Original guide by Mike Brown (Vidiot)
http://vidiot.com
Version: January 4, 1989
Additional information and HTML formatting by Loren Heisey
https://innermind.com
Version: April 30, 2021
Guide Notes
Information is from the June, 1983, issue of Video Review. Other information is from the MGM/UA video tape packages and the book "The Outer Limits - The Official Companion".
Additional information is from United Artists Television press releases and on-screen credits.
Series Introduction from Press Release Package
Where does Fact end and Fiction begin? Who can predict what fantasy of today will become the reality of tomorrow? As man's knowledge of the universe expands, the realm of science fiction takes on new significance. Each episode of THE OUTER LIMITS begins with scientific fact. That fact is dramatized, illumined, projected into the Future and developed into a highly imaginative yet believable adventure. Each story has a different cast, headed by distinguished new guest stars, actors and actresses of proved talent.
Dramas Of the Unusual, The Surprising, the Almost Incredible
Examples of the highly imaginative dramas in THE OUTER LIMITS:
Locale
The laboratories and space stations, city streets and far-off galaxies, the depths of the Earth, Seas and Human Mind.
Principle Production Credits
Executive Producer: Leslie Stevens
Producer: Joseph Stefano (season 1), Ben Brady (season 2)
Associate and Story Consultant: Louis Morheim (season 1), Seeleg Lester (season 2)
Associate Producer: Sam White (season 2)
Theme: Dominic Frontiere
Control Voice: Vic Perrin
Produced by Daystar Productions
In Association with Villa Di Stefano Productions
United Artists Television
Metro Goldwyn Mayer
Original airdate: 9/16/63
Production dates: 3-14 Dec 62
Please Stand By (pilot title)
A radio engineer experimenting with a 3-D TV scanner accidentally teleports to Earth a being from the Andromeda Galaxy.
Package notes:
Oscar-winner Cliff Robertson stars as Allan Maxwell, a radio station owner who plunders his station's resources to build and power a three- dimensional television receiver capable of displaying deep-space radio signals. These strange radio waves suddenly take the form of a "galaxy being" composed of pure energy, whose own curiosity has led it to Earth.
The alien's strange, glowing form and deadly radiation trigger a tide of panic and violence. Only Maxwell can avert a showdown — at the possible cost of his own life!
Cast:
Original airdate: 9/23/63
Production dates: 3-11 Jul 63
A drug which makes flesh plastic enables a foreign agent to impersonate a US presidential candidate.
Package notes:
No one knows, but the President is not who he appears to be. In a terrifying timely story of genetic engineering and East-West powerplay, "The Hundred Days of the Dragon" stars Sidney Blackmer (Rosemary's Baby) as a popular American President who puts into place a master plan to slowly and steadily destroy the United States. Only the President's daughter can stop him — if she can uncover his secret before it's too late. A classic chiller from the TV series that influenced a generation of horror and suspense films.
Cast:
Original airdate: 9/30/63
Production dates: 19-26 Jun 63
A team of desperate scientists, seeking an end to the threat of war, surgically metamorphose scientist Robert Culp into an "alien" in an elaborate scenario designed to frighten the world's nations into peaceful coexistence by creating for them a "common enemy" — an enemy from space. Culp's death is faked — not even his wife is aware of the plan — and he's then subjected to a series of operations. But the noble scheme backfires: His spaceship crashes in a wooded area, where he is shot by frightened hunters. The "creature" limps back to the lab and reveals himself to his horrified wife before collapsing at her feet.
Package notes:
Grimly concluding that a common enemy, not love, is the only hope in unifying the warring nations of Earth, a group of scientists set out to secretly create the ultimate, global threat — an all-powerful alien monster. But can fear save the world? Robert Culp stars as the idealistic scientist chosen to undergo the painful and bizarre mutation from human to Thetan ("I am Caliban — with a Ph.D!"). Considered a special effects masterpiece, the resulting creature was judged so frightening by several local television stations that they actually blacked out the screen during the Thetan's appearance!
Cast:
Original airdate: 10/07/63
Production dates: 29 Jul-3 Aug 63
A meek university professor finds that his unconscious mind is destroying those with whom he becomes angry.
