The Outer Limits (TV Series) The Human Factor (1963) User Reviews

One of the Better 'Outer Limits' Episodes

[Chance2000esl · 7/10 · 19 February 2008]

This is one of the better 'Outer Limits' episodes for several reasons. First, the 'mad' scientist totally devoted to work without feelings for others, such a common theme in so many 'Outer Limits' episodes, while present in Dr. James Hamilton (Gary Merrill) is quickly muted into the background as the story unfolds.

Using electric headsets he accidentally transfers his mind into that of a guilt ridden soldier, Major Brothers (Harry Guardino) and vice versa. Veteran film actor Gary Merrill gives an excellent performance, conveying the mad nature and mannerisms of Major Brothers.

Sally Kellerman appears as Dr. Hamilton's secretary who figures out that the switch has been made, even though no one else on the military base in Greenland believes it. Easy to look at, she does a fine job helping the story swiftly move along.

Quality performances from a small cast, and good editing make this one enjoyable. Even though it's titled "The Human Factor," and we have the expected resolution that scientists should not only need love, but should want love, it's not as heavy handed as the Outer Limits Philosophy is in other episodes.

Switching Minds

[claudio_carvalho · 8/10 · 20 February 2018]

In Greenland, Dr. James Hamilton is developing an equipment capable to read the mind of another person, and has successfully tested with his secretary Ingrid Larkin. He learned that Ingrid feels an unrequited love with him. After a fatal accident of a military, his commander Major Roger Brothers deranges, has hallucinations and tries to blow-up the base. Colonel William Campbell sends Major Brothers to Dr. Hamilton´s office and he decides to use his device to read the thoughts of Major Brothers. However there is an incident in the base and they switch their minds. Now the insane Brothers is free to destroy the base using Dr. Hamilton´s body while the doctor is locked in a cell.

"The Human Factor" is an engaging episode of "The Outer Limits". The storyline of switch minds and bodies is not original but this episode is tense and well resolved. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "O Fator Humano" ("The Human Factor")

I'm Willing to Suspend Disbelief...Up to a Point

[Hitchcoc · 6/10 · 3 January 2015]

This certainly kept my interest. A man living in one of those frost line places during the cold war goes bananas after allowing a fellow soldier to die after fall in a crevasse. He begins to hallucinate and decides to kill everyone. He is on the far side of paranoia. He wants the man who is in charge of a nuclear weapon to hand it over to him. That's the first of the problems. Fortunately, what happens in that realm is pretty realistic. The guy is brought in after his insane ravings. He is seeing things and is really dangerous. The other plot involves a boring scientist who has developed a method where two minds can meld (actually trade places). Remember those cartoons where a man changes brains with a monkey. Well it works and our nut case is allowed to be part of an experiment. You guessed it. He becomes the scientist and the scientist becomes him, giving him a leg up on his quest for destruction. Everything plays out after that in a fairly predictable way and once again, there is the contrived ending to the story. I was really taken with The Outer Limits and enjoy seeing them again, but sometimes they don't work so well. Still, it's fun to experience a series that didn't always deliver the message you had hoped for.

Sometimes it takes more to be a man then an officer

[sol-kay · 7/10 · 28 December 2011]

(Major Spoiler Alert) Deep in the icy wastelands of Northern Greenland at US military outpost Point Taboo strange things can happen to those who are stationed there. That's from being exposed to the bitter cold and endless nights of lonely isolation that can drive a man to go bonkers. That's what happened to Major Harold Brothers, Harry Guardino, after he lost it in a landslide that ended up taking fellow GI Pvt.Gordon's life.

The guy-Maj. Brothers-developed this tremendous guilt feeling in not being able to recuse Pvt. Gordon or better yet letting him die in order not to jeopardize the lives of his men in trying to save him. This has made Brothers now a danger to all those at the base with him! It's base doctor James Hamilton, Garry Merrill, who's experimenting with this brain switching machine that he's invented that really starts things, that were at first normal, to get crazy at the base.

