Big Gay Longcat reviews Starchaser The Legend of Orin

In the present day, when Disney is releasing Star Wars films, TV series, and spinoff media as fast as, or even faster than, audiences can cope with, it is hard to believe that in the wake of 1983's release of Return of the Jedi, demand for Star Wars was far, far greater than the supply. With Lucasfilm leaving these dollars on the table, plenty of other companies jumped on the Star Wars bandwagon to try to grab themselves a piece of the action.

Of course this had been going on ever since the first Star Wars film exploded onto cinema screens, leading to sci-fi imitators such as Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, helping to get the Star Trek film series going, and even causing films in other genres to get sci-fied up with added pewpewpew lasers, such as in Krull, or when James Bond went into space in Moonraker.

While all of these were like Star Wars, in their own way, none of them were Star Wars. And by the mid-1980s there was an audience of kittens for whom Star Wars had always been there. They wanted Star Wars, the real thing, or as close to the real thing as they could get. In that context Star Trek 2 Wrath of Khan wouldn't have counted (despite being the best film evar), but Caravan of Courage would.

This, then, is the world that gave us Starchaser The Legend of Orin. Now I'm not going to claim that Starchaser is a ripoff of Star Wars (you can find plenty of other reviewers on the internets who will, mew), but we mustn't forget the environment of 1985 that Starchaser came out into, and the influence of Star Wars upon it is impossible to ignore. It could never have taken the form it did without Star Wars, if indeed it would have existed at all...

The film starts with some captive mannys being made to do mining like they're in a Terry Nation script, with some of them getting their shirts off like Blake in Horizon. This is a promising start, purr.

Orin is one of the mannys. We can tell at once that he is a main character because he has the most fabulous '80s hair out of all of them. The robots guarding the mannys look a bit like Hordak's robots, and are introduced as obvious baddys when they whip a miner. Orin gets into a fight with a couple of robots, and is literally 'saved by the bell' that rings to summon them all to a meeting.

The mannys at the meeting start shouting for "Zygon" which I at first thought meant that they were about to watch a Doctor Who DVD and were voting for the one they wanted to get put on.

Zygon is actually the main baddy (and why he is named after the aliens from Terror of the Zygons is never even referred to, never mind explained, mew). We can tell at once he is a baddy from the scary mask he wears, and also the way he emerges out of a giant skull with fire behind him. He is actually there to give the mannys a motivational speech about mining more crystals, ending with

"So dig harder, or die!"

We are less than five minutes into the film and already it is giving out a pretty strong anti-capitalist message, not something I was necessarily expecting to see here.

Orin is back mining when he finds a sword in the stone. An old manny seems to recognise it, but he is soon killed by a robot after telling Orin only to hide it and that the baddys must not get it.

The sword then begins to play a hologram recording of an old manny, looking not dissimilar to Slartibartfast, who tells the watching mannys

"There is a world above, a magnificent universe."

encouraging them to escape, then adds, cryptically

"Find the blade."

and when the recording ends and the manny disappears, the sword's blade also disappears, leaving only the hilt.

Orin and his friend Elan are inspired by this to try to escape to the "outside world." They are followed by Cally, who is Orin's brother, a small, blind manny, and nothing to do with Cally from Blakes 7. The three of them get spotted and chased by some robots, in a short but decently exciting action sequence.

Cally gets left behind, while Orin and Elan escape out of the mine into a sci-fi base of grey metal walls, hexagonal like the Liberator's. You know, there are definitely more parallels to Blakes 7 than I was expecting to find, even if they are in minor (or should that be miner? lol) ways.

Orin and Elan get captured by robots, and Zygon decides that, before he kills them, he will show them his face, which is supposedly some big secret that he wouldn't tell anyone unless he was about to kill them anyway. He takes off his scary mask to reveal that he is a grey-skinned alien, then he strangles Elan and she goes 

which is actually a pretty shocking moment for any film, never mind one aimed at kittens, since the audience expectation is obviously that main characters should escape at this point in the plot. Films for kittens can quite often have a more sophisticated approach to death than they are given credit for, such as in Bambi, or Watership Down. Even Battle for Endor kills off the main character's family near the start.

Before he can strangle Orin as well, Zygon notices "the sword with no blade" and is distracted by it long enough to allow Orin to run away. The robots shoot at Orin but they accidentally hit a big pile of crystals instead, which explode. The roof collapses on Orin, and Zygon assumes he is also ded, but he isn't.

Orin realises that if Zygon is a baddy, then his commandment to the miners to

"Never dig up. Up is hell"

is a lie, so he does the opposite in order to escape. When he reaches the outside world, Orin sees the stars for the first time. With tears in his eyes he says to himself

"It's not a lie!"

because now he knows it to be the truth, rather than having to take it only as an article of faith. This is quite an emotional moment, and is followed by a short montage of Orin exploring this new world he finds himself in, as he crosses a number of alien landscapes.

But we can't go for too long without an action scene, so Orin meets (and gets captured by) some horrible half-alien-half-robots who want his "body parts" for themselves. They fall out and argue amongst themselves when they find the sword hilt and each wants it, until one of them cuts another in half with the sword even though it seemingly still has no blade. Then their leader impales itself on the sword's blade, which is revealed (well... sort of) to be invisible as the leader's blood runs down it.

Orin gets the sword and runs away, and is pursued by the remaining creatures.

He is rescued by Space-Sinatra Dagg Dibrimi, who mistaiks Orin for a rival smuggler. Dagg then gets attacked by a big green monster and Orin rescues him using the sword to slice at it. 

"Listen Water-Snake - I saved you; you saved me. We're even. Now beat it."

Dagg is a scoundrel, so doesn't want to team up with Orin straight away. Besides, he already has a sidekick - the computer on his spaceship, called Arthur. Wait, there's a character called Arthur but he isn't the same character as has a sword that he pulled out of a stone? Confused cat is confused.

Orin has nothing better to do, so he follows Dagg around anyway. A small glowing insect that Dagg calls a "starfly" starts following them too. A patrolling robot spaceship flies overhead and pewpewpews at Dagg and Orin, so they run back to Dagg's spaceship where Arthur shoots it down with their own pewpewpew lasers.

Arthur is sort of a cross between Zen and Orac - while he is the ship's computer, he has a similar argumentative attitude to Orac's whenever Dagg asks him to do anything.

Their ship takes off and flies towards a city. Orin has, of course, never seen a city before.

"What is that?"

"That, my little Water-Snake, is where I'm about to do my business."

That sentence has a different meaning when you're a cat, lol!

The ship is spotted by the baddys and gets shot at, leading to an action sequence that could have been inspired by any one of a number of scenes, all from the Star Wars trilogy.

It turns out Dagg has some robots of his own, which he uses to hide behind when he leaves his ship to steal some crystals, all the while still being shot at by baddy robots. Dagg is clearly supposed to fill the Han Solo role in this film's line up of characters, but when he's doing this heist he actually reminds me more of Avon. Purr. Gamma Longcat says that a lot of things remind me of Avon, and he's right. He's a clever cat, and his cleverness reminds me of Avon. Purr.