Package notes:
Donald Pleasence ("Halloween", "Escape From New York") is Harold Finley, a meek, unassuming college professor who invents a device capable of controlling the entire electro-magnetic spectrum. Implanted in his brain, the device gives Finley the ability to mentally direct this unlimited energy source. When a storm-like cloud of electricity attacks his sharp-tongued wife and domineering school dean, he realizes the device has unleashed a subconscious thirst for revenge — with uncontrollable and deadly results.
Cast:
Original airdate: 10/14/63
Production dates: 20-27 Aug 63
An uneducated miner (David McCallum) volunteers for an experiment in the acceleration of human evolution, and is transformed into a man of the distant future. Possessing a bulging cranium and a vast intellect, he grows increasingly aloof toward the rest of mankind, coming to regard human beings as little more than insects.
Before setting out to destroy the nearby town as an example of his power, he returns to the laboratory and directs his former sweetheart to operate the controls of the apparatus which will catapult him to the furthest limit of man's evolutionary potential. The heartbroken girl instead returns him to the former, 20th-century self.
Package notes:
A benign and brilliant scientist (Edward Mulhare) discovers a way to accelerate human evolution. David McCallum (superagent Illya Kuryakin from "The Man From Uncle") plays the bitter young coal miner who is miraculously transformed into the man of the future. As a result of the experiment, the size of his brain grows grotesquely, a 'sixth finger' appears, and he becomes the possessor of tremendous mental powers!
Cast:
Original airdate: 10/28/63
Production dates: 27 Aug-4 Sep 63
An astronaut returning from a deep-space mission passes through a time warp and lands on the desolate Earth of 2148. He meets a dis-figured mutant named Andro (Martin Landau) who informs him that civilization was wiped out by an extraterrestrial microbe developed by a biologist named Bertram Cabot Jr.
Hoping to return to the 20th century to prevent Cabot from unleashing the microbe, the two men pilot the ship back through the time warp, but only Andro survives the trip. Through various intrigues, he manages to prevent the birth of Cabot, thereby saving the future from deadly pestilence.
Package notes:
A time and space traveler journeys into the future, where the bacterium invention of a crazed twentieth century scientist has turned humans into mutants. Accompanied by the ghoulish Andro (Martin Landau), the astronaut races back in time to kill the scientist and save the future of the world.
But only Andro survives, and he arrives too early — before the infant is born. He must disguise his appearance and convince the mother-to-be to abort her wedding. Only Andro can stop her and change the course of destiny. But is it too late?
Cast:
Original airdate: 11/04/63
Production dates: 13-20 Sep 63
A senatorial committee uncovers an alien plot to demoralize the human race with surveillance machines capable of spying on anyone.
Package notes:
"It's awful — awful!...It's the most hideous creation ever conceived! No one can laugh, or joke. It watches, sap the very spirit. And the worst thing of all is I watch it. I can't not look. It's like a drug — a horrible drug. You can't resist. It's an addiction."
These words of testimony are babbled by the crumbling Colonel Grover to describe OBIT — The Outer Band Individuated Teletracer — a hellishly precise surveillance machine of questionable origin. Uncovered by a murder investigation at a Defense Department research center, OBIT proves to be an insidious instrument that breads fear and hostility.
Both cautionary tale and tight courtroom drama, O.B.I.T. explores the fear and hostility that result when all privacy is eliminated...and all secrets are revealed.
Cast:
Original airdate: 11/11/63
Production dates: 31 May-10 Jun 63
An accident at a military base results in a personality exchange between the base psychiatrist and a psychotic officer.
Cast:
Original airdate: 11/18/63
Production dates: 1-8 Oct 63
A doctor with a metal plate in his skull is able to hear the conversation of alien parasites plotting to take over the world.
Cast:
Original airdate: 12/02/63
Production dates: 23-20 Sep 63
Ebon Struck First (original title)
The alien Ebonites mistakenly attack Earth, then promise to do anything to rectify their grave error. Earth's military leaders insist they take part in a psychological test of the capabilities of Earth's fighting men: The Ebonites will make believe an interplanetary war is going on and will subject human POWs they've captured to a variety of excruciating tortures. The aliens play the ruse for only so long, then rebel at the prospect of continuing with the cruel charade. A chilling effort, it makes excellent use of a frequent "Outer Limits" motif — unearthly aliens who prove to be more humane than the humans around them.
