The Outer Limits (1963) 1.04

The Man with the Power

starting Donald Pleasance

directed by Laslo Benedek

College professor Harold J. Finley (Donald Pleasance) gets a job working for a government project that is planning to mine asteroids. He had an operation on his brain which left him with ability to manipulate electro magnetic forces. Vera, his wife disapproves. Dean Radcliffe, his boss at the college, forbids him from doing outside work but Finley doesn’t care what they think. He subconsciously uses the power to injure Vera and kill Dean Radcliffe.

Finley realizes what he's done and has a change of heart. He tries to convince the leaders of the project to cancel the plans to perform the same operation on another man. They sedate him but his subconscious mind strikes out and disrupts the operation. Finley realizes that he hates what he's become and uses the power to destroy himself.

Thoughts

I guess the moral of this story is to be careful what you wish for.

I've got mixed feelings about this episode. I'm not crazy about Donald Pleasance performance. It is too muted and low key. He is the focal point but it is characters that surround him that are the ones who seem more alive: his wife, the dean, and the men from the government. I can see what they were going for here. It's an interesting episode but I don't love it. I kept waiting for something about this story or Donald Pleasance's performance to grab me but it never happened.

Notes

I've seen Donald Pleasance before in Escape from New York (1983), The Great Escape (1963), and possibly a few other things.

Dean Radcliffe was played by Edward Platt. I know him best from Get Smart where he played Maxwell Smart's boss.

This is the first of three episode of The Outer Limits (1963) that Laslo Benedek directed. He also directed one episode of Thriller (1960) and two episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.