One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 1]
The Bride Possessed
Shown 20 Jan 59
A married couple drive off on their honeymoon.
However, the bride (
Virginia Leith
) completely changes her personality and claims to be someone else.
Although the new personality claims to have been murdered,
she also strangely refuses to accept the fact that she is dead.
Not only does John Newland introduce the show,
he also directs most episodes as well.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 2]
Night of April 14th
Shown 27 Jan 59
London, 1912. A young woman has a nightmare about drowning.
The next day, her fiance (Patrick Mcnee -
Battlestar Galactica
) announces he has booked tickets for the maiden voyage of the Titanic.
The ending bookend sequence has the announcer explain about Futility,
the real-life novella that had many similarities with real events ...
but was published a dozen years earlier!
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 3]
Emergency Only
Shown 03 Feb 59
A man attends a party where a psychic woman predicts his future.
It seems pretty evident that something very bad will happen to him
in the next couple of days.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 4]
The Dark Room
Shown 10 Feb 59
An American lady (
Cloris Leachman
) moves into a French chateau.
She is a staff photographer for a New York magazine,
doing a project entitled The Face of France.
A man visits the chateau, and agrees to pose for her project.
Predictably, this turns into a fem-jep scenario.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 5]
Twelve Hours to Live
Shown 17 Feb 59
A married couple has an argument.
The man drives off in a rainstorm,
and his car gets caught in a landslide.
If he does not get rescued within twelve hours,
he will not survive.
The wife has an intuition that her husband is in danger.
She tries to lead the police to rescue him.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 6]
Epilogue
Shown 24 Feb 59
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 7]
The Dream
Shown 03 Mar 59
This is set in the aftermath of the British withdrawal from Dunkirk in June 1940.
A group of Home Guard men, worn out by sleepless nights,
protect the coast of England from the threat of German invasion.
Like a more serious version of the 1970s BBC TV show Dad's Army.
The twist is that a German raiding party actually makes a landing!
The old man falls asleep on duty,
and dreams that his wife will die when their house is destroyed by a Luftwaffe bomb.
Meanwhile,
the German raiding party are probably going to kill the husband.
In all fairness, the Germans may have sub-machineguns
against the Home Guard's handguns,
but Dad's Army more than pull their weight.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 8]
Premonition
Shown 10 Mar 59
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 9]
The Dead Part of the House
Shown 17 Mar 59
A family moves into a big house.
The little girl moves into the upstairs nursery room.
She spends a lot of time playing with her three dolls,
having conversations with them.
Her father is not an easy man to live with.
Luckily, the Chinese servant looks after the girl
... and learns about the house's history.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 10]
The Vision
Shown 24 Mar 59
This story is set on the front line in France in 1915.
It seems based on the Angel of Mons myth.
A group of French soldiers are on trial for desertion,
like in Paths of Glory.
Can their lawyer prove they really had a miraculous experience?
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 11]
The Devil's Laughter
Shown 31 Mar 59
In Victorian London, 1895,
a condemned man is executed on the gallows in Wandsworth Prison.
However, the execution goes wrong.
It seems that the convict is impossible to kill.
This is not the case of an innocent man
who has been reprieved by God.
No, that story was later used in
Twilight Zone (1959)
. This is the tale of a guilty man
who has been condemned to die in another,
more ironic way - like in an episode of
Twilight Zone (2002)
.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 12]
The Return of Mitchell Campion
Shown 07 Apr 59
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 13]
The Navigator
Shown 14 Apr 59
This is set aboard a wooden sailing ship in the Nineteenth Century,
taking cargo across the Atlantic Ocean to Boston.
The technology is so primitive that the course setting is in chalk
on a black-board, and the fog-horn is manually blown.
The First Officer discovers that someone altered the ship's course,
sending the ship into an ice-pack far to the north.
Who is responsible for this sabotage, and why?