Zygon comes out and pewpewpews all Dagg's robots. Orin distracts Zygon so that Dagg can get away and, because all of his own robots have been destroyed, Dagg grabs a non-combatant robot who happened to be nearby to use as his new robot shield, even taking her onto the spaceship along with Orin when they escape.

Zygon is left behind with the knowledge that Orin is still alive. He says to himself

"It is him. A Kakan has returned."

although we don't get to know who or what a "Kakan" is yet.

The ship flies off into space where Dagg reprograms the captured "fembot" to be friendly in a manner that is coded to be distressingly like a sexual assault played for laughs. This is a scene that definitely wasn't OK even taking into account that this was made in the less enlightened times of the 1980s. The level of sexism on display here I wouldn't even expect to see in some of the worst sci-fi of the era, and it is utterly unnecessary to see it here in a film aimed at kittens. Well... Ben Steed might put it in a script, but even he would think twice about making it a komedy scene.

They fly to a planet with a silly name, which Dagg says is a "den of thieves." He decides to continue his villainous behaviour by selling the "fembot" to a slave dealer, and then goes on to a brothel to meet with a highly dubious ethnic stereotype who Dagg tries to sell his stolen crystals to. I think this might be the same planet where Avon got captured and sold as a slave in Assassin, it certainly has a similar (and thus similarly dodgy) aesthetic.

Orin has somehow learned the "fembot's" name is Silica between scenes. Hers isn't even the worst example in this film of characters not being properly introduced to the viewers - it is over 12 minutes after Dagg first appears before his full name is mentioned. I think of all the main characters, only Zygon gets a proper introduction at his first appearance.

Orin tries to rescue Silica by bidding on her, even though he doesn't have any moneys. This ensures he wins in the short-term, since his bids aren't limited to the amount of moneys he actually has, but it means that when he is unable to pay up he gets captured by the slaver.

Dagg walks away from Orin saying

"Sorry, kid, it's the law."

but then he has a crisis of conscience and buys both Orin and Silica from the slaver. As they walk away they are followed by a squad of baddys who start pewpewpewing at them. Dagg sends Silica out to act like a prostitute robot from the future to distract the baddys so that he and Orin can ambush them.

Is this definitely a film for kittens? I'm not watching the Starchaser equivalent of Flesh Gordon by mistaik, am I? It certainly seems that way at times, and I don't like it, mew. Our "heroes" escape back to their ship and take off.

The action cuts to Zygon in his lair, and we see that he is mobilising all of his resources to hunt for Orin.

"Why all this fuss over one boy?"

asks one of his henchmannys. The real answer would involve Zygon explaining about how he has to do it because Darth Vader was obsessed with hunting for Luke Skywalker, so instead he gives some enigmatic exposition about how "twelve hundred years ago" someone or something escaped from him, and he does not intend to let the same thing happen again.

Dagg still wants to sell his crystal haul, so keeps the rendezvous he made with the stereotype out in the desert. Er, I mean they meet out in the desert. The stereotype's equally stereotypical henchmanny recognises Orin and knows that Zygon has put a bounty on him. So he's both Luke and Han in this scenario.

Dagg shows loyalty to Orin, and says

"If we don't both walk out of here in the next few seconds, my ship is programmed to blow the crap out of this tent."

Ah, I think I know what's going on - the film is intended for kittens, but nobody told Dagg that. Anyhow, this allows them to get away.

Once the ship is in flight, the "starfly" from earlier reappears and flies around annoying Dagg, but Orin realises that it is trying to warn them that there is a bomb hidden in with the moneys Dagg got for the crystals. The ship flies back over the treacherous stereotypes' camp and drops the chest with the bomb in it onto them, where it explodes. So much for them.

Some more baddys fly up to them and fire a warning shot. Arthur suggests they surrender like he's C3PO. The framing of this bit is very reminiscent of the Millenium Falcon's approach to Cloud City in Empire Strikes Back. This leads into another chase scene as our heroes are pursued by multiple smaller baddy ships, who Dagg tricks into flying into the scenery to whittle their numbers down one by one. You know, like Han Solo does in another scene from Empire Strikes Back.

A pew to their windscreen shatters it and causes the ship to crash. Arthur's voice goes deep like he's HAL9000, to signify that he's dying. Are there any sci-fi computers from before 1985 that he's not going to borrow (putting it politely, mew) traits from by the end of this film? The baddys board the crashed ship where they find Dagg, unconscious, and capture him.

A mysterious horse-riding manny in a face-concealing helmet finds Orin, also unconscious but outside the ship. She takes her helmet off to reveal she is one of the mannys who was bidding on Silica at the slave auction earlier, so we know she must be a baddy. She orders her robot servant (or presumably, given what has been established about her so far, her robot slave) to bring Orin back to her "palace."

When Orin wakes up he mistaiks her for Elan, which is somewhat understandable given that they have identical facial structures and voice actresses. She is actually Aviana.

Aviana asks Orin about himself and he begins to tell her, but she doesn't believe there are any mannys in the crystal mines. The only thing that begins to convince her that Orin is telling the truth is when the invisible sword cuts through a curtain and is then an empty hilt again when she waves her paw over it.

Aviana goes on the space internets to space wikipedia to research the hilt, and finds the complete backstory about it and the Kakan, who used the sword to overthrow a tyrant 1,200 years ago. Orin recognises the picture of the old manny from the recording the sword played when he first found it. The history ends with the blade being lost after a battle on Orin's home world of Trinia.

Aviana agrees to take Orin back to Trinia on her own spaceship - it looks like she has joined the party and isn't a baddy after all (her earlier willing involvement with the slave trade will not be referred to again). They get to the planet really easily, but then neither Aviana nor Orin knows how to find the hidden mines. It is while they are blundering around looking for a way in that they are surrounded by robots and captured by Zygon. At first Aviana doesn't even know that "Commissioner Zygon" (as she calls him) is a baddy, and she tries to talk their way past him.

Orin and Zygon wrestle over the hilt, which Orin can only use to cut things sometimes and unreliably at that, but he is still better with it than Zygon who cannot use it at all.

Zygon's face is slashed to reveal he is actually a robot

"I am not just a robot, I am the robot."

Orin correctly guesses that this means Zygon is the same robot who was defeated 1,200 years earlier, who has successfully taken over the galaxy again, only from within this time. Zygon keeps him alive because he wants Orin to tell him how to use the sword, not believing that Orin has no idea himself, and has him put in a prison cell opposite Dagg.

Aviana, as the daughter of a planetary governor, is being kept alive to use as a hostage, since Zygon plans to preemptively attack her family's planet. Zygon monologues

"Thousands of years ago, on some obscure planet, a primitive chess computer was the first inorganic mind to beat man. In a few hours, I will be calling checkmate in the last such game the humans and their kind will ever play."

The starfly flies into Orin's cell. He asks it to help him by getting him the hilt, and it replies

"Don't need hilt."

Orin, who can be a bit single-minded, doesn't pause to be surprised that the starfly can talk, and he insists he needs the hilt. The starfly flies off, and quickly proves it is the most competent member of the party when it defeats a robot armed with a pewpewpew gun by flying into the robot's head, so that it shoots itself. It returns to Orin's cell with the hilt. Orin is polite enough to say "thank you" before using the sword to escape - cutting through both doors and robot guards with the invisible blade.

