangement with Mrs. Palmer and Mr. Price sabotages the experiment with tragic consequences.

"The Borderland" is an underrated episode of "The Outer Limits". The storyline of greedy is intriguing until the very last minute with an appropriate conclusion. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "A Fronteira" ("The Borderland")

I checked the schedule... unless I saw reruns out of sequence, it looks like THE BORDERLAND may have been my very 1st episode of THE OUTER LIMITS. Back then, I had no idea what was going on, but the image of the electrical power plant, and the guy who vanishes when he steps into the magnetic field (you see his skeleton just before he's gone) stuck with me forever after that. Half a mile from my house was an electric sub-station, and every time we'd drive past it, I'd be reminded of this story.

In his own way, Leslie Stevens' stories on this show are even stranger and perhaps more impenetrable than Joe Stefano's. Stevens' focus on hard science, which often have long, extended sequences of scientists and machinery must have been difficult for "average" audiences to take. Heck, it takes a lot of patience on my part, and I figure I must be this show's target audience!

I'm familiar with a number of the actors in this one. Mark Richman I mostly remember for his 2 McCLOUD movies. He appeared in the pilot-- my pick for the single worst McCLOUD ever made (how did that show ever get get sold?), as the original Peter B. Clifford. (J.D. Cannon replaced him when it went to a series.) A few years later, he guested as the commander of NYC's mounted division, where Clifford told him in a phone call, "Now he's YOUR problem."

Nina Foch mostly stands out in my mind for her part as the secretary in EXECUTIVE SUITE, a very thought-provoking story whose climactic scene actually brought tears to my eyes, as William Holden gave a speech in which he spelled out the importance of being able to take pride in one's work, and said "You can't have men working ONLY for money."

Philip Abbott was the sidekick in THE F.B.I. (which I used to watch regularly but haven't seen since the 60's), but he also turned up in an Ellen Foley episode of NIGHT COURT, the one where Stella Stevens played the high-priced "madame".

And then there's Alfred Ryder, even sleazier than he was in the STAR TREK episode, THE MAN TRAP.

So many obsessed people in this story! The scientist wants to learn the secrets of the universe. The millionaire wants to contact the spirit of his dead son at any cost. His business manager wants power over things and over people, not having any real talent himself. The spiritualist wants the money she was promised (and in trying to get it, she really gets the businessman's number). And her client is so warped with adulation for her he's eager to stoop to murder in her behalf, while trying to rationalize his actions so he can see himself as innocent. Of these, the only one who comes out intact is the scientist, whose motives were completely selfless.

Somehow, I never saw this one again in syndication, and only found out the title when I wound up renting it in sequence with all the others in the 1990's.

Hard to believe a show this intense and scary used to be on at 7:30 PM Monday night. I suspect only the fact that Mondays back then were traditionally "dead" evenings for TV programming led to my tuning it in at all. I didn't watch regularly, and never saw even half the episodes. At least, until years later, in syndication. My own fanaticism for the show has grown steadily over the years. These days, even the episodes I don't care for I find fascinating to watch anyway.

As a rich man attends a séance, the plug is pulled and the medium and her partner shown to be fakes. One of the attendees then approaches the man and tells him that he has developed a machine that could move one into another dimension. How he is able to assume that the afterlife is even a possibility is beyond me. However, the man is so desperate to make contact with his son (who died suddenly and violently in a car accident, that he is willing to pay for one hour of time at a power plant. There is a necessity for test before the scientist himself will become the guinea pig. Unfortunately, there are some adversaries: the medium and her assistant (who is nuts) and a man who controls the purse strings and insists on a first level of information. The former is understandable, but the latter could simply be lied to. Anyway, like any story worth its salt, there are some complications along the way. I was rather disappointed with this one.