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UFO - Close Up
episode 11
UK 1970
produced by Reg Hill, Gerry Anderson (executive) for Century 21 Television, ITC
directed by Alan Perry
starring Ed Bishop, George Sewell, Michael Billington, Gabrielle Drake, Grant Taylor, Neil Hallett, Keith Alexander, James Beckett, Peter Burton, Dolores Mantez, Antonia Ellis, Clive Endersby, Jon Kelley, Frank Mann, Gary Myers, Georgina Moon, Jeremy Wilkin, John Levene, Mark Hawkins, Bob Sherman, Bob Howay, Alan Tucker
screenplay by Tony Barwick, created by Gerry Anderson, Sylvia Anderson, Reg Hill, visual effects by Derek Meddings, costumes by Sylvia Anderson/Century 21
TV-series UFO
review by Mike Haberfelner
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SHADO, the top secret alien defense organisation, has developed a probe
to follow a UFO to its home planet (still unknown to SHADO), take pictures
and transmit them back to earth. Everybody's ecstatic about this
multi-billion dollar project, everybody but Kelly (Neil Hallett), one of
the probe's chief engineers, who tried to offfer SHADO a stereoscan for
much less money to get much better results but got turned down. The
probe's launch is a success, then though moon interceptors have a hard
time to get a UFO into the probe's orbit so it can hook onto the UFO's
flight path. But even that turns out to be a success eventually. The
pictures return from the alien planet 4 monthy later (as scheduled) -
successfully as well. However, the pictures fail to show any scale, not
even whether they are microscopic or macroscopic, and without that, they
could show just about anything. So the mission has failed, but Kelly has
his triumph and gets funding for his project.
The usual very nice miniature effects (including a rocket launch and
the surfacing of a aircraft carrier submarine) can't hide the fact that
the plot of this episode as such lacks excitement. Basically, sufficient
tension is built up at no point in this story to carry the episode, and
the ending (that Kelly is right) is given away way too soon, is basically
an integral part of the episode's tried-and-true structure. Plus, a scene
in which SHADO commander Straker (Ed Bishop) tries to chat up one of his
moon girls (Gabrielle Drake) seems weirdly out of place and shows Straker
unnecessarily out of character. Basically, the episode you might want to
skip.
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review © by Mike Haberfelner
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Robots and rats,
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