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 14]
The Secret
Shown 21 Apr 59
A rich woman feels neglected by her husband,
so she carries on an affair with an imaginary male friend.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 15]
The Aerialist
Shown 28 Apr 59
A trapeze artist, AKA a Aerialist,
is wracked by guilt when a trick goes horribly wrong.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 16]
The Burning Girl
Shown 05 May 59
This episode's story is set in 1921.
A blonde teenage girl named Alice has moved to a new High School,
and befriended a brunette in her class.
The boys in their class are mean to them and tease them,
which happens off-screen but we learn about through expository dialogue.
To modern eyes, the girls look they are about to hook up with each other instead ...
A fire mysteriously broke out near the girls,
and looks like Alice is a pyrokinetic.
This is the reason she had to move from her old school.
Of course, to keep the budget low this is conveyed by dialogue,
so this comes across as more of a stage play.
The real source of conflict in the story turns out to be Alice's aunt.
This seems to have influenced the novel
Carrie
...
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 17]
The Haunted U-Boat
Shown 12 May 59
This is set aboard the U-141,
as it sets sail in early May 1945.
The boat's mission is to get a Nazi party VIP to safety,
so they can set up the Fourth Reich or whatever.
There is an inexplicable banging on the sub's hull.
The crew are all accounted for,
so nobody got trapped outside when they submerged.
The banging seems to target the Nazi VIP,
and his sleep deprivation leads to mental deterioration ...
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 18]
The Image of Death
Shown 19 May 59
In the 1890s, a recently-widowered Marquis
marries the nurse who looked after his dying wife.
The new wife insists the old wife's portrait is taken down.
However, the space on the wall where the portrait once hung
develops a strange water-stain.
As the stain develops over the weeks,
it looks more and more like a human skull ...
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 19]
The Captain's Guests
Shown 26 May 59
A married couple move to a new town,
and rent a splendid-looking house.
It has been lying empty for some time,
and the Real Estate agent is reluctant to let it.
He and the other locals seem to know something bad about it ...
After they move in, the husband starts to behave strangely.
He is out of character, becoming less like himself
and more like the villainous old sea-captain who used to live in the house.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 20]
Echo
Shown 02 Jun 59
Paul Marlin (Ross Martin -
) is acquited in court on the charge of murdering his wife.
Like a white OJ Simpson, he is hounded by the Press so he leaves town.
However, he has a vision that someone will shoot him dead.
Later, Marlin meets the man from his vision.
The stranger turns out to be the brother of the dead wife.
Worse, although the brother just arrived from New Zealand
he somehow got a loaded Luger pistol through customs.
Well, this is set forty years before 9/11 ...
they did not even have metal detectors in airports until the 1960s.
The brother owns the pistol because it is useful while riding the range,
in case some cattle rustlers attack him or whatever.
But the fact he brings it thousands of miles to a big city
might indicate premeditation on his part.
Combined this with the fact he has a prejudicial newspaper article in his wallet,
which would imply motive ...
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 21]
Front Runner
Shown 09 Jun 59
A journalist interviews a hospital patient
who is breathing his last in an oxygen tent.
The patient tells of his younger days as a horse-racing jockey.
He fell out with his best friend over a woman,
and the former friend cursed him.
A decade later, they met again and the curse came true.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 1, Episode 22]
The Riddle
Shown 16 Jun 59
An American newlywed couple hold their honeymoon in India,
and take a train from Bombay to the Taj Mahal.
They meet a beggar,
and the husband becomes obsessed with the old man.
He thinks it is a case of kill or be killed ...
The episode has a warning prologue about the use of make-up
to simulate the actor being a member of a different race.
Nowadays, this kind of thing would never happen.
The twenty-first century version, as used in
Lost
, is to have a South Asian Hindu as a Middle Eastern Arabic muslim.
A completely different race, of course,
but because the skin-tones are similar there is no make-up involved.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 1]
Delusion
Shown 15 Sep 59
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 2]
Ordeal on Locust Street
Shown 22 Sep 59
A boy was born with facial disfiguration.
His parents are desperate for him,
so the mother contacts a specialist doctor.
This doctor manages to work miracles.