In trying to find out what makes the almost out of control Maj.Brothers tick Dr.Hamilton switches his brain with his own and without the brilliant Dr.Hamilton realizing it at first Brothers ends up taking over his body! With Dr. Hamilton, or his brain and personality, now trapped in the body of the crazed Maj. Brothers!

***MAJOR SPOLERS*** A real mind bender of a "Outer Limits" episode with the now determined Maj. Brothers using his control of Dr. Hamilton's body to do what in his deranged mind orders him to do to save not only Point Taboo but the entire world from total destruction! Destruction form a demon, Pvt. Gordon's ghost, that's in what Brothers had conjured up disturbed mind! And with Maj. Brothers now willing to go so far as using nuclear weapons, or WMD's, to do it!

Great acting all around with both top stars Garry Merrill and Harry Guardino in their mind or brain switching act as well as a very young Sally Kellerman as Dr. Hamilton's assistant Ingrid Larkin. It was Ingrid who finally figured out what happened to her boss as well as lover Dr. Hamilton in realizing that he in fact was the now out of control Maj. Brothers in disguise! Very effective final scene with Brothers and Hamilton, as Hamilton & Brothers, having it out with each other as Ingrid desperately tries to get their separated or switched brains back, with Dr. Hamilton's brain switching machine, into their real bodies.

P.S The shocking ending will blow you away in who of the two combatants survives this historic life and death struggle! Which will take you some time even after this "Outer Limits" episode is over to finally figure out!

Even for "The Outer Limits", this one has a really wacky plot!

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 25 June 2012]

By the way, although the summary refers to the actor playing the psychiatrist as 'James Merrill', he is in fact Gary Merrill and it is shown correctly in the cast listing on IMDb.

The show begins at a remote outpost in Greenland. Harry Guardino plays a Major who has just had one of his men die in the line of duty. Following this, Guardino appears to be losing his mind and he's sent to see a psychiatrist (Merrill). Now here is one of those "Outer Limits" impossible plot twists--Merrill is using some experimental mind device to actually look inside Guardino's head. And, an earthquake hits at that moment and the minds of the guys are switched!! But the more serious problem is that the madman is REALLY mad--and he's out to kill everyone! Can the folks at the base recognize what has happened before it's too late? This is a pretty ordinary episode--neither good nor bad. While the idea is far-fetched, Guardino and Merrill both did good jobs and managed to make the ridiculous seem possible. Worth seeing if not brilliant--though the ending is, oddly, rather sweet in some ways. Look for movie/TV regulars Ivan Dixon, Sally Kellerman and James Sikking in the episode as well.

By the way, I wonder if any of this led to the final episode of the original "Star Trek" series. That's because in that one, there are LOTS of similarities. Kirk changes bodies with an insane woman--leading to some hilariously bad acting--and one of the most notoriously bad episodes of the series.

Best Episode Since The Pilot

[StuOz · 27 June 2014]

Middle aged Gary Merrill and young Sally Kellerman do a bit of mind/personality swapping.

Best episode since the pilot! The three guest stars (Merrill, Kellerman and Harry Guardino) do a fine job of acting out this way-out drama...in the snow. The score is perfectly matched to the drama/romance of it all and this is is just an hour you will want to return to with repeat viewings.

This was the first of four great sci-fi outings with Sally Kellerman, the next would be the Limits hour The Bellero Shield, soon after Star Trek's Where No Man Has Gone Before and finally a more light hearted Kellerman in a second season episode in QM's The Invaders.

Merrill would do mighty work in The Time Tunnel pilot and a Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea episode titled: The Menfish.

A Lesser Season 1 Episode That Yet Has A Lot To Offer

[ferbs54 · 7/10 · 26 April 2017]

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"!

An excellent episode.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 9/10 · 26 March 2023]

On a Military base in Greenland, Doctor Hamilton has created an incredible piece of technology, one that allows two people to connect, and share one another's thoughts and memories. During a freak tremor, he and military figure, Major Brothers are locked in an experiment.