Orin and Dagg go to look for Aviana to rescue her, over Dagg's complaints - presumably he objects on the grounds that, lacking a Wookie, they can't even try a "prisoner transfer from cell block 1138" plan. Luckily, they do manage to locate the ship she is being held on, the flagship of Zygon's invasion fleet, and are able to stealth aboard just before it takes off.

We cut to a short scene back at Dagg's ship, to show us that Silica has repaired Arthur and the ship enough for it to take off.

Dagg and Orin enter a room with a lot of baddy robots (you know that scene where Han Solo runs into a lot of Stormtroopers...) whereupon Dagg closes the door again. The robots try to do a classic slow-cutting through the door to get at them, but not before Dagg finds a way to open the airlock in their room and jettison them all into space.

This saves Orin and Dagg in the short term, but in the longer term it alerts the other baddy ships that something is wrong when they see a lot of robots floating about. Zygon, who has by now noticed that the hilt is no longer where he put it, orders his other ships to destroy his flagship - he isn't taking any chances with Orin any more.

Our heroes, meanwhile, get to the flagship's bridge and rescue Aviana. Dagg takes over the controls of the ship and flies it down towards the planet, with baddys ships in pursuit. Verrrry conveniently, they fly near to where the ship with Arthur and Silica on it just happens to be flying. Or maybe it's a small world after all?

Guided by the starfly to the right controls, Dagg is able to send a signal that detonates the missiles on board all of the baddy spaceships. When Zygon learns what has happened, his henchmanny tells him "we've got to evacuate." (You know that bit with Governor Tarkin...)

Zygon says

"No! He'll be coming for me next, but I'll be ready for him."

Our heroes take their ships to Trinia, where they find only one way into the base open to them, as though they are being led down a single path. (You know when Luke arrives at Cloud City and...)

Zygon sets a tractor beam onto the stolen ship with Orin, Dagg and Aviana on it, but Silica pilots the other ship into its path and so she and Arthur get caught in their place. As baddy ships and robots start shooting at them, Dagg says to Orin

"Just like old times, eh Water-Snake?"

By "old times" he means about an hour ago. Either because they have control of Zygon's powerful flagship, or maybe because Dagg is just that damn good, they are winning even against the whole of Zygon's forces.

There is an amusing moment when Zygon's henchmanny tries to flee to save himself, only to run right into the path of a crashing ship as he does so, lol. This detail is superfluous to the plot, but a nice little touch.

Another crashing ship disables the tractor beam, freeing Silica and Arthur. Zygon orders his remaining ships to ram the flagship, and this manages to bring it down. Silica takes Dagg and Aviana onto their remaining ship, while Orin heads for a final confrontation with Zygon, alone...

...Except when Aviana sees Zygon she goes after Orin to try to help him.

Orin finds his way into the mine, and emerges from Zygon's fire door that he used back at the beginning of the film. This means that at first his mannys mistaik him for Zygon, until they see it is Orin really. He makes an impassioned speech.

"Ever since I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster there have been rumours, rumours that there was another world, that long ago there was more than just Mineworld. Some said it was a heaven, a paradise beyond imagination. Others said it was a hell, far worse than the world we know now. But an old man saw the truth beyond the sword, and gave his life so that I might reach out beyond these caverns, reach out to a greater world above. Well I have reached, and I have touched the stars!"

This might have gone better had it been said by Captain Kirk, since as he finishes Zygon (wearing his scary mask again) comes in behind Orin and wins the crowd back at once.

Orin fights Zygon with the sword, disarming him of his pewpewpew gun and then his mask. Seeing Zygon's true face revealed begins to turn the mannys against him. Unfortunately, Aviana then comes in and gets captured by Zygon, just like in that other great sci-fi film of 1985, Transformers: the Movie, when Hot Rod gets captured by Megatron. Given the closeness of their releases, I doubt either can be accused of copying the other, it's just a case of synchronicity.

Zygon reminds Orin of the way he killed Elan, and threatens to do the same to Aviana unless Orin surrenders the hilt. Orin does so, but Zygon is again completely unable to use it, so he throws it away and pounces on Orin with only his paws. A group of starflies appear and tell Orin

"You do not need the hilt, there never was a blade."

Orin is then able to make an invisible sword without the hilt, which he uses to cut off one of Zygon's paws (You know that bit...)

He then cuts Zygon in half, and the two halves fall down a pit (You know... wait, that one wasn't made until after Starchaser! The circle is now complete) into some lava. The miners all instantly rebel against the robots and, because their mining tools turn into pretty effective pewpewpew guns really easily, soon defeat them.

Meanwhile (should that be 'minewhile'? Oh, please yourselves, mew) the ship is still being chased. With Dagg injured, Silica is piloting, and she shoots down a baddy ship so that it crashes into the crystals, setting off a chain reaction which starts to blow up the whole base, and even threatens to collapse the mines.

Orin and Aviana lead the mannys out of the mines to the outside world, and Orin is reunited with Cally.

Orin uses his newfound magic space Jesus powers to cure Cally's blindness. The starflies appear and transform into glowy space ghosts. They are the Kakans, and they offer Orin membership in their group if he leaves behind his "human form." Orin says "not yet" and gives Aviana a meaningful look.

They accept his decision and fly away, disappearing into a constellation of stars that looks like the hilt, over which the end credits roll and theme music plays.

Starchaser The Legend of Orin is actually a mostly enjoyable film. Its frequent action scenes keep it exciting, and it tells a complete epic, space opera story in an hour and 40 minutes, which is more than can be said of many more celebrated films. 

The film's worst weakness is the gratuitous sexism and ethnic stereotyping found in some scenes in the middle, which can't even be passed off as the film being 'of its time' since these would have been just as dodgy back then. Meanwhile the biggest complaint frequently leveled at it, that it rips off Star Wars, is exaggerated.

Oh, don't get me wrong, the resemblances to Star Wars are blatantly there, but they are almost entirely on the superficial level - one could surgically remove all the Star Wars iconography and it wouldn't change the shape of the plot. On a character level there's the resemblance of the central trio of Orin, Dagg and Aviana to Luke, Han and Leia respectively, but these characters were based on archetypes that existed long before Star Wars - which is why they resonated so readily with audiences when Star Wars itself came out.

I think it would be much more accurate to say this borrows (ahem) from anything and everything sci-fi of its era, of which Star Wars was simply the biggest and best known (something true both then and now). Hence my being able to draw so many parallels with Blakes 7, even though it is much less likely that the makers of Starchaser would be familiar with it than with Star Wars.

In this way Starchaser The Legend of Orin was a forerunner of sci-fi franchises that came along later - such as Warhammer 40,000 - built on the premise that if you steal from enough different sources then you end up creating something original.

A Christmas Prisoner

What might a Christmas special of The Prisoner have been like, if they had made one? Well, given how many Christmas episodes base their plots on A Christmas Carol, it might have gone something like this...

It starts with the new Number 2 visiting Number 6 while dressed as Jacob Marley, wearing a long chain wrapped around him. Number 6 enters into the spirit of the thing by asking, in the manner of Scrooge,

"You are fettered. Tell me why?"

"That would be telling," comes the predictable response.