The twist is that the doctor's technique is hypnotism,
and somehow by changing the boy's psychological state
he is able to fix the boy's reptilian outer apperaance.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 3]
Brainwave
Shown 06 Oct 59
Aboard a United States ship in Japanese waters during World War II,
Captain Fielding is critically injured.
An alcoholic pharmacist's assistant must perform surgery
with only the radio voice of a doctor on another ship to guide him.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 4]
Doomsday
Shown 13 Oct 59
In 14th century Scotland, the Laird's son is stricken with a strange disease.
His father, the Earl of Culdane (Torin Thatcher -
7th Voyage of Sinbad
), swears vengeance on anyone he holds responsible.
The Italian doctor, under threat since he cannot cure the disease,
implies it is witchcraft and implicates the patient's ex-girlfriend.
She in turn swears a curse on the Laird's family -
that every man will outlive his eldest son.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 5]
Night of the Kill
Shown 20 Oct 59
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 6]
The Inheritance
Shown 27 Oct 59
John Newland recounts a recent trip to Mexico,
where he met a stranger in a bar
and was recounted with a tale of a cursed necklace
that strangles every woman who wears it.
The tale-teller's three love interests all try it on,
and it attacks all three of them.
This seems reminiscent of a certain 1950s B-Movie
where the tale-teller is accused of multiple homicides
and claims they were all a series of unlikely accidents.
Newland never goes so far as to implicate the man,
since this series is all about the supernatural.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 7]
The Open Window
Shown 03 Nov 59
The central character is a photographer
who is working in a heatwave.
His model Jeanie (
Louise Fletcher
) quits, leaving him alone with no witnesses.
Despite the photographer's apartment being quite nice,
the building across the alleyway is a cheap hotel.
He watches as the room opposite his is rented out to a woman,
who then tries to kill herself.
However, when he tries to save her
he discovers that what he saw is a future event.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 8]
Message from Clara
Shown 10 Nov 59
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 9]
Forked Lightning
Shown 17 Nov 59
A man has developed a certainty that he will die on that day.
Elsewhere, a woman dreams that her husband will die.
The two mens' lives slowly intersect,
until they are both in the same place at a bad time.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 10]
Reunion
Shown 24 Nov 59
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 11]
Dead Ringer
Shown 01 Dec 59
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 12]
The Stone Cutter
Shown 08 Dec 59
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 13]
Father Image
Shown 15 Dec 59
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 14]
Make Me Not a Witch
Shown 22 Dec 59
A teenage girl manages to read her mother's mind.
They are rednecks in the 1930s,
so this superpower is deemed to be a bad thing.
The family hide this from everyone,
although the girl tells the local priest in confession.
A fisherman is brought into the local hospital
with a severe paralysing injury that prevents him from talking
or otherwise communicating.
He is the only one who knows where a couple of missing children are.
Can the girl be convinced to read his mind?
As a twist, the man only thinks in his native Spanish
while the girl only speaks English.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 15]
The Hand
Shown 29 Dec 59
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 16]
The Justice Tree
Shown 05 Jan 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 17]
Earthquake
Shown 12 Jan 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 18]
The Forests of the Night
Shown 19 Jan 60
As always, John Newland introduces the story.
This time there is a secondary framing story,
as the episode starts with a man being reported missing by his wife.
His friends remember the last time they saw him,
when they were all in a
Cabin in the Woods
. They played a Chinese magic game, which later became
a classic transgression in the horror movie genre.
It seems to make the affected man think he is a leopard.
But can he actually physically transform into one?
The title is from a poem, Tiger, Tiger.
However, the episode itself actually features a different poem
written by a completely different English poet - Kipling.
Perhaps it was an IP rights issue
which prompted a last-minute rewrite.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 19]
Call from Tomorrow
Shown 26 Jan 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 20]
Who Are You?
Shown 02 Feb 60
A young girl is stricken with fever.
When she awakens,
she claims to be the dead daughter of a neighbouring family.
