The Borderland

Peter Mark Richman stars as Professor Ian Fraser, who, along with his wife Eva(played by Nina Foch) and a fellow colleague(played by Philip Abbot) claim to have discovered a doorway into the fourth dimension that they accidentally discovered via electrical fields. They need the backing of a wealthy man named Dwight Hartley(played by Barry Jones) who has recently lost his beloved son in an accident, and is desperate to make contact with him. They manage to make use of a power station to recreate the experiment, but the sabotage of a vengeful, discredited medium(played by Gladys Cooper) and her associate(played by Alfred Ryder) threaten all their plans... Interesting episode with good writing and ideas, even if it does leave many unanswered questions in its wake.

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.

You can hand it to Professor Ian Fraser (Peter Mark Richmond.) His team are trying to open a portal to another dimension by reversing the polarity.

An experiment seemed to have gone wrong but his left hand ended up being reversed.

To continue with his experiments, he needs funding from business mogul Dwight Hartley. A man desperately trying to contact his dead son though a fake medium Mrs Palmer.

Hartley is convinced that by going through the portal, Fraser could contact his dead son. The medium is exposed as a fraud. Hartley's business executive has his own agenda to take over the company.

There are a lot of plot threads but it is mysticism versus science fiction. Mrs Palmer is upset to lose out in getting money from Hartley and attempts to scuttle the experiments.

Somehow the story gets muddled, it finds itself spinning too many plates. The experiments does not even look safe with a mouse exploding. There also seems to be a lot of padding but it was enjoyable hokum.

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.