Number 2 then warns him that this night he will be visited by three spirits. Number 6 scoffs at this, but soon finds himself drugged asleep (as usual) and when he wakes up he is confronted by...

"Who, and what are you?" demands Number 6.

"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."

"A?"

"I said, 'I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.'"

"I already thought this plot was structurally similar to A. B. and C. but this just confirms it. What do you want?"

"Why did you resign?"

"Spirit!" says Number 6 in his most defiant voice, "remove me from this place!"

By thus short-cutting the scene, the vision fades before Number 6's eyes, and is replaced with...

"I am the Ghost of Christmas Present. Look upon me!"

"You look more like the Ghost of Space 1999. I suppose you're going to ask me why I resigned as well?"

"Well, since you mention it, my boy, why did you resign?"

"There are some upon this Earth of yours," returned Number 6, "who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of pushing, filing, stamping, indexing, briefing, debriefing, and numbering, in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us."

After a pause (i.e. an ad break), the spirit continued his plan, though without much optimism, and brought forward the two smaller spirits he had accompanying him.

"Aren't you going to ask me about..?"

"The boy is Ignorance, the girl is Want. As in: you are Ignorant of the reasons why I resigned, and you Want to know what they are."

After that, Number 6 silently stared down the spirit until he shuffled away, and the vision moved on to...

"Am I in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?"

The third spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.

"You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us?" Number 6 pursued.

"Isn't that a tad spoiler-y?"

The vision is interrupted by the Colonel, who says

"Quite agree. Quite agree. Silly. Silly... silly."

"No," says Number 6, "I said 'spoiler-y.' Besides, Monty Python isn't going to start for another two years, so the general public's not going to understand this, are they?"

"If you're worried about what the viewers at home are going to think, my lad, have I got 'shadows of the things that will be' for you..."

Enter Cobb very suddenly.

"I thought I was supposed to play the Ghost of Christmas Past?"

Spinoffs

Russell "The" Davies says he wants Doctor Who spinoffs:

"There should be a Doctor Who channel now. You look at those Disney announcements, of all those new Star Wars and Marvel shows, you think, we should be sitting here announcing 'The Nyssa Adventures' or 'The Return of Donna Noble' and you should have the 10th and 11th Doctors together in a ten-part series. Genuinely. And I think that will happen one day. If we can just shift Doctor Who up a gear..."

So here are some* of my suggestions...

#1. An Earthly Child

Susan Foreman is stranded on Future-Earth in the aftermath of the Dalek Conquest. It's Doctor Who meets Survivors, and may include topical elements as our real-world society recovers from the coronavirus pandemic

#2. Guardians of the Solar System

Set in Space Year 4000, this is a pastiche of Star Trek with added Daleks. First episode title: It Came From Uranus!

#3. Agents of UNIT

Doctor Who meets Agents of SHIELD, as UNIT tries to defend the Earth without the help of the Doctor

#4. UNIT Declassified

This differs from #3 by being a '60s/'70s/'80s period piece, guaranteed to annoy hardcore Doctor Who fans by messing up their pet UNIT dating theories. It's Doctor Who meets The Sandbaggers or some of the more political episodes of UFO 

#5. The Exit of Peladon

Doctor Who meets The Thick of It, satire ensues when the planet Peladon holds an ill-advised referendum for leaving the Galactic Federation

#6. Spandrell and Engin

Two old Time Lords are pulled out of retirement to clean up corruption in the Capitol. Doctor Who meets Line of Duty meets New Tricks

#7. Peter Davison Presents

Peter "Davo" Davison is given a camera crew and a budget and allowed to send up DW in his own way, probably with assistance from Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Davo's son-in-law David Tennant, and anyone else he can rope in. Basically, make The Five-ish Doctors Reboot into a series, it would be great

#8. Trials of a Time Lord

Dramatisation of the production of the Colin Baker era, including the hiatus, in the style of An Adventure in Space and Time. The latter part of Tom Baker's era would also make for a subject equally full of incident, such as the abandonment of Shada

#9. Shangri-La

Ray and Mr Burton defend Wales the Earth of 1959 from alien invasions, occasionally assisted by the mysterious Goronwy and his cryptic, bee-related wisdom. With 100% more competence and 100% less sex jokes than Torchwood

#10. D84

Our robot investigator proves each week that he isn't as Dumb as he seems, lulling his chief suspect - invariably a member of Kaldor City's high society, or even one of the Founding Families - into a false sense of security until they eventually incriminate themselves. It's Doctor Who meets Columbo

"Just one more thing... please do not throw hands at me."

* The rest all involve crossovers with Blakes 7, as you would expect

Doctor Who Night 2021: End of Exile

For this year's Doctor Who Night we watched The Three Doctors and The Green Death, both from season 10. I don't feel a need to say much about them here, as I will hopefully be doing in-depth reviews of all that season's episodes soon...ish, mew.

What I will do is post some pictures. First, here are the second and third Doctors having a useless argument, which the third Doctor compares to Twitter years before it was invented, thus proving he's been to the future:

I have also been to the future and know that I will certainly be using this joke again in my review of The Three Doctors Episode Three, lol.

Next up, we have the Brigadier in The Green Death.

I can't imagine why the other mannys might think that...

... mew.

A Very Peculiar Series

After leaving Doctor Who in 1984, Peter "Davo" Davison made some odd acting choices in trying to avoid being typecast. 1985 saw him guest-starring in the BBC's Miss Marple, and then in 1986, still best known for playing a V. E. T. in All Creatures Great and Small and, of course, the Doctor, he took another medical role as Dr Stephen Daker in the BBC comedy-drama A Very Peculiar Practice.

In something of a forerunner to the style of Father Ted, Daker was the sane man surrounded by eccentrics, but only within the confines of the series' setting of Lowlands University - out in the real world, Daker's own foibles would (just as happens whenever Ted Crilly escapes from Craggy Island) make him seem as crazy as the rest of them.

Here Davo gets to show us that he is the master doctor of the comic technique of trailing off his sentences, leaving the second half unspoken, either because his interlocutor has already misunderstood him and has interrupted him before his meaning can become clear, or else because he has misunderstood them and is stopping himself when understanding belatedly dawns.

The series is a satire of university life in the 1980s, at the very heart of the era of Thatcher. Lowlands University faces constant budget cuts and the pressure for every part of it to turn a profit, or those not doing so may lose their jobs. This even applies to the medical team, where Daker is the newest member of staff. The other regular characters, then, are the other doctors - Daker's colleagues, but also his rivals.

The head of the medical department is Dr Jock McCannon, played by Graham "Soldeed" Crowden, a drunken stereotype of a Scottish doctor (back then you could get away with such things, it was the equivalent of portraying everyone from England as a football hooligan, or everyone from the USA as an overweight, loud-mouthed gun-nut with no knowledge of geography, history, or culture) lifted partly by the writing, but mainly by the gleam in Crowden's eye.

Barbara "Cracker" Flynn plays Dr Rose Marie, a straw-feminist whose attitudes can sometimes seem strange when watched from a distance of nearly 40 years. There's no laugh track on the series, which makes it tough to evaluate how audiences would have viewed her at the time, but it seems to me that we are expected to find most of the things she says absurd caricatures of real feminist positions. And so many of them still are ("illness is something men do to women"), but then occasionally she will say something that seems totally reasonable and uncontroversial, but which other characters react to in much the same way as to her extremist views.