Package notes:
A young Martin Sheen is part of a six-man multinational strike force captured on the planet Ebon and made prisoners of war. The Ebonites — satanic, batwinged, gargoyle-like aliens — brutally interrogate their prisoners with torture, drugs and vivid hallucinations.
After painful "exploratory interviews," the group is allowed basic necessities and the "respect due a conquered enemy." This leads the prisoners to conclude that there is a traitor among them, someone who must be killed!
Arguably "The Outer Limits" best-written show, "Nightmare" is a tour de force of ensemble acting that brings to life an horrific view of phobia and conspiracy.
Cast:
Original airdate: 12/09/63
Production dates: 18-25 Oct 63
A mysterious ball of dust at an energy research facility erupts into a huge, formless creature of pure energy. The psychotic head of the facility, Dr. Block (Kent Smith), learns to control the creature, and uses it to intimidate and control his employees. Eventually the police sergeant (Ed Asner) finds out, and Dr. Block is killed in a shootout, but not before unleashing the ravenous energy creature, which heads for the nearby town. The sergeant has the town's electricity shut off completely, and the mindless creature has no alternative but to return to the research facility, where the generators provide its only source of nourishment. Though under control for the moment, a way must be found to live with the creature peaceably — for energy can be neither created nor destroyed. A cautionary tale on the necessary hazards of life in the atomic age.
Cast:
Original airdate: 12/16/63
Production dates: 22-29 May 63
A team of scientists discovers a means of entering the fourth dimension and gains financial support from a wealthy man obsessed with contacting the spirit of his dead son.
Cast:
Original airdate: 12/23/63
Production dates: 11-19 Jun 63
An enormous lizard-fish is captured off the South American coast and put on display until others of its kind emerge from the sea and rescue it.
Cast:
Original airdate: 12/30/63
Production dates: 9-17 Oct 63
Earth is chosen as the place of exile for the criminals of the planet Zanti.
Package notes:
The rulers of the planet Zanti, incapable of executing their own species, coerce Earth officials into allowing Zanti to exile its criminals to our world. Those assigned to manage the desert penal colony have no idea of the shape or form of this alien race. But their hideous appearance is revealed when a couple of losers-on-the-run (one played by a young Bruce Dern) penetrate the restricted area and the Zanti creatures loose a vicious attack!
This bizarre alien menace created by writer-producer Joseph Stefano has made this one of the most popular and enduring of all "Outer Limits" episodes.
Cast:
Original airdate: 1/06/64
Production dates: 28 Oct-5 Nov 63
A convicted murderer volunteers to be teleported to another planet in an inhabitant-exchange program with alien beings.
Cast:
Original airdate: 1/13/64
Production dates: 27 Jun-2 Jul 63
Inquisitive Martians study the uniquely human custom of murder with a "time machine" that can slow down and play back events.
Cast:
Original airdate: 1/20/64
Production dates: 26 Nov-5 Dec 63
An alien requires the assistance of human beings to carry out his mission — the annihilation of the universe!
Original airdate: 1/27/64
Production dates: 15 Nov-5 Dec 63
A highly intelligent colony of bees produces a queen capable of assuming human form and intent on mating with an entomologist in a takeover bid.
Original airdate: 2/03/64
Production dates: 6-14 Nov 63
Alien parasites take over the bodies of influential human beings in an attempt to overthrow the governments of the world.
Package notes:
"You do not know these men. You may have looked at them, but you did not see them. They are newspapers blowing down a gutter on a windy night...Today, finally, they will join the hu — I almost said the human race. And that would have been a half-truth. For the race they are joining...is only half-human..."
"Heros die alone" is the credo by which secret government agent Spain (Don Gordon) operates. A loner in enemy territory, he infiltrates the ranks of the invisibles — a subversive underground society of the nation's power brokers who are possessed by alien parasites (one of whom is played by "Family Feud"'s Richard Dawson).
Pushed to the razor's edge of endurance, Spain fights a brutal, suspense-laden battle against the spread of the alien infection. Considered among the most unnerving of all "Outer Limits" episodes, writer/producer Joseph Stefano epitomized the effect as "one of overall, pervading evil."
