UFO - The Cat With Ten Lives

Just in time for the Halloween season, it's an episode of spooky cats, seances, spirits, and the possession of Regan – a year before William Peter Blatty's novel The Exorcist was published and three years before Friedkin's film. The Cat With Ten Lives was originally aired on September 30th, 1970.


In this case Regan isn't a little girl but a Moonbased Interceptor pilot (“You're gonna die up there.”). We're introduced to him in an opening sequence in which the aliens step up their game considerably, using a two-pronged attack on Moonbase involving six UFOs. It's an exciting setpiece for us, and exhausting for the pilots who barely fend off disaster. That makes eight UFOs in just the past week. It's not a good time to be an Interceptor pilot, what with Straker considering SHADO under siege and even Foster riding them hard in combat training. Regan is lucky to be getting a few days leave at home.

Sleep will have to wait, though, he and his wife are obligated for a dinner party with the unhappy prospect of a dull cinematography display. Or maybe not, as his hosts have received an anonymous gift in the mail; a Ouija board! Oh, yes, lets; go right to the embarrassed eyerolling and the goodnatured ribbing before the planchette spells out 'S – E – A – N -C – E'. They have made contact with the spirit of Captain Obvious.

The game livens a little when Regan suffers a spell akin to a fugue state or a blackout. He's rattled enough to take the wrong way home. A cat in the road halts their journey, and the couple are assaulted by aliens who subject the pilot to some kind of procedure. He is released but his wife is not. The direction of the abduction sequence is marvelous.

It is determined that Regan was deemed medically unsuitable for organ harvesting, and that presumably his wife was found eligible. Still, quite a coincidence that the aliens just happened upon a SHADO operative as it is. Even more so that the only reason Regan was caught was because of a stray cat happening upon his trip at that moment. But, wait, isn't it true that the only reason he took that path was because he was upset by the Ouija game, which just happened to arrive from a mysterious source?

As plans go this is beyond improbable, and a little Rube Goldbergian. And, ya know, the only reason I don't mind is because of the season. It shouldn’t work, yet it does. Logic is out the window, but spooky stories are not about logic. They're about taking us for a ride, and TCWTL does exactly that. I defy anyone to watch this plot unfold and predict where it's going. Where it's going is another attack on Moonbase with another “controlled” agent – so, yes, it should be predictable, but the path to that end is so circuitous and unlikely that it's highly entertaining.

The plan seems to hinge on knowledge of one pilots' social calendar and work rotation, which one would think rather hard to come by for an alien. They would also have to rely on the man to not only keep his dates but not to balk at the idea of using the Ouija board when he's a skeptic. I guess that's why the word “seance” came up so prominently, there were aliens nearby frantically thinking “SEANCE!” at the party in hopes the partiers would comply. The séance is then used to plant the idea in Regan to take one road home over another. Let's take it a step further and guess that the reason SHADO is being run ragged is to exhaust Regan into pliability. It's that kind of script. Silly.

Speaking of tortured thinking, Jackson has some disturbing news that sparks some not fully cooked speculation. SHADO has been operating under thee assumption that the aliens' bodies are compatible with our own, and that their resources are depleted. Turns out there's a good reason for that: the aliens' bodies are our own! They're using us whole like meat puppets. I say 'they' because Jackson says 'they', but it's another wild leap based on one body. The upshot is that the aliens may b incorporeal beings that require physical form to operate, and that means stealing bodies. So what we knew wasn't wrong, exactly, just more advanced than we imagined.

Questions arise. If the aliens need bodies in order to function, how did they get here to take ours in the first place? The body Jackson found has had vital sections removed that govern emotional response, suggesting the aliens need our brains for the motor functions, language centers, and critical thinking. Must the body inhabited be human – that is, could an alien entity choose to take over another animal? Say, a cat? Jackson thinks so. As it happens, Regan has brought a cat into SHADO HQ. It's the same one that got him and his wife into the aliens' hands. Regan, meanwhile, has snapped. He's assaulted Foster and returned to Moonbase when he was ordered grounded by Straker. Must be mind control, happens every other week. Straker, that intuitive wonder, he figures it out. There's a four-footed infiltrator on the base, and is the one influencing his pilot. Luckily there was a dog food commercial being filmed at the studio that day. How's that for a convenient plot point?

The cat deserves singling out. Instead of the standard black cat you'd usually get for the Halloween season, we have a sleek and slinky Siamese that exudes a sly, observant intelligence. This feline is well cast.

What fascinates me about this revelation is what's not explored but merely suggested. When Regan attacks Foster, prompted by the cat, Regan acts like a cat, snarling and clawing. But the cat isn't a cat anymore! Is it? It's an alien intellect. It's intentions are those of an alien, cold and calculated, the advanced plotting of an intellect. Yet, the actions dictated to Regan are those of an animal. This suggests to me that the aliens' thoughts are translated through the physical wiring of the brain it inhabits, and are thus affected by or dependent upon the characteristics of that brain. Remember that the aliens have in thee past been unable or unwilling to communicate verbally. Perhaps the speech centers of their hosts bodies have been cut or are otherwise inaccessible. I don't know what it all means or how it adds up, but I'm fascinated by the possibilities!

A more obvious wasted opportunity lies in bringing back Vladek Sheybal for a single scene that amounts to exposition. It's a waste of his talent and charisma, frankly. Think of what his hypothesis means, and imagine a Jackson-centric episode that forced him to prove his theory by pitting his wits and sly cunning against the alien/cat/Regan. Sounds like a 10 right there.

But we get what we get, and I lapped this one like cream. I am giving it 8 convenient headaches for a dull dinner party.

Thoughts:
“Here we go again” , someone says at ep start as the UFOs attack. They could be addressing the audience, which is kinda delicious because what follows is not exactly business as usual no matter that it leads to the same ol' thing.

The cat/alien has one hell of a range when it comes to mental telepathy! He influences Regan from England while the pilot is flying over the moon!

There's subtle moment that reveals a vital plot point. After Regan has been abducted, he is talking about his wife. Obviously the man is in shock and grieving, as there's little hope she will ever come back alive. So, his zombielike responses would be natural. However, while he speaks, he switched his wedding ring from his left hand to his right. It's a visual clue that something about him has been reversed or tampered with. Again, the direction in this ep is especially nice.