ORDEAL

I,ve always felt that Ordeal was a little spoilt by incorporating the universal denouement "it was all a dream".
The episode would have stood up quite well enough on its own.
And as for the argument about the Aliens coming billions of miles just to kidnap Col.Foster,I,d respond by saying,well.. why did,nt a UFO destroy SID every time it got through the outer defences.
Apart from the fact it put a stick in the spokes of a good story,who the hell knows.Anyway I have always thought the Aliens to be much more complex a subject than simply a dying race.Not that the original producers would have thought so,even if its clear they wanted to develop ideas about what the Aliens actually were.

An exploration of such complexity could first touch on their apparent willingness to appease our thought processes, then to act oddly and against common sense,and finally to baffle us completely with their powerfully imaginative use of mysterious forces.

Ironically in fact it may be dreams or more accurately issues concerning the dream state that may have more than just a little something to do with it.

UFO 2 anyone.

Mark UK

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On 10 Dec 2002, at 9:44, Mark Davies wrote:

> I,ve always felt that Ordeal was a little spoilt by incorporating the universal denouement "it was all a dream".

Tony Barwick was notorious for his use of the 'it was a dream after
all' device. Stingray, Thunderbirds, Scarlet, Joe 90 & Terrahawks
all ued it (thougth I m not sure if Barwick scripted each series'
dream episode).

Dave.

On 10 Dec 2002, at 9:44, Mark Davies wrote:
> I've always felt that Ordeal was a little spoilt by incorporating
> the universal denouement "it was all a dream".

Ditto. I tend to ignore that bit and treat the events as "reality".

That incident may have been what inspired the Countdown comic
story "The Snatch" where Foster is abducted to the alien homeworld
and there he escapes and teams up with 2 other human abductees and
they raid a UFO hangar and steal a UFO each and fly back home. (There
is a novelized version of that story in http://www.shadolibrary.org/ )
That comic story shows an alien homeworld countryside scene: a dry-
looking tree hanging over a dry desert hollow at night; there may be
some night mist in the hollow.