The Outer Limits (TV Series) The Borderland (1963) User Reviews

An Undervalued Outing For This Series

[ferbs54 · 8/10 · 27 April 2017]

Well, another day, another "Outer Limits" episode for yours truly. Last night the episode for me was "The Borderland," episode # 12; the second episode to be filmed, after "The Galaxy Being," but held until midseason by the ABC executives because they just didn't know what to make of it...and because, supposedly, of their disappointment that the episode featured no monster, as was their expectation. Rather, this episode deals with a husband-and-wife team of physicists, Ian (Mark Richman, who would go on to appear in the final episode of "The Outer Limits," episode 49, "The Probe") and Eva Frazer (Nina Foch, a great actress who had recently impressed me with two superb performances on the contemporaneous TV program "Route 66"), who are seeking to find a gateway into another dimension. Having had some small success earlier, they solicit the help of a wealthy industrialist, Dwight Hartley (Barry Jones), who agrees to give them the necessary funds AND the use of a local power station, but only if--when they do cross over into that other dimension--they will look for his deceased son. This resorting to scientific methods only serves to miff a charlatan spiritualist, one Mrs. Palmer (the great character actress Gladys Cooper) and her wackadoodle henchman Edgar Price (future "Star Trek" alumnus Alfred Ryder), after their phony methods have been exposed by the Frazers' ally and co-researcher (Phillip Abbott). All seems to be going well with the Frazers' attempt to crack the door open into that other dimension, until Palmer and Price, in a manner never sufficiently explained, manage to break into the power plant and sabotage the works by dumping a toolbox into a functioning generator...leading to all hell breaking loose indeed! For the life of me, I cannot explain why I love this episode as much as I do. The characters are not sufficiently fleshed out and there really isn't much in the way of suspense or scares. And it almost feels as if half the episode is comprised of the Frazers testing their power plant equipment and uttering such techie mumbo jumbo as "1-2-zero to red line...1-stroke-1-1-stroke-7...polarity minus 3-9 degrees...." Still, the episode just works for me. The power station set looks fantastic and convincing, "OL" creator Leslie Stevens has supplied a nicely literate script (for what little real dialogue there is), the photography by John Nickolaus is moody and effective, and director Stevens gives us some wonderful close-up shots of his actors. But basically, the episode is just an excuse to wow the audience with some of the most incredible effects of any "OL" episode, and at that it succeeds wildly. Indeed, the final 10 minutes of this episode are a nonstop barrage of visual and aural pyrotechnics that stun both the eye and ear. Effects wise, I would say that this is surely the acme of any "OL" hour. Stevens would go on to mention that he "wanted to get what was later called the psychedelic look, to blow everyone's mind"...and he surely did, at that. I would never suggest the use of mind-enhancing drugs here, but man, is this episode ever made for the lysergically enhanced viewer!

I can't say enough about those final 10 minutes of this episode, in which Ian is trapped in an ion rain wilderness while his wife valiantly attempts to pull him out. I have no idea how the filmmakers pulled off their eye candy tricks here, as well as the aural effects, but wow, do they ever hold up fantastically, now more than half a century later! Reportedly, the effects for this final sequence cost $14,000, which doesn't sound like a lot today, but was enough to constitute a budget buster for this series back when. Director Byron Haskin, who had previously helmed such "psychotronic" pictures as "The Naked Jungle" (a personal favorite of mine) and "From the Earth to the Moon," not to mention such "OL" masterpieces as "The 100 Days of the Dragon" and "The Architects of Fear," was called in to assist with the effects here, earning himself a gold star from me...belatedly, of course. Of all the 49 episodes in this landmark series, few have topped "The Borderland," it seems to me, when it comes to suggesting "the awe and mystery" that the Control Voice speaks of in the beginning of every episode; not for nothing are the actual words "the outer limits" spoken by that Voice in the intro to this episode and in no other. Just look at that bizarre landscape that Frazer sees through the ion rain. The writers of Golden Age sci-fi were desirous of suggesting a "sense of wonder" to their readers, and that is just what this episode does for me...suggest awe and mystery and wonder. Capped by a sweet message regarding the Power of Love, this episode turns out to be a memorable one, indeed...despite the lack of monsters. Surely, an undervalued outing for this series.

