The Borderland (The Outer Limits)

"The Borderland" is an episode of the original The Outer Limits television show. It was the second episode to be produced, and first aired on 16 December 1963, during the first season.

The storyline involves a team of scientists who use an incredibly strong magnetic field to open a door to another dimension.

Opening narration

Plot

A scientist encounters a magnetic field that reverses the form of living matter. A millionaire attempts to use this magnetic field to contact to his dead son, while two phony famous psychics try to sabotage their attempts to travel to the other side or other dimension.

Storyline

An eccentric and elderly British millionaire named Dwight Hartley (Jones) has engaged Mrs. Palmer (Cooper), a famous psychic, to establish contact with his dead son, Dion. But scientists Ian (Richman) and Eva Fraser (Foch), together with their kindred assistant, Dr. Russell (Abbott), expose her as a fraud during a seance. Mrs. Palmer is then thrown out of Hartley's home, her plan to con Hartley for financial gain being over. Hartley feels grateful to the scientists, and wishes to use his finances to fund their research into other dimensions at Arrex Electronics, where Ian Fraser is Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Fraser insists that he has developed a method that can pierce "The Borderland" - a dimensional plane between this world and another - which may be the afterlife. (During earlier tests, the scientist's left hand was reversed when he accidentally thrust it into the limbo world. He now, as a result, has two right hands.) However, he needs all the energy of a metropolitan power grid to do so. Hartley decides to arrange the situation, if Fraser will attempt to contact his dead son. Fraser agrees, and the experiment begins. But, at a crucial moment, Mrs. Palmer reappears at Hartley's office building, planning to expose the scientists as frauds, at the behest of Hartley's unscrupulous Managing Director, Benson Sawyer (Raymond). Sawyer had secretly engaged Mrs. Palmer's services in an attempt to satisfy Hartley's interest in the occult, while feigning his own interest with the intent of assuming power within the Arrex empire.

Fraser sends inanimate objects, such as inert elements shaped into cubes, as well as flowers and white rats, into the other dimension. Just as Ian successfully enters into the fourth dimensional limbo world, the psychic's assistant, Mr. Price (Ryder), disrupts the power supply, thus causing a critical loss of energy. As a result, the dimensional overlap begins to collapse. At the last second, Eva pulls Ian free of the magnetic field generating the inter-dimensional doorway, reversing the effects of his hand. Desperate to contact his dead son, Hartley enters the magnetic coil chamber and instantly disappears to a place unknown.

Closing narration

Cast

• Mark Richman – as Ian Fraser
• Nina Foch – as Eva Fraser
• Barry Jones – as Dwight Hartley
• Philip Abbott – as Lincoln Russell
• Gene Raymond – as Benson Sawyer
• Gladys Cooper – as Mrs. Palmer
• Alfred Ryder – as Edgar Price
• Noel de Sousa – as Dr. Sung (uncredited)
• Vic Perrin – as Scientist (uncredited)

Influence in other media

• The developers of the Half-Life video game series, which deals with creatures from parallel dimensions breaking through to ours, have listed "The Borderland" among their primary influences for the plot of the game.^[1]

References

External links

• "The Borderland" at TV.com