Original airdate: 2/10/64
Production dates: 6-16 Dec 63
A scientist's laser, aimed at the heavens, provides the means for an angelic alien (John Hoyt) to descend to Earth. At first it protects itself with a device that generates an invisible shield, but soon dispenses with the device as it comes to trust the human hosts. This proves to be a grave error, for the scientist's scheming wife (Sally Kellerman) shoots the being and steals his shield, intending to present it to the world as the invention of her brilliant husband (Martin Landau). When she throws the shield around herself, however, she's unable to deactivate it. Trapped, and with a limited amount of air within the shield, she breaks down and confesses her crime. Suddenly the dying alien appears, and its last act is to deactivate the shield, but the experience has driven the woman mad.
Original airdate: 2/17/64
Production dates: 6-13 Jan 64
An alien beings returns to Earth to claim five young geniuses, born of human women but sired by alien fathers.
Original airdate: 2/24/64
Production dates: 12-20 Aug 63
Alien spores which mature into flowers that emit a lethal gas are brought to Earth.
Package notes:
"Specimen: Unknown," The Outer Limits' highest-rated episode ever, features a young Dabney Coleman as Lieutenant Rupert Howard, a scientist assigned to the Project Adonis space station.
When he discovers strange life forms clinging to the walls of the space lab, he removes several of the mushroom-shaped "space barnacles" and incubates them for examination. They quickly mature into huge white flowers and, without warning, spray Howard with fresh spores and a lethal vapor.
The incident triggers an investigation which is delayed by a shift in space station personnel. By the time anyone realizes the plants are deadly, they are already aboard a shuttle bound for earth with a new crew. It is interesting to note that this episode aired 15 years before Alien.
Cast:
Original airdate: 3/02/64
Production dates: 22-28 Jan 64
An amusement park spaceship is converted into the real thing and unsuspecting patrons are shanghaied into space by an alien.
Original airdate: 3/09/64
Production dates: 5-12 Sep 63
Lunar base personnel come between a globe containing alien intelligences and the alien leaders.
Cast:
Original airdate: 3/16/64
Production dates: 15-21 Jan 64
Radioactive rainfall transforms a man into a being with the power to kill at a touch.
Original airdate: 3/23/64
Production dates: 6-13 Feb 64
A brooding alien keeps humans captive in a Gothic mansion where time stands still.
Original airdate: 3/30/64
Production dates: 30 Jan-6 Feb 64
Aliens pit a human couple against a pair of savage creatures from another planet, with the fate of the contestants' home world at stake.
Package notes:
"There was a moment in time when those who were brilliant and powerful also were playful...they replenished their darker passions with fun and games. On the planet Earth, such games have been civilized, and drained of all but their last few drops of blood..."
The Senator, a sporting alien representing the citizenry of planet Andera, abducts ex-boxer Mike Benson (Nick Adams) and troubled divorcee Laura Hanley (Nancy Malone), "electroporting" them to a distant, neutral planet.
On this "arena planet," they are pitted in battle against two huge, hissing, primitive alien beasts from the Calco Galaxy. The goal of this hideous contest is survival. The stakes are the home planet of each team, with the world of the losers to be obliterated in a display lasting five years — all for the further enjoyment of the bloodthirsty Anderans!
Original airdate: 4/06/64
Production dates: 26 Feb-4 Mar 64
Humanoid aliens posing as tutors for gifted children begin indoctrinating young geniuses in a scheme to conquer Earth.
Original airdate: 4/13/64
Production dates: 5-12 Aug 63
The Feasibility Study (working title)
Six suburban blocks are teleported overnight to the distant planet Luminos. The Luminoids need slaves because a disease on the planet has rendered them immobile. The kidnapped humans are a test group; if enough of them prove immune to the disease, the entire population of Earth will be teleported to Luminos. But if a majority dies, then the Luminoids will look elsewhere for labor. A few members of the community do become infected, but not enough for humans to fail the test. In a moving conclusion, the healthy join hands with the sick, deliberately infecting themselves so that the Luminoids will spare Earth's population.