Great episode, I thought this was an excellent, and very unique watch, intense, unsettling and wonderfully imaginative. I liked the way it played out, you get this wonderfully dramatic opening sequence, then you learn the story.

There's so much going on, but it's cohesive and flows well. Two really interesting elements, the mind swap and threat to the base, they're very nearly interwoven. It ends really well.

Gary Merrill and Harry Guardino are both excellent in their respective roles, it's the sincerity each add that make the story work so well, if they'd played their parts less intensely, it would simply have lacked bite, it doesn't.

9/10.

Mind Swap

[AaronCapenBanner · 6/10 · 10 March 2016]

Harry Guardino stars as Major Roger Brothers, a mentally disturbed man suffering from hallucinations after letting one of his men die in a snowy crevice at an isolated military base in Greenland. Gary Merrill stars as Dr. James Hamilton, a psychiatrist who has invented a machine allowing him to read the thoughts of his patients in order to better understand and treat them. Unfortunately there is an earthquake, and while both men are using the machine they accidentally swap minds, so that each man is in the other's body, which is bad news for Hamilton, as Brothers is intent on using the situation to his advantage... Mediocre episode is mostly a mundane effort.

My favorite episode, by far

[babyfir77 · 10/10 · 14 December 2010]

Maybe I'm a sucker for romance and the concept of mind swapping and personality changes (like Face/Off). This episode was well written, no slow sequences, and the three leads were very convincing. I'll say I sure enjoyed the tenderness that Sally Kellerman gave to the character of Ingrid. She was one of the few, if not only, persons to play a hero in one TOL episode and a villain in another (Bellero Shield).

The interplay of Dr. Hamilton and Major Brothers is quite a standout. Harry Guardino is quite over the top as the paranoid, guilt ridden commander. It works for me. It is very dangerous. Gary Merrill is also superb as the intellectual Dr. Hamilton.

The final line is reminiscent of the Twilight Zone twists: that the Major shot himself. Superb! I've watched these TOL episodes several times and this is by far my favorite. I don't know what #2 is, but it is leagues behind this one!!!!

"You believe that I saw it - the thing?"

[classicsoncall · 7/10 · 22 April 2022]

For some reason, body switch programs can be almost as confusing as time travel stories. They force you to adjust your thinking about the characters you're watching right in front of you. I thought Major Brothers was too overwrought right out of the gate with the guilt he harbored over letting one of his men die in an icy crevasse at their outpost in Greenland. But why he felt he needed to blow up the entire installation they were working at was needlessly extreme to say the least. It might have been more effective if the story had him hallucinating the ghost of the fallen soldier instead of an abominable snowman-like creature, but that's what we got. With Sally Kellerman joining Harry Guardino and Gary Merrill as part of the cast, you had a pretty fair amount of talent on hand, and enough clues offered for Kellerman's character to figure out what was going on after the mind/body switch took place. But my biggest takeaway from the episode had to do with the name assigned to the military base where the story took place. Nicknamed Pont TABU, that stood for Total Abandonment of Better Understanding. That would actually be a pretty good description of where the country finds itself today.

More like a movie on its own

[spotlightne · 10/10 · 20 December 2009]

This episode stands out as one of the better Outer Limits episodes.

An intelligent tale of two men whose minds are swapped in a scientific experiment gone wrong.

It's intriguing from start to finish and seems more like a short feature than a TV episode.

One thing though. It's hard to believe a beautiful, young, tall Sally Kellerman would fall in love with short, craggy-faced Gary Merrill's character Dr. James Hamilton.

She's in her mid 20s, and he's nearly 50 but looks older.

Forget this, and enjoy!

A Premise Too Far...

[trhickey · 3/10 · 14 August 2012]

A willing suspension of disbelief is always necessary to enjoy an episode of The Outer Limits. But in the case of "The Human Factor" so many implausibilities are stacked upon implausibilities that the entire plot comes crashing down like a third-season episode of the original Star Trek series. Some fine performances from serious character players (although the usually excellent Harry Guardino chews the scenery in his over the top portrayal of a guilt-driven suicidal madman).

