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.
