UFO (TV Series) Mindbender (1971) User Reviews

A bit stupid...a bit really cool!

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 12 May 2010]

This is an odd episode and it's like an episode of "The Prisoner" (once it got really weird--in the latter episodes) as well as "The Twilight Zone". And, because of this, it's completely unlike any other show in the series.

The show begins badly...very badly. One of the SHADO members begins hallucinating and it's obviously caused by the aliens. Here's where it gets cheesy--he imagines he's in some sort of spaghetti western-like world and begins trying to kill bad guys....and in the process attacks his own people. Seeing "UFO" and a western merged was a lot like one of the worst episodes of the original "Star Trek"--the one where Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty and Checkov all are transported to the O.K. Corral! This is NOT the highlight of the show, that's for sure! Later, Straker himself falls under this odd hypnotic-type influence. This is mega-cool and just like "The Twilight Zone" episode where the businessman finds out his entire life is a movie! Straker sees himself as an actor on a show...just like "UFO"!! You see clips from episode #1 and several others and it was pretty funny seeing the behind the scenes stuff. Blending fantasy with reality was pretty cool--and I think this was all done rather tongue-in-cheek.

Overall, despite the dopey western portion, an interesting and mega-weird show!!

Wow!

[straker2 · 10/10 · 21 February 2017]

A TV show within a TV show, this is an astonishing episode. It's insane, off the wall, bizarre, hilarious and terrifying all at the same time. Straker's identity crisis is truly the stuff of nightmares. As much Twilight Zone as in-joke fest, this is one right out of the box we love to watch. If you watch the series early episodes first and then hit this one, it's a shock to the system in a very good way!

The show was heading way out.

[grunsel · 31 December 2020]

I do so love the last episodes of UFO. the show was heading way out and who knows where it was heading if it had not been cancelled? I caught this on a rerun after midnight in Winter 2020 and I was familiar with it from years ago, but it was so magical to see it again at that time. In 2021 we are complacent that humans are pretty much irrelevant in the future and machines will be king, but this harks back to a time when humans were the king and could create any world their mind could allow and the big question of what is real and what is not in our lives.First impressions to anyone watching is 'they must have been on something' or this was revenge for being cancelled- It does not matter they captured human essence here a fragrance that now seems long departed.

An imaginative classic

[lor_ · 10 September 2023]

A quite fanciful, genre-bending episode for pure entertainment value, rather than sticking strictly to the premise of the series. One Moonbase pilot begins hallucinating, mistaking other personnel for Mexican bandits, violently shooting them and fighting with them for real! (Even including women mistaken by him for male banditos.) It's a frightening as well as amusing bit of surrealism, with even Eda and Billington dressed up in Mexican outfits as his targets. Expert editing between the imaginary and the real is quite effective in sustaining the crazy mood. The body count is impressive, driving home the importance of this incident.

Another psychotic occurrence happens, this time at SHADO headquarters, with a couple of casualties. The employee imagines that his fellow workers are UFO aliens. This time the nutcase is a longtime ex-astronaut, and there's no connection of him with the recent mysterious exp[losion of a UFO near Moonbase.

Episode features the operations of the movie studio front, where a new TV series is being shot, its star (played by guest star Stuart Damon) meeting with Ed concerning poor scripts, wanting approval or else. Ed is stern with him, but the connection with the "UFO" series is unmistakable, especially since this particular episode has such a strange script itself!

The coup de grace occurs when Ed imagines he's the star of the TV series he was just arguing about, and it turns out to be "UFO" - and has a physical fight with his budgetary nemesis in real life, General Hendrson!

This meta-version of "UFO" a show about the show is quite alarming and Ed's paranoia becomes palpable, yet is staged against the bucolic backdrop of the scenic studio backlot with costumed actors form various genres. The actor he argued with about scripts reappears now as actor Ed's stand-in replete with a lookalike wig of Ed's distinctive hair style!

He's no longer Straker but is "Howard Byrne", the conceited actor who he had confronted, and in a screening room he gets to see rushes of the show he's starring in! He watches himself acting the part of Ed Straker in a scene set years before in his life during his military career, adding yet another genre to the overall episode, but with a UFO attacking the limo carrying Ed and the General. Billington joins him in the screening room as a fellow actor watching scenes drawn from his real life, featuring his late son, plus his ex-wife (using footage from previous episodes).

The complexity and experimental novelty of this segment stands out and makes it a classic thriller, with an unsettling open ending, which doesn't let Ed or the viewer off the hook.