History Trivia / TheOuterLimits1963

** The crashed spaceship created for "Specimen: Unknown" shows up in ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E129Probe7OverAndOut Probe 7, Over and Out]]".

* TechnologyMarchesOn: The signature opening Control Voice lines about how "we are controlling transmission", specifically reference a number of technical glitches - misaligned images, blur, color distortion, rolling or flickering - that commonly afflicted early analog television sets. These days, glitches typically involve pixelation, scrambling, or judders between adjacent channels, and even the idea of "transmission", i.e. broadcasting, seems archaic in the era of cable, satellite, and streaming video. In addition, the opening monologue's most well-known lines are "we control the horizontal, we control the vertical". This referenced the fact that [=TVs=] of the era actually had controls that adjusted the vertical and horizontal width of an image, a feature that was dropped from TV sets by the end of the 1970s. Interestingly, this narration was retained almost verbatim for ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'', which was on cable.

* TheWikiRule: There is [[https://theouterlimits.fandom.com/wiki/The_Outer_Limits_Wiki a wiki]] dedicated to both this and the revival.

* TechnologyMarchesOn: The signature opening Control Voice lines about how "we are controlling transmission", specifically reference a number of technical glitches - misaligned images, blur, color distortion, rolling or flickering - that commonly afflicted early analog television sets. These days, glitches typically involve pixelation, scrambling, or judders between adjacent channels, and even the idea of "transmission", i.e. broadcasting, seems archaic in the era of cable, satellite, and streaming video. In addition, the opening monologue's most well-known lines are "we control the horizontal, we control the vertical". This referenced the fact that [=TVs=] of the era actually had controls that adjusted the vertical and horizontal width of an image, a feature that was dropped from TV sets by the end of the 1970s. Interestingly, this narration was retained almost verbatim for ''/TheOuterLimits1995'', which was on cable.

* TechnologyMarchesOn: The signature opening Control Voice lines about how "we are controlling transmission", specifically reference a number of technical glitches - misaligned images, blur, color distortion, rolling or flickering - that commonly afflicted early analog television sets. These days, glitches typically involve pixelation, scrambling, or judders between adjacent channels, and even the idea of "transmission", i.e. broadcasting, seems archaic in the era of cable, satellite, and streaming video. In addition, the opening monologue's most well-known lines are "we control the horizontal, we control the vertical". This referenced the fact that [=TVs=] of the era actually had controls that adjusted the vertical and horizontal width of an image, a feature that was dropped from TV sets by the end of the 1970s. Interestingly, this narration was retained almost verbatim for Series/TheOuterLimits1995, which was on cable.

* TechnologyMarchesOn: The signature opening Control Voice lines about how "we are controlling transmission", specifically reference a number of technical glitches - misaligned images, blur, color distortion, rolling or flickering - that commonly afflicted early analog television sets. These days, glitches typically involve pixelation, scrambling, or judders between adjacent channels, and even the idea of "transmission", i.e. broadcasting, seems archaic in the era of cable, satellite, and streaming video. In addition, the opening monologue's most well-known lines are "we control the horizontal, we control the vertical". This referenced the fact that [=TVs=] of the era actually had controls that adjusted the vertical and horizontal width of an image, a feature that was dropped from TV sets by the end of the 1970s.

** Jason Wingreen's three supporting roles form a curious trilogy. He plays an alien invader in "O.B.I.T.", a human murdered by an alien invader in "The Special One", and a coroner in "Expanding Human"!

** Sally Kellerman played Ingrid Larkin in "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1963S1E8TheHumanFactor The Human Factor]]" and Judith Bellero in "The Bellero Shield".

*** Barbara Rush played Leonora Edmond in "The Forms of Things Unknown" in the original series and Barbara Matheson in "The Balance of Nature" in the revival.

* UnfinishedEpisode:
** The 1998 version of ''The Outer Limits Companion'' includes an appendix which provides detailed plot synopses of TOS scripts and premises that were never filmed. It also has details on rewritten and {{Deleted Scene}}s from the finished episodes, such as "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1963S1E6TheManWhoWasNeverBorn The Man Who Was Never Born]]" originally ending on a ''much'' more upbeat (if still [[BittersweetEnding bittersweet]]) note, but this was changed due to time constraints.
** "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1963S1E32TheFormsOfThingsUnknown The Forms of Things Unknown]]" was written by Joseph Stefano with one eye on making it his directorial debut, but it ended up being helmed by Gerd Oswald. (Stefano's only directorial effort came after he left the series, with the unsold pilot ''The Ghost Of Sierra De Cobre''.)

* Creator/CliffordSimak: His short story "Goodnight, Mr. James" was adapted as "The Duplicate Man".

* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
** The 1998 version of ''The Outer Limits Companion'' includes an appendix which provides detailed plot synopses of TOS scripts and premises that were never filmed. It also has details on rewritten and {{Deleted Scene}}s from the finished episodes, such as "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1963S1E6TheManWhoWasNeverBorn The Man Who Was Never Born]]" originally ending on a ''much'' more upbeat (if still [[BittersweetEnding bittersweet]]) note, but this was changed due to time constraints.
** "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1963S1E32TheFormsOfThingsUnknown The Forms of Things Unknown]]" was written by Joseph Stefano with one eye on making it his directorial debut, but it ended up being helmed by Gerd Oswald. (Stefano's only directorial effort came after he left the series, with the unsold pilot ''The Ghost Of Sierra De Cobre''.)

** Henry Silva played General Juan Mercurio in "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1963S1E13TouristAttraction Tourist Attraction]]" and Chino Rivera in "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1963S1E15TheMice The Mice]]" (which was broadcast only two weeks later).

* [[ShowAccuracyToyAccuracy Show Accuracy/Trading Card Accuracy]]: The original ''Outer Limits'' [[http://science-fiction.netfirms.com/ cards]], released while the series was still in production, are notorious because the writer, who couldn't use the series' actual plots due to licensing issues, concocted new stories (and [[SoBadItsGood laughable]] ones, at that) around colorized photos of the AliensAndMonsters. Later series of cards didn't have this problem; one series recycled the original pics with new text including both the TV and trading card plots.

** Dabney Coleman played Dr. Williams in "The Mice", Lt. Rupert Lawrence Howard in "Specimen: Unknown" and James Custer in "Wolf 359".

*** Cliff Robertson played Alan Maxwell in "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1963S1E1TheGalaxyBeing The Galaxy Being]]", the first episode of the original series, and Theodore Harris in "Joyride" in the revival.

** Ben Wright had two onscreen roles (in "Nightmare" and "Wolf 359") and two voiceover roles where he played aliens (in "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1963S1E24Moonstone Moonstone]]" and "A Feasibility Study").

* SimilarlyNamedWorks: Although some of the [[Series/TheOuterLimits1995 revival]] episodes (like "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1963S1E10Nightmare Nightmare]]", "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1963S1E29AFeasibilityStudy A Feasibility Study]]" and "The Inheritors") are remakes of TOS episodes, "The Human Factor" is ''not'' one of them. It has the same title as [[Recap/TheOuterLimits1963S1E8TheHumanFactor a TOS episode]], but a completely unrelated story.

** Creator/HarlanEllison, a writer of two episodes for the second season, notably dismissed the entire first season as crap.
--->"The first season, I thought, was garbage, the usual monster bullshit. They were doing 'the bear on the beach', in which you open with a bear on a beach, then you ask how the bear got on the beach. It was a lot of funny rubber masks, and basically silly ideas. Until [second season producer Ben] Brady came in, there were no science fiction writers working for the show."

** "The Invisible Enemy" was a TroubledProduction due to difficult special effects and multiple rewrites mandated by ExecutiveMeddling. Schow sums up how the creators came to regard the episode:

** Director Byron Haskin hated "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1963S2E3BeholdEck Behold, Eck!]]", which he worked on only because he was [[ContractualObligationProject contractually obligated]] to do so. As Haskin said in the ''Companion'': "It was an alleged comedy that was just a ''bomb''. They laid that script in my hands; I got one sniff of it and damn near fainted".

** "The Invisible Enemy" was a TroubledProduction due to difficult special effects and multiple rewrites mandated by ExecutiveMeddling. Schow sums up how the creators came to regard the episode: "[N]othing cripples a show so much as the producer, story editor, director and writer ''all'' hating it."

* CompletelyDifferentTitle: In Portuguese, the show is called ''A Quinta Dimensão'' (The Fifth Dimension).

** Robert Culp starred in three of the most acclaimed episodes ("[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1963S1E3TheArchitectsOfFear The Architects of Fear]]", "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1963S1E9CorpusEarthling Corpus Earthling]]" and "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1963S2E5DemonWithAGlassHand Demon With a Glass Hand]]"), becoming the actor most associated with the series.

** Robert Duvall starred as Louis Mace in "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1963S1E31TheChameleon The Chameleon]]" and Adam Ballard in "The Inheritors".

** Director Byron Haskin hated "Behold, Eck!", which he worked on only because he was [[ContractualObligationProject contractually obligated]] to do so. As Haskin said in the ''Companion'': "It was an alleged comedy that was just a ''bomb''. They laid that script in my hands; I got one sniff of it and damn near fainted".