The Fourth Dimension

[claudio_carvalho · 8/10 · 27 February 2018]

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")

Polarity-- REVERSE!

[profh-1 · 6/10 · 4 October 2009]

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.

The 2nd Episode In Production Order (Not Screening Order)

[StuOz · 28 June 2014]

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.

Barrier Beyond

[AaronCapenBanner · 7/10 · 11 March 2016]

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.

The Fourth Dimension

[wes-connors · 6/10 · 28 February 2012]

During a séance, electronics scientist Mark Richman (as Ian Fraser) reveals "medium" Gladys Cooper (as Mrs. Palmer) is a charlatan. She claims the fakery helps channel her participants to believe, which is necessary when contacting the dead. Haven't heard that before, but it is a good explanation, under the circumstances. The failure distresses millionaire Barry Jones (as Dwight Hartley), who hoped to contact a son who died in a car accident at age seventeen...

Conveniently present at the séance, Prof. Richman explains he and wife Nina Foch (as Eva) have another idea for Mr. Jones. They are experimenting with a "doorway into the fourth dimension" and need financial backing. Richman has stuck his left hand in the doorway and now has two right hands. How this means Jones' dead son will be found seems far-fetched, but we go along with the idea. From writer/director Leslie Stevens, it's interesting if not convincing.

****** The Borderland (12/16/63) Leslie Stevens ~ Peter Mark Richman, Nina Foch, Barry Jones, Gladys Cooper

Sort of Silly Science

[Hitchcoc · 6/10 · 8 January 2015]

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.

"It's better to live two weeks as a tiger than a whole lifetime as a lamb."

[classicsoncall · 7/10 · 2 May 2022]

I couldn't see the point of this episode when it was over; nothing was accomplished except for the closing message of love conquering all. Ostensibly, the married team of Professor Ian (Peter Mark Richman) and Eva Fraser (Nina Foch) discovered a doorway to the fourth dimension, which the single mindedly, obsessed industrialist Dwight Hartley (Barry Jones) wanted to exploit for the purpose of communicating with his dead son. In real life, the actor portraying Hartley was seventy years old, while the story had his son dying in an auto accident at seventeen! That was a disconnect for me right there. While that death could have occurred decades earlier, its relevance in the story made it seem like it just happened. A lot of scientific jargon is used during the experiments leading up to a major test of Fraser's polarity reversing machine, and the filming employs a cascade of double and triple exposure images to simulate Fraser's emergence into the fourth dimension, complicated by a psychic assistant's (Alfred Ryder) attempt to sabotage the whole thing over a rejection when they tried to pull a fast one in the story's opening. At least the seer (Gladys Cooper) wanted to stop short of murder, good for her. For the finale, Eva Fraser risks getting pulled into the fourth dimensional void to successfully save her husband, who's right hand as it turns out, was able to figure out what his left hand was doing.

An unusual episode -- compelling as an exponent of the power of technology

[wwroblic · 10/10 · 3 May 2009]

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?

The Borderland

[Prismark10 · 6/10 · 10 May 2023]

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.

Switches, generators and blather

[kyyankee · 5/10 · 7 April 2020]

This episode is one I would expect a high school kid to write after a couple of weeks in electrical shop. The characters keep yelling about polarities and switches and REVERSE!!! without ever really trying to make sense of what they're actually doing. Who in his right mind would step into a high voltage field after less than an hour of not particularly successful testing? Why does his wife not make a more strenuous case for not doing it? And how in the world do a two bit medium and her nutty assistant just stroll into a power plant while a dangerous test is being attempted? Not up to the standards set by most of the series.

A quality episode, with a mix of science and spiritualism.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 9/10 · 24 April 2023]

Man of wealth Dwight Hartley is desperate to contact his dead son, after a failed seance with Mrs Palmer, he's approached by Professor Ian Fraser, who claims to have found a path to the fourth dimension, Hartley sees a potential means for contact.

