UFO - The Man Who Came Back

The plot synopsis:

Craig Collins, a SHADO operative and longtime friend of Ed Straker, is on his way home to Earth when the aliens spring a two-pronged attack, putting the Space Intruder Detector out of commission and apparently killing Collins.

Some time later as plans are underway to repair SID, Collins turns up alive and well on a desert isle. Good news all around, Straker is buoyed for his old friend, but also fortuitous in that Collins is one of the few astronauts with the training to repair their sentry satellite.

Heading up that project is John Grey, who has had a longstanding adversarial relationship with Collins. Just bad chemistry, he says, no real reason for it...they just rub each other the wrong way. That being what it is, when Grey begins to suspect that Collins has came back not entirely himself and possibly dangerous, Straker assumes Grey's antipathy is causing him to jump at shadows. After all, three SHADO psychiatrists have cleared Collins for duty.

Worryingly, other people who know Collins (including a recent lover) see a change as well though it is Grey alone who finds it suspicious. Collins is acting far more aggressive then he used to, bordering on veiled hostility. He's also stepped up his game at chess...and in one curious instance, something about him freaks out a total stranger on the Harlington/Straker lot - one Sir Esmond, who is blind but senses that Collins is not what he must seem.

During a weight training session, Collins misjudges his weights and injures Paul Foster, who had been assigned to partner with him on the SID mission. Surely it must be an accident? After all, it was Collins himself who had specifically requested Foster. Ah, well, only one man is left available for the job: no less than the head of SHADO himself, Ed Straker. Straker, who is having none of the now fully-alarmed Grey's warnings that he's being set up. Someone tried to murder Grey by shutting off the oxygen to his private compartment on Moonbase, and who else would it have been but Collins?

Enter the enigmatic Doctor Jackson, one of the three who had cleared Collins. Something's been nagging at him, and when Grey seeks his advice Jackson hesitantly shares the source of his misgivings. You see, alongside the standard evaluational tests, Jackson has been experimenting with a new procedure of his own, one for which Collins yielded puzzling results. These were not passed along to Straker because the experiment is so new that Jackson doesn't even know how to interpret what the test reveals about its subjects, let alone an anomaly like Collins. The test studies the brainwaves of a subject when shielded from external stimuli or input. When tried on Collins, he essentially ceased to exist as a person at all. He became an empty vessel.

Jackson and Collins theorize that the aliens have been controlling Collins via radio transmitted right into the astronaut's mind, and that their aims are to cripple SHADO by killing its head and making the recovery of SID impossible. Confronting him (rather recklessly alone), Collins silences first Grey and then Jackson. Grey survives the attempt on his life and at the last moment is able to relay his discovery to Straker, who realizes his old friend is gone and is forced to kill Collins to save himself.

evaluation:

Benefiting from a hiatus in production, this first episode from a new studio steps up it's game by the same factor Collins does his chess game. It's sharper, more fluid and dynamic on every level from acting to storytelling craft. You see it right away with a gripping pre-credits teaser in which the UFOs make a more sophisticated advance than they had before, three in number. Previously they had used diversionary ruses, where this time either one of their targets (Collins and SID) could be mistaken for a diversion but are equally integral to one grand plan that would effectively set SHADO back for months. This sequence is taut and exciting and boasts several new fx shots, one especially nice one that gives us a close look at the alien panels as they spin. In earlier episodes the actors' delivered their lines in neatly choreographed arrangements from stage 101. The opening of TMWCB lets the dialog flow in an almost Altmanesque rush, everyone talking at once. Our attention is commanded.

Editing is tightened throughout the episode, ratcheting up the tension level. Dialog is more organic with a minimum of exposition, so the human element is vivid without feeling forced. The usual extraneous fx sequences are pared to a bare story-telling necessity rather than filling time. This is not a theme-driven script, just a damned good drama.

Improvements continue production-wise, I even saw (or imagined I saw) more texture in the sets - seams in the cement pillars within SHADO central, for example. The new fx shots are simply a delight to behold, like the damaged SID spinning out of its orbit over Earth.

Straker has been a polarizing figure to this point, often losing what sympathy we'd want to grant him for his personal losses. He's didactic, removed, dictatorial, and more than a little insufferable for his arrogance. Writer Terence Feely manages to humanize Straker here without altering his persona one whit, as the opening sequence effectively puts us in the middle o=f his dilemma having to deal with an attack unfolding too quickly to respond to. This once, he's without a clever insight or sneaky ploy. He's not a television hero to smart to be real, he's just a man having to rely on his gut feelings and what his people tell him. It's not his episode, either, the tale centers on Grey...but it's Straker who loses the most and who we have to feel for ultimately. Pretty neat trick for a central character many viewers have come to dislike. You can see the terrible loss in his face when he realizes his friend is already gone. The episode doesn't even give us the solace space of a coda or wrapup, ending on Straker's heartbreak. This is on death he feels to his core.

The one thing that I would mention as a potential objection would be Jackson's premise for mind control, that Collins' "personality center has been burned out". That's problematic, though not to the point that it bars fanwank. Without his personal traits, including the most deep-seated ones like sense of humor or quirks of irritation, he would be fooling no one. Is it possible the aliens made a template of his psyche so complete as to replicate his most formative thought patterns, which they were able to beam back into his head subservient to his progtamming? That would mean an amazing level of sophistication I don't think we've seen from them before.

Still, that never gets in the way of the drama. 9 inflatable tubular pillows, because they may look uncomfortable but, dammit, this is the future!



Asides:

Jackson! Squeeeeeee! And in a sympathetic light, too!

Wanda Ventham is back as well, a welcome character return. it's well worth noting that her character is treated not as a sex object ala her introduction in Identified but as a fully dimensional personality. Her sexual life is openly questioned, and she has no hesitation in owning it as both private and fully considered. It may be a small moment, but a progressive one for the era (and sadly still for some in this one as well) ia woman who owns and takes responsibility for her own sexuality.

The above is set back slightly by an old cliche - the woman who discovers what must be a dead body naturally has to scream. Now, if it had been the male hotel manager and not the maid, that would have made my day!

Not only is Jackson's experiment not some wild sci-fi whimsy, it was actually a fad in scientific circles at the time: sensory deprivation booths. These are the same experiments that would be more widely popularized in Altered States in 1980.

The footage of the rocket on its launchpad came from Gerry Anderson's feature film Doppleganger, aka Journey to the Far Side of the Sun.

It's kind of odd and amusing to think of the Harlington/Straker lot now located at a new studio...that's a little more meta than expected.