The dead girl's mother senses that her daughter has returned,
although she does not recognise the young girl.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 21]
The Day the World Wept: The Lincoln Story
Shown 09 Feb 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 22]
The Lovers
Shown 16 Feb 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 23]
Vanishing Point
Shown 23 Feb 60
John Newland is summoned by a Police Lieutenant,
and gets recounted with a tale of an unhappily married couple.
The wife goes missing inside their rented house.
When the husband gets blamed for her disappearance,
he investigates by himself and discovers two previous disappearances.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 24]
The Mask
Shown 01 Mar 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 25]
The Haunting
Shown 08 Mar 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 26]
The Explorer
Shown 15 Mar 60
The presenter, John Newland, opens the episode
by listing tales of Scandinavian explorers.
He has a point with Leif Ericson,
but he controversially says that
the Vikings reached China long before Marco Polo did.
The main story starts in Scandinavia,
where a middle-aged man is visited by a famous explorer.
The story-within-a-story is of the explorer
and two companions getting lost in the Sahara desert.
They are rescued by the middle-aged man's son,
who guides them to a water source.
Somehow they manage to walk for days across the sand,
covering dozens of miles despite having mere ounces of water.
But this is not the miraculous event.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 27]
The Clown
Shown 22 Mar 60
It is evening in a small town,
and the carnival has shut down for the night.
A young woman (
Yvette Mimeux
) and her overbearing husband are pestered by a creepy clown.
Well, the woman welcomes the diversion
because her husband is coercive and controlling.
This series normally features generic stories,
and the twist is uaually he was a ghost all along.
However, this episode actually does something different.
It is scary in a way the rest of the series
does not even try to be.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 28]
I Saw You Tomorrow
Shown 05 Apr 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 29]
Encounter
Shown 12 Apr 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 30]
The Peter Hurkos Story (1)
Shown 19 Apr 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 31]
The Peter Hurkos Story (2)
Shown 26 Apr 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 32]
Delia
Shown 03 May 60
John Newland recounts a recent trip to a small tropical island,
San Salvador, where he met a stranger in a bar
and was recounted with a tale of an inexplicable event.
Eight years previously, a man named Philip Wilson vacationed there.
He was a cynical alcoholic,
until he met a beautiful woman named Delia.
However, Delia mysteriously disappeared without trace.
Wilson spends the next eight years waiting on the island
in the hope she will reappear.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 33]
The Visitor
Shown 10 May 60
Ellen (
Joan Fontaine
) decides to stay off alcohol,
and to end her relationship with Harry (Warren Beatty -
Dick Tracy
). He drives off on a dark road, and crashes.
Will he be found in time?
Ellen is visited by a younger version of Harry,
and while she recognises him he does not recognise her.
He tells her about his life,
and she gets to understand her marriage from his perspective.
Most of the episodes of this show have small-time actors
who never had their break-out role.
This features two Hollywood big-timers.
Fontaine might have been past her movie-star days,
being a forty-something like the female lead in Sunset Boulevard.
However, Beatty was half her age in his early twenties,
and delivers some great monologues.
You can see the glimmerings of talent that would later make him a star.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 34]
Gypsy
Shown 17 May 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 35]
Contact
Shown 24 May 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 36]
The Lonely Room
Shown 31 May 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 37]
House of the Dead
Shown 07 Jun 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 38]
Goodbye Grandpa
Shown 14 Jun 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 2, Episode 39]
The Storm
Shown 21 Jun 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 1]
Tidal Wave
Shown 30 Aug 60
The episode starts with info about the US government's department
which monitors seismic events around the world.
In the 1950s an earthquake in Chile sent a tsunami
across the Pacific ocean at 400mph for over a day,
until it arrived at the Hawaiian islands.
The main story is about a woman
who is in a wheelchair because of polio.
Her husband is off at work while she is home alone,
and she does not have the radio switched on
so she does not hear the warning broadcasts.
By the time she realises the danger she is in,
there is only ten minutes for her to get to safety.
At the end of the episode, presenter John Newland introduces
one of the real-life people that the episode is about.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 2]
Anniversary of a Murder
Shown 27 Sep 60
A businessman uses a 1950s reel-to-reel tape recorder
as a dictaphone, dictating letters for his secretary type up.
