UFO - Computer Affair

“The decision and the responsibility must be yours.”

That's the responsibility hanging over Lt. Gay Ellis when an attempted UFO interception results in the death of a pilot who is awaiting instructions from her. What went wrong? Straker wants to know. Ellis and the two surviving astronauts are ordered back to Earth for evaluation. It is revealed that Ellis is attracted to pilot Mark Bradley (what's more the interest is reciprocated). However, this doesn't answer the crucial question: did it affect her judgment?

Meanwhile, the UFO that got through the Interceptor defense has been damaged and lands in the forests of Canada. SHADO scrambles to put together a team to capture the vessel and its occupants.

I think the word that sums this one up might be 'ambivalence'. So far I've enjoyed the way the writing and editing assume that we are intelligent enough to connect the dots if we're provided enough dots. The Computer Affair is just a little hazier than usual (for example, it might help if we understood better how these flight logistics work), and more provocative for it.

We first learn that something is up with Ellis through Alec Freeman: when the pilots launch, Ellis hands Bradley his helmet. It's an innocuous gesture, yet an obtrusive edit draws our attention to Freeman finding it suspicious. Is politeness a breach of protocol? Is it out of character for Ellis? His hunch is correct, but it strikes me as more intuitive than substantive. What's more intriguing is that when SHADO analyst Dr. Shroeder deduces the very same thing, Freeman balks. It's not the conclusion that bothers him, clearly, as he secretly agrees. His verbalized objection is to the method by which the conclusion was reached - computer analysis, albeit guided and interpreted by a human. Underlying this, I think, is a more basic motivation – he wants to protect Ellis, but his hands are tied in the matter. So, he keeps to himself that he already knew she was attracted to Bradley and protests with the only argument he has, that Shroeder's results are too flimsy to credit. Ironic, given his own intuitive leap earlier.

Freeman doesn't hide his unhappiness with Shroeder, or with Straker for backing the Doctor. Ellis, it looks, is going to take the fall. Freeman ought to know better, and so should we. Straker always, always plays it close to the vest. How many times does he have to say it, he wants to know why it happened. As well he should! There's no mention of blame, no talk of punishment...his manner, though, is aggressive as to be leading. He gives every appearance of a man on a headhunt, and he's known to be cold. Freeman, the one person who knows Straker best, has made another assumption.

All this talk of Freeman in what ostensibly is Gabrielle Drake's hour. UFO has placed a woman in a position of not only authority but of grave responsibility. More, she is engaged in what has always been considered a strictly male calling: war. That's a provocative move for a show circa 1970, a female warrior in command of a squadron of male fighter pilots. Computer Affair is the episode that sets out to justify that move. To do so it takes on the usual objection, that a woman is simply too emotional to be a warrior, that she is too prone to attachments. No man ever had feelings!

Freeman heads up the task force in Canada hunting the downed UFO and takes Ellis and Bradley with him. He's giving her a chance to prove herself, and she takes it. The overt charge over her is that she will allow her emotions to compromise her judgment, that she will not follow procedure. That was never the real concern, though, but whether a woman can put the mission above fear for a loved one in harm's way. More irony, then, because she proves herself capable precisely by putting her own need above the mission – she sends in Mark's team rather than the one in the better position. Instead of losing her job, she secures her place. It's the wrong move tactically but the right one to prove her steel.

That's plenty for one show, isn't it? No, writer Tony Barwick had to go even further by touching on interracial relationships! Oooooh, let's really make the men nervous, she's a white woman attracted to a black man! Barwick skates over the topic, just bringing it up enough so as not to pretend it isn't an issue...but ignoring it enough to demonstrate (quite rightly) that it shouldn't be an issue. There's an awkward moment where racism is thrown in Bradley's face just to see how he'll react, and he coolly blows it off. No such blatant trap is pulled on Ellis, but she panics when she has to respond to the word 'black' in a free-association test. She's not blind to it, it's on her mind. What exactly it is that's on her mind is never forthcoming. Was Barwick just being skittish? I don't know. Sometimes you can say a whole lot more by saying less.*

Decision and responsibility...is it just me or have Bradley and Ellis not acted on their mutual attraction to this point? When Shroeder points it out to them, they react with genuine surprise. There's never an outright statement to this effect but I read into it that they were surprised to hear that the affection was reciprocal, and a little startled that it was finally spoken aloud for the other to acknowledge. The episode's coda is the first time we see the two as a couple when they go out on a date – Ellis the warrior has also taken command of her love life. There's no either-or sacrifice here. She's capable of both.

In the end, though, it's still more of a Freeman episode, and what a humiliating hour for him it must be. On the one hand, he's made a solid effort to support a colleague he values. Assuming she's a friend might be too strong given the stiff formality of the early exchange between them when he arrives on Moonbase. Now I'm really in danger of reading too much into the tale, but dare I suggest that his defensiveness toward her is based on attraction – that he is troubled by the same affliction everyone suspects her of, an affection that will impair his judgment? He misreads Straker (albeit that Straker remains stubbornly unreadable) to the point that Alec tenders his resignation. It's not the first time Freeman has let his emotions sweep him into precipitous action.

Would Straker have fired Ellis if not for the final computer analysis revealing that her actions saved the lives of the other two pilots? We'll never know. He wanted answers and he got them. Perhaps it was an object lesson that saved her, a lesson in decision and responsibility taken when he had a live alien captive for the second time and through his own rash choice caused the death of this invaluable asset (and, it must be said, living being - I guess the Geneva Convention doesn't apply to extra-terrestrials? Interrogation does not supercede the health of your prisoner.)


9 purple anti-static wigs for having the balls to go there. It would have been ten but for Straker's senseless choice with the alien.

Asides:  Shane Rimmer!  He doesn't get any lines, though, and so does not appear in the credits list.

There's a production gaffe for the interceptor liftoff, as the third craft passes behind a rock outcropping something white or bright seems to fall off the model. It might be light hitting one of the miniature handlers, I can't tell.

I can tell this was an early production because Ellis is wearing that same Spock-browed wig with the quizzical look from Identified.

It's uncanny, Gabrielle Drake in Moonbase uniform really does look exactly like a living anime girl right down to the eyes and figure. Must have really made an impression on me as a kid, because the sight of her with normal hair just doesn't look right to me.




*Admittedly a trick I never learned.