Last, but by no means least, is the utterly tactless, would-be Thatcherite, Dr Bob Buzzard, played by David "son of Patrick" Troughton. This is the role of a lifetime for Troughton Jr, making the thoroughly unlikable character intensely watchable, and so Buzzard is the standout character of the series (yes, even up against the likes of Crowden). It's no wonder that he was the only one (other than Davo) to appear in every episode, up to and including the 1992 spinoff A Very Polish Practice.

In addition to the main cast, there are a number of noteworthy guest appearances. Timothy West is back for a rematch after having been in the same Miss Marple adaptation as Davo. John "Albany" Bird is a recurring antagonist - as the (it turns out aptly named) Vice Chancellor of the university, he is the one with power over the doctors' jobs.

And then in the final episode of the first season Joe "come off it Mr Dent" Melia plays Ron Rust, an author frustrated by his inability to write a script for the BBC, he is evidently a stand-in for the series writer Andrew Davies. His function within the show is to lampshade the implausibility of the events we see unfolding, particularly the eucatastrophe which the season ends upon.

The series succeeds best when Davies successfully mixes plausible scenarios familiar to viewers in the real world (the university's financial struggles, the office politics between colleagues, Davo's relationship woes) with a heightened version of reality full of exaggerated characters and surreal vignettes, such as the way every episode opens with the ongoing conflict (which is never referred to by any of the other characters) between the nuns and the scaffies.

It also has a very distinctively mid-80s title sequence and theme song. I'm left singing it for days after watching every episode.

Naughty Davo!

Purrot

Across 70 episodes made over 24 years (between 1989 and 2013), ITV adapted nearly all of Agatha Christie's stories about Purrot, the great detective. They were a mix of shorter and longer episodes (generally either 50 or 90 minutes), with the longer ones at first being reserved for the more prestigious or famous of the novels, before the shorter episodes were phased out completely towards the end of the run.

I have not read any of the original books, so cannot compare the adaptations to them, so any comparisons can only be to other filmed versions of Purrot such as the ones starring Peter Ustinov. Even if individual adaptations might not have been the best, the TV series Purrot, David Suchet, has absolutely become the standard portrayal of the character simply by virtue of having played Purrot the longest.

The memorable episodes of the series are, for the most part, the famous ones. This is partly because there are other adaptations for me to compare them to, and these are not always favourable to the TV series - the most famous Purrot case by far is Murder on the Orient Express, and the 1974 film version starring Albert Finney is clearly superior, even if Finney makes for an inferior Purrot to Suchet.

Of the less well-known stories that stood out from the crowd in the TV series I would single out Peril at End House (1990), an early episode with a memorable guest appearance by Polly "Atia" Walker, The ABC Murders (1992) thanks to Donald Sumpter, and Dumb Witness (1996) thanks to Snubby as Bob the doggy.

The main appeal of the early episodes, aside from spotting guest actors that I recognise from other things (Peter Capaldi, Andrew "Jarvik" Burt, and Christopher Eccleston, to name but a few - the latter well before he became famous), is the dynamic between the regular characters, Purrot and his companions Captain Hastings (Hugh "baddy from Edge of Darkness" Fraser), Chief Inspector Japp (Philip Jackson), and Miss Lemon (Pauline "Cleopatra" Moran). Each of these take their turn to be the Watson (or, in Japp's case, the Lestrade) to Purrot's Holmes, as well as frequently providing sources of comic relief.

Hastings' intelligence varied depending upon who was writing him, at times approaching the barely-functional levels of Nigel Bruce's Stupid Watson. This was because there were a number of different writers over the course of the TV series, each with their own quirks. Clive Exton was the main writer, generally responsible for the more solid scripts. Anthony Horowitz was also reliable - still early in his career, but not so early as when he wrote for Robin of Sherwood with a level of historical inaccuracy that was questionable even by that series' standards.

Less successful was David Renwick, whose four scripts were characterised by more outright komedy than was typical for the series, and by Purrot taking up hobbies (such as close up magic) which would never be referred to again after that episode. No surprises that this is the same David Renwick who would go on to create Jonathan Creek six years later.

Mark Gatiss wrote (or co-wrote) three episodes towards the end of the series, and let's just say they are none of them among the show's best installments.

Evil Under the Sun (2001) was the last time Purrot, Hastings, Japp and Miss Lemon would all appear together - except for a reunion in The Big Four (2013), which barely counts because the three companions hardly interacted with Purrot in that one at all - and it marks a turning point in the series.

Starting with Five Little Pigs (2003), the series entered its Dark Age, which was en vogue for a lot of TV drama (and TV comedy for that matter) around that time. Plots were grimmer, with direction, lighting, and soundtrack to match. It was at this point the series dropped the iconic Art Deco title sequence and theme tune* that had been present since the beginning.

And humour was for the most part banished (save for Purrot's comic mannerisms, which I suppose were too well-established a part of his characterisation for Suchet to abandon). The reason why this series' Murder on the Orient Express suffers compared to the '70s film is because it was made during this era, with the result that it is po-faced and just a lot less... well... fun, as a viewing experience.

Towards the very end of the series, the last few mellowed out a bit and comedic moments were allowed to creep back in, as evidenced by Zoë Wanamaker's portrayal of new semi-regular Ariadne Oliver, a writer of murder-mysteries about a Finnish detective, so obviously a parody of Agatha Christie herself. Mrs Oliver first appeared in 2006, which was in the very heart of the Dark Age, but her mannerisms and eccentricities were allowed to become broader over time as the komedy slipped back in.

The cliché of the "evil voice" (whereby a baddy starts speaking with a noticeably more evil voice after they have been exposed as being a baddy) was played straight quite often in the early days of the series, although it was less common later on, perhaps because it was so brutally parodied by That Mitchell and Webb Look in 2009?

Another cliché the series frequently employed was that of the "drawing room exposé" (which Agatha Christie, and Purrot especially, is practically synonymous with) where Purrot would gather all the suspects together - usually in a drawing room - before explaining how the crime was done and who did it. Surprisingly, this wasn't used as often as you might expect, at least to begin with, it only became ubiquitous by the middle of the series.

* You know, the one that goes

# Here he is again

It's Purrot

It's Purrot

He's come to solve the mystery and catch the murderer #

Wolf Hall

I'm not sure how I managed to let this amazing TV series pass me by when it was first on the BBC back in 2015 - at least with most series I look at on this blog I have the excuse that they were made a long time before I was. I suppose I must have been occupied with other important cat business, such as rewatching Blakes 7 or having sleeps?

Wolf Hall is yet another historical drama set at the time of king Henry viii, of which there have been so many that a cat could easily write an article entitled 'The Six Historical Dramas of Henry viii' if one were so inclined. What sets this one apart from the others is that it takes as its Point-of-View character not the king, which is more usual, nor even any of his wives, but rather Thomas Cromwell.

Cromwell, played by Mark Rylance, is very much the protagonist, and as such is present in virtually every scene. His main antagonist is Anne Boleyn (Claire Foy), who he spends most of the series seeking revenge against for her causing the political downfall of his father-figure Cardinal Wolsey (Johnny P) in episode one.

