Month: October 1963

Harold Findley, an ordinary man who recently underwent a brain operation hasn’t revealed the full extent of his surgery to the world. He actually volunteered for a very experimental, very secret and very dangerous procedure that would give him control over raw energy – an ability which begins to manifest itself in a terrifying way when violent fates begin to befall those who anger him. The procedure is being tested as a top-secret enhancement for astronauts on long-duration asteroid mining missions, but as Finley’s powers grow more destructive, he begins to see that he may also be the first example of a new human weapon…one with the means to destroy the world with a single thought.

written by Jerome Ross
directed by Laslo Benedek
music by Dominic Frontiere

Cast: Donald Pleasance (Harold J. Finley), Priscilla Morrill (Vera Finley), Fred Bier (Steve Cravett), Edward C. Platt (Dean Radcliffe), John Marley (Dr. Hindemann), Frank Maxwell (Dr. Keenan), Paul Lambert (Dr. Henschel), James McCallion (Dr. Tremaine), Ann Loos (Emily Radcliffe), Harry Ellerbee (Finley’s Doctor)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

A girl named Cathy delivers bread to an eccentric scientist in a small mining town, and discovers his experiments to increase the intelligence of a chimpanzee. She inquires about becoming the next experiment, eager to escape her working-class drudgery, but when she brings her friend, a miner named Gwylim who has recently quit his mining job in anger, the scientist is much more interested in experimenting on him. When Gwylim proves suitable, he becomes the center of an experiment to advance humankind’s evolution by tens of thousands of years. The most visible evidence of the experiment is the growth of a sixth finger on each hand, and an obvious increase in the size of Gwylim’s cranium, with an attendant increase in his intelligence and the ability to read minds. But what he still lacks is a more practical education, and he sets about trying to acquire this for himself by reading voraciously. But Gwylim continues to evolve even without further experiments, developing the terrifying power to kill with a thought – and an even more disturbing lack of any remorse for the death of his first victim, the professor’s housekeeper. Eager to out-evolve the hatred he still feels for the town, Gwylim now wants to continue the experiment by evolving into humanity’s ultimate form…but Cathy wants to de-evolve him into the man that he once was.

written by Ellis St. Joseph
directed by James Goldstone
music by Dominic Frontiere

Cast: David McCallum (Gwylim), Jill Haworth (Cathy), Edward Mulhare (Professor Mathers), Nora Marlowe (Mrs. Ives), Robert Doyle (Wilt), Constance Cavendish (Gert), George Pelling (Policeman), Janos Prohaska (Darwin)

Notes: Stuntman Janos Prohaska has a solid classic SF pedigree; his appearances range from Professor Mathers’ chimpanzee Darwin (along with two other Outer Limits appearances) to the Gumato creature in the original Star Trek episode A Private Little War and as two different creatures in the unaired series pilot, The Cage. He also appeared in Lost In Space, Land Of The Giants, Bewitched, Perry Mason, Gilligan’s Island, and Escape From The Planet Of The Apes, frequently impersonating some kind of animal. He died in a plane crash, along with his son, stuntman Robert Prohaska, in 1974 while working on a TV series called The Ascent Of Man.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

After an unusual incident rocks his spacecraft on approach to Earth after an eight-month solo mission, astronaut Joseph Reardon requests instructions for re-entry and receives no reply. Reardon manages to land his vehicle on his own, but finds himself in a vast wasteland with only a single occupant, a horribly mutated man named Andro. Andro tells Reardon that the year is now 2148 – 200 years in the astronaut’s future – and that the human race has all but been destroyed by an experiment by a biologist named Bertram Cabot, Jr. Horrified and galvanized by what he sees, Reardon is determined to return to space in an attempt to re-create the conditions that warped him into the future. He brings Andro with him, hoping that the sight of the disfigured man will convince Cabot, or those around him, to end his experiments. But when the ship travels through the time warp again, the timeline has already changed – and Reardon ceases to exist, leaving Andro to stop Cabot’s experiments on his own.

written by Anthony Lawrence
directed by Leonard Horn
music by Dominic Frontiere

Cast: Martin Landau (Andro), Shirley Knight (Noel), John Considine (Bertram Cabot), Maxine Stuart (Mrs. McCluskey), Karl Held (Joseph Reardon), Jack Raine (Minister)

Notes: Martin Landau later went on to star in two cult classic series, Mission: Impossible and Space: 1999, and also appeared in a later Outer Limits episode, The Bellero Shield.

LogBook entry by Earl Green