Close Up (UFO)

"Close Up" is the eleventh episode aired of the first series of UFO - a 1970 British television science fiction series about an alien invasion of Earth. The screenplay was written Tony Barwick and the director was Alan Perry. The episode was filmed between 29 September to 9 October 1969 and aired on the ATV Midlands on 16 December 1970. Though shown as the eleventh episode, it was actually the thirteenth to have been filmed.^[1][2]

The series was created by Gerry Anderson and Sylvia Anderson with Reg Hill, and produced by the Andersons and Lew Grade's Century 21 Productions for Grade's ITC Entertainment company.^[3]

SHADO place a B142 tracking probe (launched with NASA Rocket 712) equipped with a newly developed high resolution electron telescopic camera aboard in lunar orbit, during a spacewalk accomplished by Paul Foster and camera developer Lt. John Masters. A UFO is turned back by the SHADO Interceptors from Moonbase and the probe follows it back to its home world. The images the probe returns several months later have no information regarding range or magnification, however, rendering their intelligence value moot.^[4]

• Ed Bishop — Commander Ed Straker
• George Sewell — Colonel Alec Freeman
• Michael Billington — Colonel Paul Foster
• Gabrielle Drake — Lieutenant Gay Ellis
• Dolores Mantez — Lieutenant Nina Barry
• Gary Myers— Captain Lew Waterman
• Keith Alexander— Lieutenant Keith Ford
• Ayshea — Lieutenant Ayshea Johnson
• Grant Taylor — General James Henderson

TV Zone magazine considered this episode the worst of the series, commenting that the story lacks tension and the downbeat ending is "hardly worth a 50-minute wait".^[5] John Kenneth Muir calls "Close Up" one of UFO's "most dated" episodes, partly because of its "sexist" portrayal of Lieutenant Gay Ellis. Muir also criticises the ending, noting that it sees Neil Hallett's character, an expert on microphotography, "lecturing to Straker about the importance of 'inner space', and understanding distance and magnification in photographs. Not only is this a seemingly basic fact treated as a cosmic revelation, but it makes all the other characters seem stupid for not realising it."^[6]

Review website anorakzone.com ranks "Close Up" the fourth-worst UFO episode, stating that the plot is "thin [...] for a 50-minute show, and the basic point is hammered home repeatedly before the final credits roll." It also criticises the "oddly spiky" and "out-of-character" interactions between Straker and Ellis, as well as Dr Kelly's demonstration of the images' uselessness, which involves "showing [Straker] a shot of Gay's 'private area', magnified several thousand times over. Straker, ever stoic, seems oddly unconcerned by two of his underlings getting together to make him look an utter fool, or the fact that Gay's crotch looks like an alien planet when seen close-up."^[7]

• "Close Up" at IMDb