Cast:
Original airdate: 4/20/64
Production dates: 19-25 Feb 64
A nuclear reactor goes out of control and releases a flood of energy creatures from another dimension.
Original airdate: 4/27/64
Production dates: 5-11 Mar 64
The Seamaness Drug, also The Drug (original titles)
A man impersonates an alien to infiltrate a party of creatures in a downed spacecraft.
Original airdate: 5/04/64
Production dates: 2-21 Jan 64
The Unknown (pilot version title)
Lovers and Madmen (working title)
Two women (Vera Miles and Barbara Rush) murder the evil man who "keeps" them in riches and flee in the dead man's Rolls-Royce, with the body stashed in the trunk. Seeking refuge from a storm, they come upon a Gothic mansion inhabited by an eccentric genius (David McCallum), who has brought himself back from the dead with an elaborate "time-tilting" apparatus. Later, he brings back to life the dead man in the car. The series' most experimental episode, with bizarre, disorienting camerawork.
Original airdate: 9/19/64
Production dates: 3-10 Jul 64
Synopsis:
A soldier from the future is caught in a time warp and sent back into the present — with the enemy not far behind.
Storyline:
A quirk in Time lands an Earth Soldier of the future back in our present time. He's armed with an incredible weapon and an exaggerated instinct to kill. Government authorities apprehend him and hold him in custody for examination. They discover that he's the "ultimate soldier", trained exclusively for the purpose to destroy his enemy. The Enemy?...another futuristic soldier, who is also on Earth and stalking him.
Befriended by a scientist, the Soldier is taken into his home. Later, armed with a rifle, he runs amuck. But he is persuaded not to harm anyone. Finally, the Enemy appears bearing a futuristic weapon and mortal combat ensues.
Package notes:
Somewhere in Earth's distant future: on a blasted, radioactive no-man's-land, two soldiers battle in a crossfire of death beams, and a bizarre time-warp is created. Wrenched out of the future, flung back in time to today, Qarlo (Michael Ansara) is a killing machine without a war.
In Harlan Ellison's first-ever science fiction teleplay (based on his own short story), language expert Tom Kagan (Lloyd Nolan) is given the job of taming this savage beast. But is it possible to change a man born, bred and brainwashed to worship violence? Or is it all just a nightmarish glimpse into our own future?
Starring:
Original airdate: 9/26/64
Production dates: 25 Jun-2 Jul 64
Synopsis:
Following a successful orbit around the planet Venus, an astronaut finds he is beginning to look like a nightmarish creature he saw there.
Storyline:
Astronaut, Jeff Barton returns from a successful and much-heralded orbit of the planet Venus. His heroic exploit earns him full command of a proposed space flight to colonize Mars. But before funds for the project can be appropriated, General Barton must appear before the Senate Committee, with a complete report.
All is well, until unexpected physiological changes begin to occur which dramatically affect Barton's appearance and well-being. In a dream, he relives an encounter with a Venus Creature he is beginning to resemble. All the facilities of space medicine are applied to effect a cure. They are only partially successful until coupled with the power of love manifest by the astronaut's wife. If he recovers in time to testify convincingly to the Senate Committee, he'll write a new chapter in Men's history in space.
Starring:
Original airdate: 10/03/64
Production dates: 28 Jul-4 Aug 64
Synopsis:
An optometrist fashions lenses from meteoric quartz which enables him to observe a two-dimensional being.
Storyline:
Quite by chance, eye-specialist James Stone fashions several pairs of glasses which enable his patients to see an otherwise invisible horrendous, two dimensional monster. The creature attacks each patient, not to do him harm but merely to take away his glasses. Using his own pair of special lenses, Dr. Stone discovers that all the creature wants is to find a way back to the outer world, whence he came accidentally. Failure to close this door within hours will mean the destruction of Earth.
Dr. Stone, working frantically to make more lenses, is thwarted when the creature suddenly becomes visible to all and panic ensues. As the city's security forces trap the creature in a blazing room, Dr. Stone works feverishly to save him, so he can close the fateful doors that threaten the earth. The doctor succeeds. The kindly creature survives, completes grinding the lenses and enables the harmless monster to return to his two dimensional world.
