The Human Factor
- Episode aired Nov 11, 1963
- 51m
IMDb RATING
6.9/10
649
YOUR RATING
On a military base, in the frozen vastness of Greenland, an army psychiatrist devises a machine which enables him to tune in directly to his patients' thoughts.On a military base, in the frozen vastness of Greenland, an army psychiatrist devises a machine which enables him to tune in directly to his patients' thoughts.On a military base, in the frozen vastness of Greenland, an army psychiatrist devises a machine which enables him to tune in directly to his patients' thoughts.
Joe De Santis
- Colonel William Campbell
- (as Joe de Santis)
Vic Perrin
- Control Voice
- (voice)
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writers
- David Duncan
- Leslie Stevens(uncredited)
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaAlthough this episode shares its title with an episode of The Outer Limits (1995), namely The Human Factor (2002), it was not a remake of this episode and they have no connection beyond the title.
- GoofsThe two headsets of the telepathy machine are shorted out by an earthquake (quite violently, with showers of sparks), but they still function normally when the machine is used again at the end of the episode.
- Quotes
Dr. James Hamilton: How did you know it was my mind in Brothers' body?
Ingrid Larkin: I thought you knew. It's your mind that attracts me the most.
Featured review
A Lesser Season 1 Episode That Yet Has A Lot To Offer
Last night's "Outer Limits" episode for me (as I work my way through the series for the first time in several years, once again in chronological order) was "The Human Factor," the eighth episode to be shown, although one of the earliest to be filmed. This is the one that takes place at an American military/scientific base in northern Greenland (and besides 1957's "The Deadly Mantis," really, how many sci-fi or horror films have transpired in THAT setting?). One of the men there, played by Harry Guardino, is currently going bonkers, after having had one of his men die in a crevasse during an earlier mission. Harry is now seeing that soldier's frozen ghost beckoning at him, and resolves to use a nuclear device to blow the area to bits! He is examined by the installation's resident psychiatrist (Gary Merrill), who uses his cutting-edge gizmo to share thoughts with the maniac and determine just what is wrong with him. But a sudden seismic event during the procedure causes the two men to switch minds permanently, making it a bit easier for the madman to roam the installation freely, while Merrill, trapped in the lunatic's body, is being held in prison. Good thing for Merrill that his assistant (Sally Kellerman, here in her very first TV appearance) has become suspicious of things and is there to give aid and support. "The Human Factor" has a reputation as being one of the very least of the episodes in "The Outer Limits"'s glorious first season, and that reputation is, sad to say, somewhat deserved. The episode has little in the way of scares (we know that that frozen ghost is merely a hallucination of Guardino's deranged mind, and not a genuine manifestation, so the viewer is not at all frightened by it) or suspense (Guardino does not even come close to setting that A bomb off; he merely asks a lot of questions of the bomb expert played by Ivan Dixon). Still, to my great surprise, the episode is far from dull, and does yet have much to offer. First of all, the performances from the three leads, particularly Kellerman, are uniformly fine (Kellerman was indeed SO excellent here that she was brought back by producer Joseph Stefano for another first-season episode, the infinitely superior "The Bellero Shield"), and the script is intelligent and no-nonsense. Typical for Season 1, moody lighting and unusual camera angles go far in creating an outre atmosphere, and Dominic Frontiere's always-wonderful background music ratchets up a sense of unease. Bottom line: It says a lot that even one of the worst episodes of Season 1 is able to entertain and impress. And this classic series would indeed rebound in a very big way with its following two episodes, of course; two of the very best to be had in '60s TV: "Corpus Earthling" and "Nightmare"!
helpful•41
- ferbs54
- Apr 26, 2017
Details
- Runtime51 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
- 4:3
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