A thoroughly imaginative, creative episode, I think this is without a doubt one of the more interesting ones from series one. We have the obvious sci fi element, but it's also mixed in with the occult to.

It's a very solid production, very well made, with some age defying special effects, and a quality that still shines through decades later, huge credit to the production team.

The acting is spot on, Mark Richman and Nina Foch are both great, the character of Dwight Hartley was very well played by Barry Jones, you did get the impression of a desperate father, and of course a wonderful turn from the wonderful Gladys Cooper, who played the dodgy medium.

9/10.

Weak.

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 6 March 2012]

Just like the previous episode, "The Borderland" is about power--not one of the more interesting topics for "The Outer Limits". Too many episodes dealt with this topic and "The Borderland" is among the weakest of them.

The show begins with a fake séance. It seems that a rich man is desperate to make contact with his dead nephew and these tricksters are trying to convince them of their powers. However, the other guests quickly uncover the hoax--and then ask the man to invest in their weird project involving alternate dimensions and how one of them now has TWO right hands after one was reversed by plunging into this dimension! He agrees and using his political connections, he's able to get the team HUGE amounts of power from the local station and they try to unlock the secrets of this dimension--though how it all relates to the dead man's nephew is a bit confusing.

All in all, there isn't a lot to love about this one. It suffers from a goofy plot and lots of unanswered questions. But, most importantly, it also lacks originality--especially after appearing just after another show about power! Not especially good.

Several dumb plot-devices aren't enough to ruin this.

[fedor8 · 10 September 2021]

It's very typical that the ratings average is so low for this episode. Plebeians need their cheesy monsters, hence struggle with any story that is half-way intelligent or attempting originality, or handles the science aspects of the story with any level of effort.

The first half-hour is very good, in terms of plot, acting and dialogue, it largely avoids the pitfalls of B-moviedom hence has no major flaws. Unfortunately, the writer couldn't resist using an idiotic, ultra-generic plot-device such as sabotage, and man is it a dumb example of sabotage or what: the silly, unrealistic character that's Mrs. Harper's sidekick (what exactly is his purpose? Since when do psychics need assistants?) throws a random tool box (that just happens to be conveniently lying around) onto some electric circuits that just happen to be located beneath them, cutting off power from several generators, interfering with the experiment.

Questions: how the hell did the two charlatan goofballs get inside the plant?! Is there really no security in such places?! During very expensive, elaborate, major experiments especially?! How the hell did this stoopid lackey even know how to ruin the experiment with what can be perfectly described as practically zero effort! "Oh, I guess I'll just drop this box on these here thingumabobs and that will screw up the generatorabob. Hey, there's a toolbox here! That'll do." Just like that. WTF.

An even more crucial question: WHY did the writer feel this stupidity was necessary in the "dramatic" sense? The experiment was HIGHLY dangerous as it was, i.e. There was absolutely no need at all to add "tension" to the plot. No need at all to make the experiment's outcome even more uncertain. But there you go, Hollywood writers are suckers for laying on BS upon unnecessary BS because they are so insecure about their not being enough CONFLICT in the story. Some writers are so obsessed with there not being enough "conflict" that they go to great lengths to create too much "conflict" hence burden the stories with excessive nonsense.

Still, the finish is interesting, and the episode survives this idiotic monkey wrench of a dumb sabotage attempt without too much damage.

Read my reviews of the entire series on my "The Outer Limits (1963-1965) - All Episodes Rated & Reviewed" list.

Nevertheless, we never really find out WHY the millionaire financing the experiment was TRANSPARENT in one scene, in the 30th minute to be exact, while standing next to the scientist, and why nobody noticed this, not even the scientist he was talking to. Perhaps this was an error brought about by a script change and the subsequent lack of funds or willingness to re-shoot the scene. Certainly there was zero logical reason for him to be transparent i.e. Affected in any way by the experiment at this early stage.

The narrator mentions "the power of love" in the outro. Rather cheesy and needless. This story wasn't about love, at least not primarily. But that was typical of TOL, these silly attempts to bring the show closer to housewives.