Ordeal (UFO)

"Ordeal" is the nineteenth 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 by Tony Barwick and the director was Ken Turner. The episode was filmed from 8 August to 20 August 1969, and aired on ATV Midlands on 14 April 1971. Though shown as the nineteenth episode, it was actually the ninth to have been filmed.

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.

Plot
Col. Foster gets drunk at a party the night before a scheduled fitness check at a SHADO-run health farm (featured in this sequence on the soundtrack is The Beatles' single "Get Back"). He passes out in a sauna at the farm, and awakens just as aliens are kidnapping him. The aliens put Foster in a UFO and take off. Foster's friend and colleague, Captain Waterman in command of Skydiver, is ordered to destroy the UFO carrying Foster. However, Waterman, flying Sky One, cannot bring himself to do so: instead he uses Sky One to disable it, forcing a crash-landing on the Moon, where Foster is rescued by Moonbase operatives.

Inside Moonbase, they find that Foster has been put in a spacesuit and made to breathe the liquid that the aliens must breathe in order to survive the journey from their home planet. When his helmet is removed, he struggles to re-adapt to breathing air. He then awakens properly back inside the sauna, realising that he was simply imagining the abduction while all along he was safely on Earth.

The episode ends with Foster singing a rendition of "Beautiful Dreamer".

Regular cast

 * Ed Bishop — Commander Ed Straker
 * George Sewell — Colonel Alec Freeman
 * Michael Billington — Colonel Paul Foster
 * Gabrielle Drake — Lieutenant Gay Ellis
 * Vladek Sheybal — Dr Douglas Jackson
 * Dolores Mantez — Lieutenant Nina Barry
 * Gary Myers — Captain Lew Waterman
 * Keith Alexander — Lieutenant Keith Ford
 * Ayshea — Lieutenant Ayshea Johnson

Reception
According to John Kenneth Muir, who interprets the plot as a "cautionary tale about excess", the episode is often thought of as the worst of UFO due to its "underwhelming" final plot twist. He questions why the SHADO scenes are played straight despite being part of Foster's nightmare, arguing that because of this the story "doesn't quite hold together". However, he considers the overall episode to be "well filmed" and "visually dynamic", as well as a "nice showcase for Michael Billington".

Review website anorakzone.com ranks "Ordeal" the second-worst episode of the series, describing it as "more just inessential than anything else" and "a time filler".