EDITOR’S NOTE: Outland was on the CBS Late Movie on July 30, 1986 and December 16, 1988.

Federal Marshal William O’Niel (Sean Connery) has been assigned to the titanium ore mining outpost Con-Am 27, operated by the company Con-Amalgamate on the Jovian moon of Io. It’s rough work in a place where gravity a sixth of Earth’s with no breathable atmosphere and the men are forced to work in heavy spacesuits with hardly any air. But there is money and productivity is up ever since the new manager, Mark Sheppard (Peter Boyle), was hired.

O’Niel is left behind with his wife and son leaving for Jupiter, but he does have a mission. That’s because several miners have died from getting stimulant psychosis and tearing off their suits. That may be because the miners are abusing polydichloric euthimal, a drug that allows them to stay awake for days at a time. The side effect? After ten months, they go insane.

With only one person on his side — Dr. Lazarus (Frances Sternhagen) — O’Niel has to battle the corrupt mining company and their men, many of whom don’t want a chance to their way of life, no matter how wrong it is.

Outland is pretty much a Western in space, directed and written by Peter Hyams, who told Empire, “I wanted to do a Western. Everybody said, “You can’t do a Western; Westerns are dead; nobody will do a Western.” I remember thinking it was weird that this genre that had endured for so long was just gone. But then I woke up and came to the conclusion – obviously after other people – that it was actually alive and well, but in outer space. I wanted to make a film about the frontier. Not the wonder of it or the glamour of it: I wanted to do something about Dodge City and how hard life was. I wrote it and by great fortune Sean Connery wanted to do it. And how many chances do you get to work with Sean Connery?”

If you love this movie, I recommend the comic book adaptation by James Steranko.

The CBS version of Outland features scenes that were cut from the movie to extend parts of the film. This allowed the network to sell more commercial slots to advertisers.