UFO - A Question of Priorities

“This movie hates us, doesn't it?” - Crow T. Robot, on 'The Giant Spider Invasion'
For a series dedicated to cynicism and the unhappy ending, A Question of Priorities sets the gold standard. No one gets away unpunished, least of all the audience. How to rate it – a 6, a 9? It's a frustrating hour, but then it's designed to be such and excels at it. It's one of the finest episodes in the series yet one I always dread having to watch again. I don't like downers.

Ed Straker's son lies in hospital after being struck by a car. The boy is in critical condition and needs medicine available only in America. Straker puts SHADO resources into play to make that happen, but time is running out.

Meanwhile, an alien on the run from his own kind has made a mad dash for Earth, crashing off the coast of Ireland. Taking shelter in the home of an elderly blind woman, he has built a radio transmitter in an attempt to reach SHADO, but that same signal is picked up by the UFO sent to kill him.

Both these men, Straker and the alien, will be thwarted – by luck, by fate, by the opposing agendas and even the best intentions of others, perhaps by some god or other. Without invoking religious faith (hardly needing to), this is an existentialist story.

We'll never know what drove these men to make crucial decisions. If there's one detail that ties them together it's that Straker and the alien are close-mouthed about what they are thinking. Good friend Alec Freeman cannot miss that Ed is upset, and gives him multiple opportunities to confide. We can guess why Straker spurns them, but we'll never know the truth. It costs him at a crucial moment. Likewise the alien does not speak when perhaps he might have found an ally in the woman who sits terrified, a prisoner in her home. I continue to wonder at the silence of these aliens – an inability to speak, or even to understand spoken language? He has a transmitter but does not speak to his listeners. All we know is that he wants to be taken by SHADO and that his people will kill him to prevent it.

Both are faced with impossible choices. A SHADAIR transport might reach Ireland in time to take the alien before its fellows can. Or it might reach London in time to save the boy. There's no guarantee the medicine will be enough, nor that the alien will prove a turning point in the war with the extraterrestrials. When Freeman, not knowing of Ed's plight, redirects the transport, Straker freezes and allows the diversion to stand. His son's life, or the safety of the human race? Likewise the alien, when he realizes the hunter UFO has locked on to him, can remain where he is or take the beacon away from the house, sacrificing his own already-doomed life but saving the woman.





Why does Straker freeze?  I think the words froze in his throat because he was blocked by his own silent nature.  Oh, he was misusing  the organizations resources, but to hell with that - it's his son's life.  No...this is a man who cannot reveal himself even to save his son.  A psychological block.  It just won't come.

There's nothing much else I can say. It's all on the surface, every painful minute of it, except for what remains unspoken.. We're thoroughly invested in this most riveting of episodes. No deus flies in from the machina. No one is saved. Every effort to do the right thing is brutally smacked down. I gave away a spoiler of sorts in one of my first two episode reviews: I said that Ed Straker is a man who's had his humanity damaged. This is the one I knew was coming. It has an inevitability to it. There's still something tender to him, but he'll never show it even to his closest friend. It's buried too deep.

10 model boats gifted to a loved one.

Next week I want some catharsis!!