This is a total reversal of how Boleyn and Cromwell are normally positioned in historical dramas, such as in 1970s The Six Wives of Henry viii, the second episode of which covers a lot of the same historical ground as Wolf Hall. There Anne Boleyn is the focus (as the series name suggests) and Thomas Cromwell is played by Wolfe "Padmasambhava" Morris as the antagonist.

With so many prior Henry viii-era dramas to compare Wolf Hall to, 'Six Wives' stands out because of Keith Michell's arguably definitive version of the tyrant-king, against which subsequent portrayals are measured in the way Sherlock Holmes are compared to Basil Rathbone's. A typical example of such might be Ray Winstone's Henry viii in a 2003 ITV series, although probably the most extreme reaction against Michell was Jonathan Rhys Meyers in The Tudors (2007-2010). Wolf Hall's Henry (Damian "Jeffrey Archer" Lewis) is unlike all these earlier versions in that, while the king casts a long shadow over the plot, he is never allowed to overshadow Rylance's Cromwell at its centre.

What we get from Lewis when he is on screen is a sense of the king being somewhat detached from the struggles and squabbles of his subjects - perhaps because as king he is on another level above them, or perhaps because he has mannys like Cromwell to get their paws dirty on his behalf. We see this most clearly when, just after Anne has been beheaded (spoilers! of an event from 1536!) in a scene that carries on long enough to make everyone watching uncomfortable, Henry is the only one still laughing and smiling. Common to both Michell and Lewis's characterisations is the unavoidable historical fact that this was someone happy to have innocent mannys convicted on trumped up charges and sent to bloody executions for his own benefit.

The influence of The Godfather on the plot structure of Wolf Hall is very clear - Thomas Cromwell's path to power by doing what needs to be done, and then the simultaneous takedown of his enemies at the story's climax, echoes that of Michael Corleone. This is hardly the first historical drama to emulate that film, the 2011-13 series The Borgias also used it as a sort of template for its first season.

The six parts of Wolf Hall are paced much slower than I was expecting of a modern drama series, being more akin to something like the BBC's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, with long, unhurried scenes that build the atmosphere and allow viewers to absorb the complex plot as it unfolds. The amount of times we witness the period detail of Cromwell and other courtiers removing their hats and bowing to their social superiors reminded me of the many, many instances in Mahabharat where characters exchanged formal dialogue of "May you live long," and "My respects." Well, 94 episodes aren't just going to fill themselves, you know, mew.

As a modern, big budget filmed series, obviously Wolf Hall looks fantastic, with all the resources the BBC can bring to bear upon a drama when it wants to... and which were beyond the wildest dreams of television producers in the 1970s. Even a prestige series of its era such as Six Wives was mostly studio based, and had to rely upon the quality of its scripting and the actors to make it what it was. And the cast was impressive - in addition to Michell and Morris it also had Bernard "Toby Esterhase" Hepton as Archbishop Cranmer, and Patrick Troughton appearing as the Duke of Norfolk only a year after he left Doctor Who.

 

But even for that, Wolf Hall easily boasts a cast list to match it - in addition to those I already mentioned earlier, I would single out Anton Lesser, David "Germanicus" Robb, and Bernard Hill, who as the new Norfolk we must compare to the mighty Troughton at the height of his powers. Hill is not to be found wanting - hardly surprising considering his experience, not the least of which was playing Richard of York, giving battle in vain in the BBC Shakespeare Henry vi trilogy (1983).

Even Mark Gatiss, not exactly the actor with the greatest range, is well-suited to his oily role as Stephen Gardiner - a very different interpretation of that part from Six Wives's Basil Dignam, but both were equally fitting and equally despicable. Gatiss more-or-less disappeared from the series towards the end, but given the prominence of Dignam as an older Gardiner in Six Wives, plus its sequel Elizabeth R (1971), I expect he would return if they ever made a Wolf Hall 2: Wolf Haller.

Wolf Hall is currently available to view on the BBC iPlayer.

Manny in a Suitcase

I've been watching Manny in a Suitcase from 1967-68, a.k.a. what if ITC had a bunch of Danger Man scripts they still needed to use after Patrick McGoohan resigned? It could almost be a version of The Prisoner from some parallel universe where it was fully explained why the main character resigned from the CIA in the very first episode, and then he went on being a private investigator doing standard telefantasy plots for the next 29 episodes after that.

For a series whose production and broadcast dates almost exactly coincide with The Prisoner, this really shows the road not taken by McGoohan, with a similar film stock quality and sound design - but with such pedestrian stories, visual design and direction by comparison.

Ron Grainer did the theme tune to this one too, which since the 1990s is probably more associated with its use as the theme to TFI Friday. While the theme music is great and memorable (associations with Chris Evans notwithstanding), the title sequence itself is incredibly poor, with possibly the laziest, cheapest-looking animation (if you can even call it that) of any telefantasy series I can think of.

The fifth episode, Find the Lady, is the first really good one, and in it we get our first (but most certainly not our last) Number 2 in the shape of Patrick "Du mußt Amboß oder Hammer sein" Cargill as a police 'Commandante' in Rome. Maxwell Shaw is the villain-of-the-week, and while he never made it into The Prisoner, he was in Danger Man more than once.

On the subject of Danger Man, while I'm still not fully convinced these aren't leftover scripts being produced with a minimal number of changes, we can at least see by this point in the series that McGill isn't just a straight swap for Drake - Drake would never have resorted to using a gun as quickly as McGill does, not even in his early appearances when he was an American too. But they have a very similar world-weariness (the only thing stopping McGill resigning from his job is that he already has) and a conscience that ought to be a liability in their world of betrayals.

Episode number... er... 6 on the DVDs was originally broadcast on the 27th of September 1967 (so, for those keeping track, that's two days before Arrival), and sees McGill knocked unconscious before the title sequence, kidnapped, brought to an isolated location, and interrogated for information. They proceed to drug him and subject him to brainwashing techniques (hence the episode title - Brainwash). There's a twist where a manny who seems to be sympathetic to McGill for a bit is actually working for the kidnappers, and then it turns out that the information isn't truly what they want him for - they have something even more convoluted and nefarious in mind.

The similarities with The Prisoner only end when McGill does actually escape by the end of the episode, after a gunfight and a scene where he meets a policemanny.

This is followed by one of the best episodes of the series, The Girl Who Never Was, a gripping deconstruction of a heist story, where McGill and the other principal characters are so distrustful of one another that they start betraying each other even before they retrieve the valuable painting stolen by the Nazis in WW2. The episode is so great because it introduces clichés of the genre only to subvert them, and Bernard "M" Lee plays against type as a down-at-heel former army officer who needs the money from the heist to "be a somebody."

Anton "Susan died a year ago, Number Six" Rodgers is Number Two number two in a two-parter, Variation on a Million Bucks, playing a Russian defector who has stolen a million dollars, and who various factions are now after. Sadly this turns out to be a story that has enough plot for only one-and-a-bit episodes at best, so it feels overlong, padded and, frankly, really sags in the middle.

