User Reviews

Tony Barwick's 'Close Up' opens with a satellite transmitting photographs of the Earth taken from outer space. Straker is impressed with the detail and high resolution. He takes the pictures to the International Astrophysical Commission and makes a pitch to secure a huge budget. The satellite is to follow a U.F.O. back to its point of origin and photograph the Alien planet. He gets his way, and 'Project Discovery' goes ahead. Straker ventures to the Moon to see the project get started, culminating in a space-walk by Colonel Foster ( which recycles music from the Anderson feature film 'Doppleganger' ). All they have to do now is wait for a U.F.O...

The idea's sound, but you know it is going to culminate in a massive cop-out from the word go. Neither Straker nor General Henderson appear to have given thought to the possibility that the U.F.O.'s might shoot the satellite down. As it turns out, they need not bother as the blamed thing does not work properly in any case. 'Dr.Kelly' ( Neil Hallett ) points out that while the pictures were taken without any problem, neither the range and magnification were transmitted, hence they are effectively worthless. Kelly had earlier gone into a sulk over an idea of his not getting proper funding from the I.A.C. so one wonders if the fault was deliberate sabotage on his part. This is never explored.

Things To Look Out For - John Levene, best known to 'Dr.Who' fans as 'Sergeant Benton', plays an Interceptor Pilot.

Straker seems to be developing a sexual interest in Lt.Ellis ( presumably the thing she had with Mark Bradley fizzled out ), and Foster notices this. In the episode's most memorable scene, she adopts a sexy pose to illustrate Kelly's explanation of the device's failure. How nice it would have been if the pictures sent back from the Alien planet had showed them grinning inanely and waving placards that read: "We Love Ya Too, Gay!"

1. This episode had great potential to be a fastinating story, that is until the writers directed it to a mundane ending. The idea of sending a spacecraft to pursue a UFO back to its home planet was very interesting. 2. I wish that the mission had been a success, that they had indeed obtained detailed photos of the aliens' planet, but unfortunately no. 3. I enjoy this short TV series, but too may of it's episodes are sabotaged by the writers. 4. I really like the lovely ladies of UFO. I'm glad that Gabriella Drake (Lt Gay Ellis) had a bit more screen time in his episode. We were treated to seeing her at the moon base in her awesome uniform and purple wig. Then we get to see her on the earth looking quite fetching in her sexy clothes and natural hair (that may have been a brown wig, but I don't care). For me personally Gabriella Drake saved this episode.

The interesting thing here is the episode tries to be a bit of a TV version of 2001: A Space Odyssey, (something the sequel series, Space:1999 tried in a different way). The probe here is even named Project Discovery. There's plenty of space sequences and plenty of nice music, and an ambitious notion of uncovering the origins of the aliens and their planet. A nice moment comes when the actual sting from the end credits, used when we see the alien planet, occurs as we see the alien world below the probe. There's also a human story here. Straker is clearly obsessed to the point of tunnel vision with this project and ignores a technician who wants his help. This backfires on him in the end and it's a painful lesson for the Commander. The final monologue is not exactly worthy of Kubrick, but it raises a good point. When we try to understand something truly alien, we have no reference points. Talk of worlds within worlds remind us that human perception has its limits.

This is, in my opinion, the weakest episode of the series. Essentially nothing happens. They send a camera out to follow a UFO and when they get the pictures back, they don't know what they are a looking because they forgot to include any sort of scale information in the images. Seriously? Anyway after a lame demonstration of the problem everything just end with nothing gained.

The story in "Close Up" probably began with the intention of using the "Micrograms"....basically photos that are like looking through a microscope. The vehicle for using these fancy pictures was a steal from the episode of "Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons" called "Shadow Of Fear" where Spectrum send a pair of photographic satellites to Mars, one as a decoy (which gets destroyed as expected) and the real one which lands on Phobos and gets a "free ride" around Mars every few hours.

Here, we get Straker and General Henderson butting heads again as Straker's plan: force a UFO to head back to its home planet and have it tracked by a satellite that can take close up photos of the alien planet and relay them back to Earth, will cost a billion dollars. HOW these photos are going to help SHADO in the fight, is not made clear.

One of SHADO's boffins who worked on the camera wants a paltry 50,000 dollars for his pet project: the Micrograms. Straker assures the boffin that he is "looking the wrong way", "Space is where you should be turning your talent." As the whole project relies upon making a UFO go where THEY want it to go, Straker de-camps to Moon Base with Keith Ford.... Straker may pick on the poor chap, all too often, but he knows Ford is the man for the job.

A UFO is successfully forced to go back home and the satellite fires its rockets and follows the UFO. Four months later, it takes photos but when they are relayed back to SHADO, they prove to be next to worthless as a fault means that the photos don't include the distance from the alien's planet nor the magnification used.

Straker can hardly believe it but the boffin proves his point by showing him that a close up of a puff of wheat could be mistaken for an alien base, and a close up of Gaye Ellis's thigh could be the radius of the alien planet. All of a sudden, Straker is a Microgram fan and sells the project to Henderson who says that it'll get more than a measly 50,000 bucks. So the episode ends. A pretty thin story stretched out a bit too far.

5/10.