User Reviews

UFO can be a little flat when it takes itself too seriously.

This episode is one of the sillier ones and therefore one of the better ones.

You'll never guess the solution for finding the titular cat.

Maybe you will.

Never has so many Moonbase personnel owed so much to a handful of small extras.

P.S. Straker's callousness when informing a pilot that his kidnapped wife is probably going to be used for alien spare parts is breathtaking.

First of all, one must realize the UK networks totally sabotaged this series by running the episodes COMPLETELY out of sequence. The best thing the DVD box set did was put them in PRODUCTION order. It turns ut to be even more vital her,e than it is with "STAR TREK".

No less than 3 different actors in this one had earlier appeared on "THE PRISONER". Wanda Ventham was one of the assistants of a Number Two. Albert Thompson was played by Colin Gordon, who was one of the Number Twos, and also played the Insurance Man in "THE PINK PANTHER". But the main guest-star, the focus of the entire story, Jim Regan, was Alexis Kanner, who played "The Kid" in "Living In Harmony" (arguably the most disturbing episode) and returned, his mind gone, in "Fall Out" (although, the finale was actually filmed before the western episode).

One of the biggest criticisms of "UFO" up to now has been that the characters seem less human than the earlier puppets tended to. Not here. In this episode, the entire cast suddenly became more human. Nina had more screen-time than usual, Ayesha has several scenes (she was the one who found the cat wandering around the base), Jim Regan had more personality than all the previous Interceptor pilots put together, and the other two also had more warmth than usual. Continuing on from before, Vladek Sheybal as Dr. Jackson was far less creepy than before. When Straker saw the wounded Foster, his reaction shows more care than usual. Even a minor part like Morgan, the air field guard, seemed more like a real person than usual. Morgan was played by a clean-shaven Windsor Davies, who in the 80s became my favorite character on "TERRAHAWKS", the voice of the robot Sergeant-Major Zero. One of the pilots was played by Steven Berkoff, who later played an actual James Bond villain in the movie "OCTOPUSSY", and later still, a crooked doctor in an episode of "SPACE PRECINCT".

But the biggest surprise had to be Miss Holland-played by Lois Maxwell, in between 2 Bond films. She was Miss Moneypenny in every Bond film from "DR. NO" all the way up to "A VIEW TO A KILL". The scene where she & Straker mention Section 9 and Colonel Blake suggests a whole world of military intelligence going on outside the confines of this series. I wonder if that might have been expanded, had the show continued longer?

Ayesha (whose's been around from the start) takes over for Keith Alexander who left during the break.

The one odd bit, to me, was Virginia Lake taking over for Alec Freeman. Considering she became one of the main regulars here, there's no mention of Alec disappearing, her taking over, and she gets shockingly little to do in this one. I might think the change in actors was sudden, and her part was written for Alec. According to the IMDB, George Sewell became "unavailable" after the production break, which may be exactly what happened, as he was already doing another series when they started up agaiu.

At the heart of all this, is David Tomblin, one of the chief writers & producers of "THE PRISONER". He both wrote & directed this one, and on the basis of this, I have to rank him as the single BEST writer and director on this show to date. I mean, in this one episode, he totally blows Tony Barwick out of the water. It's like what happened on "SPACE PRECINCT" when John Glen would direct (which he did several times). However good the show was (and it was), Glen made it EVEN BETTER by a wide margin.

The revelation of what the true nature of the aliens may be (or not) seems shocklingly similar to that of THE MYSTERONS. Maybe this show really is a prequel to that series after all?

It bloggles the mind. This episode was originally run 3rd, between "Exposed" and "Conflict". GEEZ.

The plot of aliens controlling the mind of a human, picks up and expands on what we saw earlier in "E. S. P." But, by running this long before "E. S. P.", I would think it totally underminded that episode, the same way running "The Menagerie" before "Court Martial" totally underminded "Court Martial". The running sub-plot about kidnappings for spare body parts was mentioned several times in earlier episodes, but the development in this episode was NEVER mentioned in any of those. (Idiots.)

The longer this goes on, the more I deeply wish it had gone to a 2nd season.

"The Cat With Ten Lives" is one of my favourite episodes of "UFO". It features Alexis Kanner as the very likeable Interceptor pilot Jim Regan who is due a couple of days back on Earth. Before he goes, he has an unarmed combat session with Paul Foster where having dealt out some nice throws, arm locks and drop kicks, agrees with Foster that he lacks the killer instinct, at least where humans are concerned, he doesn't mind blowing up UFO's into a million pieces though.

Jim and his wife have an arranged evening out with a couple of pals (played by Colin Gordon, famous for his drunken DHSS official in "Steptoe & Son" and Eleanor Summerfield, famous for getting her hair cut to shreds by Norman Pitkin in "On The Beat"). Instead of the usual boring film about the reproductive functions of the common earthworm, they attempt a seance. Jim passes out, for no apparent reason. He cites tiredness. On the drive home (down UFO's oft used country road), Jim suddenly stops the car in the middle of nowhere. There's an expensive looking chocolate colour point Siamese cat sitting in the road. Jim suggests taking it to the police station, his wife suggests they keep it if nobody has reported the cat missing. Just then, she notices a UFO landed in the woods. Before Jim can save her or himself, they are rendered unconscious and carried off by aliens.