Starring:
Original airdate: 10/10/64
Production dates: 21-28 Aug 64
Synopsis:
A professor experimenting with consciousness-expanding drugs becomes capable of turning himself into a superman.
Storyline:
Roy Clinton, a university professor experiments with a drug that expands human consciousness. The drug not only increases Clinton°s awareness and sensitivity, but also changes his appearance, gives him hypnotic power, as well as super-human strength. The effect of the drug endangers Clinton — Dr. Peer Wayne, Clinton's brother-in-law and associate — as well as all the lives oi those around him.
Starring:
Original airdate: 10/17/64
Production dates: 31 Aug-7 Sep 64
Synopsis:
Robert Culp stars as a man from the future with no memory, who is being pursued by mysterious alien invaders, also from the future, in an abandoned office block. One of his hands is a talking, computerized prothesis that is missing three fingers. It can tell him what to do, but it cannot tell him who he is or why the aliens are trying to kill him until its missing fingers are restored — and they are in the possession of the aliens. Culp hunts the aliens down one by one and wrests the missing fingers from them. With the fingers plugged in, the hand can at last reveal Culp's identity and purpose. He is an android and stored on a wire in his hand is the entire Earth population, converted to electrical impulses to escape alien invasion. An imaginative script by Harlan Ellison.
Storyline:
Alien soldiers from the distant future of the Universe invade Earth via a time-mirror. Their mission: capture the last homo sapien to survival a war that's to occur in the future between Earth and the invaders.
The single Earth survivor appears to be normal in all respects save one...His right hand is glass and contains a computer-brain which holds the secret of where the future generations of Earthmen are hiding after the holocaust. But several fingers of the hand are missing. When the hand is finally assembled, it reveals the true identity of the Last Man on Earth.
Package notes:
In a role written for him by famed sci-fi writer, Harlan Ellison, Robert Culp stars as Trent, an intent, enigmatic man from the future who escapes back into our present. Pursued by the Kybe — an alien race which has conquered future Earth — the fate of all humankind lies in Trent's glass hand.
Trapped in a dilapidated office building (the same building where much of "Blade Runner" was shot), Trent battles the Kyben as both sides fight for survival. This tension-filled, visually fascinating episode won Ellison the Writers Guild Award for Outstanding Script for a Television Anthology.
Starring:
Original airdate: 10/24/64
Production dates: 10-17 Sep 64
Mind Over Matter (original title)
Synopsis:
A disembodied alien intelligence inhabits and animates tumbleweeds in an attempt to establish communication with humans in a desert canyon.
Storyline:
Andy and Karen Thorne drive to remote Wild Canyon to inspect some farmland they're thinking of buying. En route, their car stalls — they've been roadblocked and surrounded by animated tumbleweeds!
Farmer Lamont discovers the beleaguered couple and rescues them. Driving them back to his farmhouse, he reveals that a meteor-like object recently plummeted to Earth in the vicinity. Andy and Karen soon realize that Lamont — like the weird tumbleweeds — is possessed by an alien power. Andy puts himself in jeopardy in an effort to unravel the unearthly mystery of Wild Canyon.
Starring:
Original airdate: 10/31/64
Production dates: 13-20 Jul 64
Synopsis:
An expedition to Mars is menaced by reptilian creatures who dwell in a sea of sand and move through it like water.
Storyline:
A flight to Mars succeeds — but the astronauts don't come back home. A second expedition sets out to discover why the first men on Mars landed safely but never returned. They find wreckage of the first craft but there's no sign of life. One of the crew mysteriously disappears in a sea of sand. A trace of blood leads the crew to suspect an invisible enemy.
Investigation of the strange sea imperils the flight Commander and his crew exert heroic efforts to save him from a horde of monsters that inhabits the region.
Package notes:
Two astronauts travel to Mars, but never return home. A second expedition is sent to find out why, and two crew members are mysteriously suctioned into the sand shortly after arrival. Only Mission Commander Merritt (Adam West, "Batman," "Robinson Crusoe on Mars") and his Captain are left — with the shocking realization that their "invisible enemy' is really a band of man-eating sand sharks! When Merritt gets marooned in the middle of the shark-infested sand pool, a safe return to the ship seems impossible. With only minutes left to blast-off, Merritt must outsmart his deadly opponents — or never see Earth again!