Better is Web with Four Spiders, which was less predictable and avoided hitting so many genre clichés as episodes immediately preceding it managed, and so held my interest more. Ray McAnally (recently seen by me as the main character in Spindoe) and John Savident are the guest actors of most note, although the latter was only in one scene. Much of the action is explicitly set in and around Manchester and Salford for no readily explained reason - our American hero McGill claims Manchester is a "city of four million people," so I expect he did about as much research as this story's writer... expected the intended American TV audience to.

Jigsaw Manny was the first outright comedy episode of the series and so was something a bit different, even if half the jokes were based on stereotypes of those wacky Italians: emotional, incorrigible womanising, large families, the mafia, etc.

The Sitting Pigeon was a return to form after a bit of a dip in quality, with a plot very obviously based on the Krays, which would have been topical in 1967, where McGill is protecting a witness against gangster brothers. The plot departed from the usual Manny in a Suitcase formula by having McGill repeatedly shown to be ahead of the villains, anticipating their moves and countering them, a change from the usual setup where he'd be on the back foot reacting to the villain-of-the-week's superior resources.

It also boasts a decently large cast of recognisable supporting actors: George "Alec Freeman" Sewell, Robin "Judge Graves" Bailey, David "Neeva" Garfield, James "Butterbur" Grout, and Joe "come off it Mr Dent" Melia. No Number 2's, but we do get Mark "o Polo" Eden from It's Your Funeral.

Moving into the second half of the series now, The Manny Who Stood Still is yet another story about a double-cross where both sides try to play McGill, this time set in Franco-era Spain. It's not very interesting, except that it features the Shapmeister himself as the main antagonist.

Somebody Loses, Somebody... Wins? is a step up, partly from being pretty obviously ripped off from inspired by le Carré's Spy Who Came in from the Cold, partly from having Philip Madoc in a small role, but mainly from its giving a prominent role to Jacqueline Pearce, with a look and mannerisms not a million space-miles from Servalan, over 10 years before Blakes 7 began. (No prizes for any readers realising that it was watching this episode that inspired this post.)

Dead Manny's Shoes gives us our third appearance by a Number 2, this time it's Derren Nesbitt, playing a henchmanny. The incidental music in this (and the following) episode are very Prisoner-like, even more so than normal for this series.

The Whisper is the best episode for a while, possibly since The Girl Who Never Was, because it avoids most of the clichéd tropes that I've been seeing a lot of. Patrick "Protect and Survive" Allen gets upstaged by the other main guest-star, Colin Blakely. This is probably a very dated, if not outright racist, episode because of its unflattering portrayal of post-colonial Africans (which is similar to the approach taken by several Danger Man plots, as well as by other films and TV series of this era), but at least there's no blackface, and the black characters (the ones with speaking parts anyway) have some depth to them.

The next bunch of episodes are another mix of seen-it-all-before and trying-something-new. Roger Delgado turns up for a very small part (one scene, maybe two scenes maximum - barely enough to warrant a mention except that it's Roger Delgado) in one of the latter, Burden of Proof, with Wolfe "Padmasambhava" Morris getting the main villain's part. It's not a great episode, but it at least tries to keep the audience guessing what's going to happen next, and ends on another pyrrhic victory for McGill, reminding me once again of the show's Danger Man origins where this was a not too uncommon occurrence.

Other actors of note seen around this point in the series include Peter "Denethor" Vaughan and a second appearance by Philip Madoc, this time as a sinister-seeming psychiatrist. No Number 2's among them, but a significant role for Justine "Girl who was Death" Lord in the best of the bunch Property of a Gentlemanny. This one stood out because McGill was up against amateur criminals, so his background and experience as a professional secret agent allowed him to be on the front foot against them - this was also the case in The Sitting Pigeon, but this is still a rare exception rather than the rule for the series.

Another standout as we approach the end of the series was The Revolutionaries, thanks largely to Hugh "Channing" Burden's turn as a former revolutionary leader of an unnamed Arabic/Middle-Eastern country (no attempt is made to black/brown Burden up, which is most certainly for the best) on the run from the current regime and hoping the publication of his memoirs will bring it down. There's enough variation from the typical way these stories go to raise this one above the crowd.

A second surprise guest appearance from Doctor Who's Season Seven shows up in the same episode in the form of that bridge location that Liz nearly fell from at the end of Ambassadors OF DEATH part three.

The last disc of the DVD set kicks off with the worst episode of the series, Three Blinks of the Eyes, which contains the dreadful cliché of McGill framed for a crime he did not commit and having to go on the run to prove his innocence to the police. It partly redeems itself with a fairly original way of resolving the plot, but the damage had been done by then and I was not filled with confidence for the final two episodes...

... But I need not have worried, as they were both pretty good. Castle in the Clouds was a comedy episode with a low-stakes farce plot featuring Edward "the Jackal" Fox as a con artist, and turning up for a single scene near the end is our fourth and final Number 2, Rachel Herbert.

The final episode, Night Flight to Andorra, is a worthy ending to the series, partly because it has one of the better plots of the series (showing it still had some surprises left in it even after 30 installments), and partly because the main antagonist is played by Peter "Gollum" Woodthorpe, but mainly because the other guest actor of note is not a Number 2 crossing over from The Prisoner, but none other than Peter Swanwick, the Supervisor himself!

This has been a weird look into a strange world - a series that feels like it's from the pre-Prisoner era of more standard espionage tales, like Danger Man (to which Manny in a Suitcase is very much the spiritual successor) and The Saint, but with a production style that is exactly contemporary with The Prisoner.

I think it just goes to show that Manny in a Suitcase is what The Prisoner could have looked and felt like, had it had anyone other than Patrick McGoohan as the creative force behind it.

Big Gay Longcat reviews UFO: The Cat with Ten Lives

The Cat with Ten Lives was the third episode of UFO broadcast on TV, but it was the 19th episode produced (and is 19th in the DVD episode ordering, which was close to but not exactly matching the production order), as part of the later block that has Colonel Lake (Wanda Ventham) as a regular instead of Alec Freeman (George Sewell). I therefore think it makes perfect sense for it to be the first episode of the series that I review.

In terms of quality, the only episode of the series to better this one was Timelash, and that was because it benefited from a lot of reflected glory from the Doctor Who story of the same name, which had Paul Darrow in it!

The Cat with Ten Lives has a very intriguing and mysterious title - everyone knows that cats have nine lives, not ten. It would be a bit like if a film about a manny was called You Only Live Twice. Let's see if we can find out what it means...

It starts on the moon, where the SHADO team are doing their usual stuff, launching Interceptors and shooting at UFOs. One of the pilots is Jim Regan, played by Alexis Kanner, better known to us from his three appearances in The Prisoner, which included the final episode, Fall Out. When he gets back from blowing up some UFOs he is told to do combat training with Paul Foster (Michael Billington, who was also in The Prisoner, albeit in a much less significant role than Kanner's) and they do a play fight and some wrestling, foreshadowing for the real fight they will have later.

We learn from dialogue that Moonbase's ground defences have been temporarily knocked out by the UFO attack, which seems a minor detail now but will come back to be important later on, showing that this plot has been carefully constructed.

