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.

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")

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.

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?

About a power station that can contact the afterlife.

I never liked the way this was pushed back to episode 12 when in fact it was the second episode produced! It would have made a fine 2nd episode so why push it back??????

Guest stars Alfred Ryder and Mark Richman both appeared in several 1960s sci-fi shows (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, QM's The Invaders, etc,) to the point that it was almost expected that one or both of them should turn up a 1960s sci-fi show. They were both very welcome! In this, Ryder's character has a touch of Dr Smith in Lost In Space.

The Borderland has a nice epic-feel (thanks to the Power Station set) and the hour is a bit different as it features no monster.

All in all, a fine episode.