Starring:
Original airdate: 11/07/64
Production dates: 5-12 Aug 64
Synopsis:
The environment of a distant planet, reproduced in a laboratory experiment, gives rise to an entity that draws the life-force from other living things.
Storyline:
Professor Jonathan Meridith reproduces a planet in miniature and introduces the DNA factor: life. Evolutionary forces on the planet progress at such a rate that life on the small planet soon advances in time to the present day. Further evolution, beyond the present, reveals what life on Earth has in store for mankind.
Electronic photos of the microcosm's "future" show the existence of a grotesque monster of violence, on the planet. The creature escapes the laboratory and attacks the scientist. Meridith's quick-witted wife, witnessing the attack, goes into action to save her husband and — possibly — the world.
Starring:
Original airdate: 11/14/64
Production dates: 18-25 Sep 64
Synopsis:
An adaptation of a story by Eando Binder about a robot who is put on trial for the alleged murder of his creator.
Storyline:
Dr. Charles Link, a small town research scientist constructs a robot. Link's murdered. The robot, Adam, is blamed and declared to be a Frankenstein monster. Grotesque in size and make-up only, Adam as computer-like brain that affords him a gentle personality and most human capabilities.
Apprehended, the robot is threatened with destruction by authorities. Nina, Link's niece, gets a defense attorney, Thurman Cutler, to force the matter into court for an official judgment in a trial without precedent.
Starring:
Original airdate: 11/21/64
Production dates: 28 Sep-13 Oct 64
The Hui Tan Project (scripted)
Synopsis:
"The Outer Limits'" only two-part effort follows the actions of four men who, wounded in action in Vietnam by bullets made from the ore of a meteorite, have each developed a kind of "second brain" that has boosted their IQs to genius level and linked their consciousnesses together to form a "group mind". The four men are being driven against their will by this "group mind" to collaborate on a mysterious project which entails the kidnapping of a number of handicapped children. In the end, it is revealed that the "group mind" is a guiding alien intelligence and that the project they have completed is a spacecraft in which the blind can see, the mute can speak and the lame can walk.
Storyline:
A meteor crashes in Hui Tan Province. From its ore, handmade bullets are molded and find their way to battle.
Four soldiers of the opposing army fall, all from identical wounds in the head. Such injuries usually prove fatal — however, not so in these cases. The men recover...and disappear!
Adam Ballard, investigating, learns that each victim has gained a new IQ with genius rating — apparently the result of brain transplant. Tracing one victim — Lieut. Minns — to Wall Street, Ballard sees him amassing fortunes in money and disbursing it to all corners of the world. Trailing the lines of communication taken by the money, Ballard discovers the geniuses hard at work — as if possessed — on a scientific project dealing, primarily, with Earth's children!
Starring:
Original airdate: 11/28/64
Production dates: 28 Sep-13 Oct 64
The Pied Piper Project (scripted)
Storyline:
Four soldiers have been turned into scientific geniuses as the result of gunshot wounds from four identical bullets. The missiles were made from ore in a meteorite. Investigator Adam Ballard discovers the men engaged in a mysterious project, key to which seems to be a number of children. The genius's leader, Lieutenant Minns, kidnaps several kids and takes them to the site of spaceship construction. Ballard's attempts to interfere with an obvious kidnap attempt are foiled by the scientists... When the children finally go aboard, the true purpose of the project is revealed.
Starring:
Original airdate: 12/05/64
Production dates: 13-20 Aug 64
Synopsis:
An alien scientist provides the key to a scientific equation in exchange for the emotions of an Earth scientist.
Storyline:
Scientiest Eric Plummer comes under the sinister influence of a creature from outer space. It's capable of materializing in human form but lacks human emotions. Plummer agrees to exchange his emotions for scientific data known only to the creature. The monster takes commend of the scientist's emotions but has great difficulty in understanding such things as love and beauty, which are unknown in his totally physical world.
With the data, Plummer harnesses a fantastic energy source and fashions a weapon capable of destroying all life. The creature begins to feel compassion for humanity and returns the scientist's emotions to him.
...and is now vulnerable to attack by those of his own weird world who resent his defection.