Jim is woken by the loud purring of the cat, he is back in his car but his wife is missing. The UFO is heard taking off. He goes off to SHADO HQ to see Straker....the cat has followed him without anyone noticing. Straker and Virginia Lake tell Regan that they were taken, along with four other missing people, for transplants and that Regan must've been left in his car as an "unsuitable donor" but they are baffled as to why the aliens left him alive, they don't consider the possibility that Regan was the real target and the other victims were taken to make it look like mere chance that the Regan's car was stopped.

As with other examples, we get to witness Straker's hard heart as Lake asks who to assign as Jim's replacement and Straker says that Regan is to return to normal duty, even though Regan is in tears. Lake has about the same luck as Colonel Freeman in changing Straker's mind. Again, it's as if Straker's personal sacrifices to the SHADO cause (his marriage & his son) means he expects equal sacrifices from those under his command, be they close, like Colonel Paul Foster or more distant like an Interceptor Pilot. Doctor Jackson agrees with Straker's decision and Straker is glad that SOMEBODY "understands" but Straker's p.o.v is "We need every astronaut available!" whereas Jackson's psychology is that "work will be better for Regan than sitting around, thinking about his wife."

As an aside, Jackson's latest alien autopsy gives him the idea that the aim of the aliens is NOT transplants but stealing human bodies and wiping the mind clean, removing the parts of the brain that makes humans emotional and leaving the rest to be used as they have no physical form of their own. (Not unlike The Mysterons who have a voice but no apparent physical form, killing humans then reconstructing them and using them for their own ends.) It's like Season 2 was planned to go in another direction, if Dr Jackson was correct in his theory.

The UFO probably carrying Jim Regan's wife has been hiding underwater and finally takes off. Straker's judgement is put to the test as its destruction is left to Moon Base and its Interceptors and Jim is one of the three pilots. It falls to him to destroy it, which worries Straker, but Regan is denied his right to destroy the UFO and save his wife from being harvested for organs as the cat (found by SHADO Operative Ayesha and made SHADO's "mascot") reaches out to Jim's mind....(Not totally beyond possibility as our cat Trixie was able to wake my mother and me by staring at us. A weird tickling INSIDE the head that you couldn't sleep through, though her effective range was limited to a couple of feet!) A rarity follows in that Straker admits that he made a bad decision to put Regan straight back to work. Straker puts Regan on a month's leave, to be replaced by Paul Foster. Regan has different ideas and attacks and defeats Foster and takes his place on the transport ship to Moon Base.

Regan disables two of the three Interceptors as the aliens plan to use Regan's Interceptor, crashing it into Moon Base, completely destroying it. The cat is the key as it is still controlling Regan's mind, even 250,000 miles away. The cover of a film studio comes in handy when Straker sets some dogs being used in filming a commercial for dog chow after the cat. The dogs kill the cat and Regan gets control of his mind just in time to veer his Interceptor away from Moon Base but he is killed in the crash.

David Tomblin squeezes a lot of story into the episode and offered a different thread to examine (the aliens being non-corporeal entities) which could've formed the basis of Season Two....destroying flying saucers would eventually get tedious to many people, after all. As with Gerry Anderson's post "Thunderbirds" show "Captain Scarlet & The Mysterons" unhappy endings were allowed and that's what this episode got.

10/10.

I have to agree with quatermax-1 from Cyprus that the premise for "The Cat With Ten Lives" is pretty weird and it's not one of the better shows from the series because of this. Even for a totally crazy show like "UFO", this one is bizarre! Now, I am NOT being critical when I call the show 'totally crazy'--I am sure that the creators of the series would agree. After all, a secret multinational organization that fights UFOs based on the Moon, under the sea and in the basement of a film studio ain't exactly normal! But, in most episodes, sci-fi lovers can accept it all and just enjoy. This time, however, this just isn't such an easy thing--even to die-hard sci-fi nuts!

The show begins with the focus on one of the Moonbase pilots, Jim Regan, being the focus of the episode. Most of what you see at the beginning is very routine--such as his training classes and furlough at home with his wife. However, starting with a dinner party with some dull hosts who insist on using a Ouija board, things start to get weird. First, the husband passes out during this 'game'. Second, on the way home while his wife is driving, he suddenly wakes up and pulls the emergency brake--and instinctively knows to rush onto the road to save a poor little kitty. Third, his wife is abducted by aliens (don't you just hate when that happens?!). Fourth, Regan eventually goes nuts and attacks Foster, steals a ship and runs amok! And to what do we attribute all this weirdness? Yep, the pussycat that he picked up early in the episode! Apparently an evil alien-possessed cat is responsible. Yes, a cat.

What I have learned from this and several other episodes of "UFO" is that if a character you've never seen before is suddenly featured in the show, he'll most likely die. Not a whole lot of surprise here in one of the weaker episodes of an otherwise good show.

Finally, I have owned a Siamese cat (the same breed as the one in this episode) and while it was not a particularly pleasant pet compared to the other cats I've owned, it certainly did no appear to be under alien influence--though it was a tad evil. If you own a Siamese cat and you find yourself inexplicably working for the forces of evil, it could be your cat behind it--or you're just nuts. That's what else I picked up from this goofy episode!