However, when he plays the recording back
it only has a young man's voice,
screaming that he has been blinded.
Later that night, by incredible coincidence,
the businessman and his wife are driving home
when their car accidentally hits a young man ...
who is blinded and dies from his injuries.
The couple manage to keep quiet about this hit-and-run accident
for an entire year.
Yes, somehow the businessman manages to avoid using his reel-to-reel
again for twelve whole months.
However, eventually he has to risk it again.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 3]
The Death Waltz
Shown 04 Oct 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 4]
The Return
Shown 11 Oct 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 5]
If You See Sally
Shown 18 Oct 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 6]
Moment of Hate
Shown 25 Oct 60
A woman speaks to her psychiatrist.
She thinks she has
The Medusa Touch
, meaning that she gets angry at anyone
then that person dies immediately.
While the woman narrates a flashback to her childhood,
it also turns out in the final scene
that the whole story-within-a-story has been told
to the show's narrator John Newland.
This is not exactly
The Zaragosa Manuscript
, but it shows how such a concept can be used.
Well, in this case it is under-used
since the events are all within a single lifetime.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 7]
To Know the End
Shown 01 Nov 60
John Newland's intro mentions the show's sponsor, Alcoa.
They manufacture aluminium foil for domestic purposes ...
and the World of Tomorrow.
Yes, the slogan has shades of
Futurama
and
Tomorrowland
...
The story starts with a framing story.
A senior military officer interrogates a woman named Emily
about a mission that went wrong.
Somehow a major attack cost the army six thousand casualties.
This is not as big as the initial casualties of the Somme -
sixty thousand in two days - but it still means the loss of six regiments.
Emily's story starts with her seeing the raid.
An officer gets severely injured,
and tells his sergeant to contact his wife ... Emily!
Later, Emily meets the officer for the first time.
The man is MacDougal, and he is a civilian.
After all, it is the 1930s and the Second World War is deemed unlikely
when Chamberlain makes the Munich deal with Hitler.
That said, MacDougal is not entirely honest.
He claims to be from near Glasgow in Scotland,
but his accent is Received Pronunciation.
Emily tries to avoid the inevitable death of her husband.
However, as per the framing story we know this is inevitable.
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 8]
The Trap
Shown 15 Nov 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 9]
The Voice
Shown 22 Nov 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 10]
The Promise
Shown 29 Nov 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 11]
Tonight at 12:17
Shown 06 Dec 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 12]
Where Are They?
Shown 13 Dec 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 13]
Legacy of Love
Shown 20 Dec 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 14]
Rendezvous
Shown 27 Dec 60
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 15]
The Executioner
Shown 03 Jan 61
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 16]
The Last Round
Shown 10 Jan 61
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 17]
Dead Man's Tale
Shown 17 Jan 61
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 18]
The Sacred Mushroom
Shown 24 Jan 61
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 19]
The Gift
Shown 31 Jan 61
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 20]
Person Unknown
Shown 07 Feb 61
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 21]
Night of Decision
Shown 21 Feb 61
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 22]
The Stranger
Shown 28 Feb 61
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 23]
Justice
Shown 07 Mar 61
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 24]
The Face
Shown 14 Mar 61
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 25]
The Room Upstairs
Shown 21 Mar 61
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 26]
Signal Received
Shown 04 Apr 61
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 27]
The Confession
Shown 11 Apr 61
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 28]
The Avengers
Shown 25 Apr 61
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 29]
The Prisoner
Shown 02 May 61
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 30]
Blood Flower
Shown 16 May 61
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 31]
The Sorcerer
Shown 23 May 61
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 32]
The Villa
Shown 06 Jun 61
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 33]
Midnight
Shown 13 Jun 61
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 34]
The Tiger
Shown 20 Jun 61
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 35]
Nightmare
Shown 27 Jun 61
One Step Beyond (1959) [Season 3, Episode 36]
Eyewitness
Shown 04 Jul 61