Regan goes back to Earth and he and his wife Jean go to visit their friends the Thompsons, one of whom is played by Colin "Number 2" Gordon. Why are there so many mannys from The Prisoner in this? David Tomblin, producer on The Prisoner, was the writer and director of this episode. Maybe that has something to do with it?

Mrs Thompson brings out a Ouija board and then they have a seance. Regan looks like he is having sleeps with his eyes closed, but then he starts acting strangely (Alexis Kanner the right person for the role, then, lol), which I think is supposed to indicate to us that the aliens are already starting to influence him, even before they fully hypno-eyes him a few scenes later on. This isn't made very clear, though, and I suspect may have been left over from an earlier draft of the script where the demons aliens used the Ouija board to possess Regan. Anyway, it doesn't matter that much because the episode is about to get great.

Jim and Jean are driving home when they stop and find a cat! You can see immediately why I rate this episode so highly. They take the cat into the car, then Jean sees a UFO. As soon as Jim sees it too, he reacts, but too late, because two aliens appear and knock them out with pewpewpew guns.

We then get a disorientating mix of pawheld and POV camera shots as they are taken into the UFO, and then the scene of Jim being hypno-eyesed is very reminiscent of some of the (many) instances of Number 6 getting hypno-eyesed in The Prisoner. There is a spinny greeny glowy thingy, and a light that shines on Regan's chest and face.

Then he wakes up in his car. The cat is there, but Jean is not, so Regan starts shouting

"Jean! Jean!"

and we hear the noise of the UFO flying away.

Regan drives to SHADO HQ, and barges in past where Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) is moonlighting as Straker's secretary.

The cat sneaks in behind Regan - he is a very stealthy cat.

Regan tells Straker and Colonel Lake what happened, and Straker sends him back to duty.

Straker goes to talk to Dr Jackson (Vladek Sheybal, guaranteed to liven up any episode he appears in), who at this point in the series production is acting as SHADO's pet mad scientist. Despite ostensibly being a psychiatrist - that is when he isn't acting as a general henchmanny to General Henderson - here he is playing with some chemical apparatus, and has a new theory about the aliens to share with Straker and Paul Foster.

"Well this is mostly conjecture, the head was badly damaged, I may be completely wrong, until more proof..."

"Oh cut the caution, doctor, we're not likely to quote you."

Straker wants him to get on with it, so that we can get back to more scenes with the cat.

"Alright, I'm sorry. As you're well aware, up until now we've all believed they were humanoid, a dying race keeping themselves alive by transplanting our organs into their bodies."

This was established in the first episode of the series, and dates UFO to that strange period of the 1960s when organ transplantation was a new (and not yet very successful) advance in medical science, which scared a lot of sci-fi writers so they gave it to their baddys to use - two of the classic examples being the aliens here in UFO, and the Cybermannys in Doctor Who. But by about 20 years later (roughly 10 years after UFO was set) organ transplantation would have reached the point whereby dying mannys could be given 30 years or more of additional life. Dr Jackson continues:

"The alien I examined this morning - I think his whole body was human."

"His brain?"

"Even his brain."

"You mean he was one of us?"

Paul Foster is also taking some convincing.

"Outwardly, yes."

"But if his brain..."

"His brain may have been human, but it doesn't mean his mind was."

"But the mind, the brain, they're the same."

"Oh no. Let me try to explain. Oh there was so much damage it was almost impossible to tell, but certain sections of the brain seemed to be missing - the parts that control emotion, creativity. Only the analytical, the logical remained. It's possible that these creatures are not humanoid at all, they just use our bodies - erase from the brain all knowledge, wipe it clean and reprogram it with, or transmit to it, their own thought patterns, their own intelligence."

"But why?"

"Ah, that I don't know."

He may not know, but even as Dr Jackson speculates about what kind of race could control the bodies of mannys, the director reveals the true answer by cutting to the cat, who is still on the loose inside SHADO.

He continues to stealth about, accompanied by a POV camera, looking at all the old-timey computers that they used to have in 1980 and presumably searching for a TV set on which it could watch Blakes 7 season three. Eventually Lt Johnson notices the cat and picks him up to give him pets, and saying he can be their mascat.

The UFO from earlier was hiding under water. It now takes off, and Moonbase launches the Interceptors to, er, intercept it. Like in the first scene, Regan is one of the pilots. He is about to shoot the UFO when the cat hypno-eyeses him all the way from SHADO HQ to stop him from firing.

Straker doesn't know about the cat yet, so he thinks Regan hesitated because Jean was on board the UFO. He says to Regan

"I'm resting you for a month."

That's a lot of sleeps, even for a cat!

Straker sees Miss Moneypenny. He calls her "Miss Holland" and thanks her for "filling in" for his usual secretary. She replies

"No need. It makes a break from Section 9."

Wink wink.

Again this looks like it could be a filler scene, but the reference to SHADO's cover film studio making a "dog food commercial," and the following scene where we see Straker walking past a lot of doggys, all barking and borking loudly, is actually going to become important by the end of the story.

The cat hypno-eyeses Regan again and sends him to fight with Paul Foster. While fighting, Regan starts mewing and holding his paws like cat claws, and this obviously allows him to beat Foster. He even does a cat pounce onto Foster at one point, before knocking him into a pit and leaving him there. This allows Regan to go back on the mission, and he makes his way back to Moonbase and, as one of the Interceptor pilots once again, get launched into space.

Straker finally finds out that Regan has taken Foster's place and telephones Moonbase to ask him why, but Regan hangs up on Moonbase when they try to question him.

Foster escapes from the pit and gets back to SHADO HQ. He tells them that Regan was making cat noises, which prompts Lt Johnson to tell Straker about the cat. Straker telephones Dr Jackson:

"Jackson, that 'human computer' theory of yours, could it apply to an animal?"

"Well, without researching..."

"Is it possible?"

demands Straker, who clearly think Jackson hasn't gone mad scientist enough yet if he's equivocating about such things.

"The brain structure's entirely different, but I suppose..."

"Never mind that, yes or no?"

"Yes, but you must understand..."

Straker hangs up on him. This scene is played totally straight by the two actors, but is hilarious to watch. So, the revelation means it is not really a bad cat, it has just been hypno-eyesed itself by the aliens. That is what the title refers to - the tenth life is the alien that has possessed the cat!

Regan starts to fly towards Moonbase, looking as though he is going to crash into it. The other two Interceptors have been sabotaged so they can't stop him, and the ground defences are still knocked out from at the start of the episode. Their only hope is to find the cat and get him to stop hypno-eyesing Regan. Paul Foster says

"Wait a minute - the dogs!"

The doggys are sent to chase the cat, even though it is now hiding out on location. The cat goes

"Mew!"

which is cat for "Curses, foiled again!"

Even though he could easily have run away from the doggys and so survived for long enough to complete his mission, the cat sits still and lets the doggys descend upon him, which strongly implies that some part of the cat's original mind survived and successfully resisted the alien in the end.

This is a brilliant subversion of the usual cliché where it is the manny who manages to overcome his hypno-eyesing at the last moment - here Regan is only freed when the cat stops controlling him.

Regan regains his senses in time to miss crashing into Moonbase, but he still crashes into the Moon and gets blowed up, explaining why Alexis Kanner isn't in any more episodes of UFO.