S P O I L E R S - - F R O M - - H E R E - - F O R W A R D ! ! ! ! !

Call it a "situation drama." To fabricate a situation necessary to support the plot, the writer gives us the following:

1. In an area of Greenland so remote that Eskimos don't visit, the US Army maintains a psychiatric hospital as part of a cold-war early warning radar station.

2. A psychologist in this remote setting invents a device that allows him to read other people's minds (apparently in his spare time, since it has nothing to do with finding Soviet bombers).

3. The Doctor is hooked up to the Madman at the moment that an earthquake randomly transforms the implausible mind-reading device into an even more implausible mind-transference device.

4. Coincidentally, the base just accepted delivery of a thermonuclear device.

5. The madman-turned-psychiatrist convinces the base commander that he needs to personally inspect the thermonuclear device for security.

6. To prove how secure the thermonuclear device is, the officer in charge of it willing to demonstrate, step by step, everything necessary to turn it into an atomic bomb (including repeating steps the madman didn't quite pick up the first time...).

This isn't even questioning in the May-September romance between the psychiatrist and his secretary that suddenly blossoms just in time to save the day (this is an incredibly remote base, after all!).

The Human Factor requires the viewer to stretch their credibility much further than the typical The Outer Limits episode. As such the plot is much more "set up" driven than it is character driven. Put this low on your priority list.

My very first television experience

[XweAponX · 10/10 · 6 August 2020]

This was the very first television show that I had ever seen where I understood the story that was being told.

I understood that Gary Merrill had a "brain machine", and that he kind of pulled a switch with Harry Guardino's character.

And that Merrill's character could not convince anybody of what had happened, until he asks his assistant (Sally Kellerman who would later be struck by a God lightning bolt in the second pilot of star trek) to "look in his eyes".

58 years ago, when I was five years old I understood exactly what this meant. and that was the part of the story which was important to me, and it stuck with me all of this time. From that moment on I was very interested in science. Not merely science-fiction, but I wanted to know how things worked, I wanted to know if things like what I had just seen in this episode where possible?

There is another aspect to this episode which deals with the madness of Harry Guardino's character. But since that connects almost directly to the main arc, it is not that important other than to say that men deal with their guilt in different ways.

I never understood why this series was cut short right in the middle of the second season, as it turns out the network deliberately put this show into a slot where it's previous fans could no longer watch it. So, the same thing that they did to Star Trek. In fact, a lot of these actors and some of the props would show up in Star Trek episodes.

And even though I like a lot of the episodes of the 1995 remake, I don't feel like they revisited enough of the original stories from this show. This show was so well-made that it was as if we were watching a theatrical production every week. The special effects, the props, the actors, the dialogue, it was modern and believable and contemporary. And I would hear people talking like that in real life which is what made me ask, "could such a thing where people switch bodies actually happen?"

And this was the question that we had to ask after every episode of the show, could this really happen, or was this actually happening right now? In fact, many of the things that they visit, have become reality. especially if you watch the episode "obit"

Starts well, then crumbles.

[fedor8 · 9 September 2021]

Good dialogue, a decent premise, convincing characterization, and a competent cast start off things very nicely. However, around midway most of that goes out the window because the episode turns into a stupid switcheroo thriller. In other words, the audience knows everything, we are ahead of the story, so all we have left is to patiently wait for things to play out in the usual predictable switcheroo-thriller way.

It's boring and annoying to know so much of the plot in advance. I never understood the point of that. These kinds of thrillers (and just thrillers in general) are for people who don't like being challenged by a story in any way that might require analysis and intelligence. The thriller genre is anyway one for the less intelligent or lazier viewers.

Usually TOL has the opposite problem: a unique premise but ruined with lousy or mediocre execution. It's a pity such a good cast, including the very charismatic and pretty Sally Kellerman, is wasted on such an unimaginative mid-twist, on a hackneyed plot. The first 15 minutes or so are very good but after that it's mostly for the dumpster.