Package notes:
The lack of two crucial equations needed to complete his magnetic disintegrator drives scientist Eric Plummer (Warren Stevens) to the brink of suicide. When a dispassionate alien creature, Ikar (Robert Webber), suddenly appears and offers the answers, Plummer readily accepts, but in return must surrender to the alien all of his emotions — including love. But why does the alien want the project completed? Is he working alone? And is he as immune to human emotions as he thinks he is? For the answers, you'll have to take a trip to "The Outer Limits."
Starring:
Original airdate: 12/19/64
Production dates: 15-22 Oct 64
Synopsis:
A savage creature smuggled to Earth escapes, and the scientist responsible has a duplicate of himself made to kill it.
Storyline:
Henderson James, a Twenty-First Century space anthropologist, secretly studies a strange animal from another planet. Captain Karl Emmett, a retired interplanetary explorer, had smuggled the creature back to Earth in spite of the 1976 ban on importation. The creature, a Megasoid, possesses intelligence higher than man's but it is obsessed with only one emotion...hate.
When the creature escapes its confinement, James has the Federal Duplication Bureau create an exact duplicate of his human body for the sole purpose of finding and killing the creature. The two Henderson Jameses, original and duplicate, soon find themselves endangered not by the Megasoid but by each other.
Starring:
Original airdate: 12/26/64
Production dates: 21-27 Jul 64
Synopsis:
Six people volunteer to undergo a simulated space voyage to another world, unaware that an alien presence from the target world is on board.
Storyline:
A group of carefully selected passengers board a space ship for a simulated flight to a distant planet. A panic button is the only contact they'll have with the outside world for the duration. Pressing it will end the flight. The long confinement plays upon their nerves and the interplay of their emotions. Gradually fear spreads throughout the group.
Fear gives way to panic when an alien influence actually invades the ship. The alien power fears that its own security is in jeopardy if the research continues. Seizing one of the passengers, the "power" tries to force him to push the "panic button" to end the experiment.
Starring:
Original airdate: 1/02/65
Production dates: 23-30 Oct 64
The Brain of Donald Duncan (original title)
Synopsis:
A rehash of the sci-fi movie "Donovan's Brain" with a dying astronaut's brain surgically removed and connected to a computer.
Storyline:
Brilliant space explorer Colonel Alex Barham is about to die of a fatal disease. As part of a scientific project developed by Dr. Rahm and despite the protests of Mrs. Barham and army psychologist Colonel McKinnon, Barham consents to having his brain transplanted in computer-like mechanical man. This advanced robot will man space flights never before undertaken. The transplant is successful. The half-human-half-robot not only talks but develops a strength and power far beyond anything the scientists had ever anticipated...and becomes a menace that all agree must be destroyed at all costs.
Starring:
Original airdate: 1/09/65
Production dates: 2-9 Nov 64
Gordian Knot (original title)
Synopsis:
A mysterious suspension of time gives a test pilot and his wife a glimpse of existence between once instant and the next.
Storyline:
Under instructions from flight control director Baldwin, test pilot Jim Darcy executes a maneuver which causes his supersonic plan to exceed heretofore known velocities. The plane goes out of control... Darcy prepares for a crash landing...and, at the same time his wife is racing to the scene. Suddenly,...time stands still. The world about them is frozen.
Darcy's guess that a "time barrier" has been broken is confirmed when a "limbo" creature appears and threatens to prevent the Darcys from returning to the animate present.
Starring:
Original airdate: 1/16/65
Production dates: 10-16 Nov 64
Synopsis:
The survivors of a plane crash are drawn on board a gigantic alien space probe.
Storyline:
Pilot "Cobe" Coberly heads the crew of a transoceanic cargo plane inflight to Tokyo with only one passenger, Amanda Frank. A hurricane forces the plane to ditch directly within the "eye" of the storm. The people scramble into a life raft...and run 'aground' on a strange, solid surface in mid-Pacific.
Dexter, the navigator, sets out to investigate the odd place. His distant screams are heard. Then an amorphous glob advances threatening the remaining crew. Further exploration reveals that they are all captives within a laboratory equipped with instruments and mechanization far in advance of anything known to scientists of Earth.
Starring:
Guide Copyright
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