Survival

This seems like one of the slowest moving episodes to
me. I have to remind myself that at the time it was
made, it wouldn’t have seemed quite so slow. We’ve
gotten used to a lot faster paced cutting in recent
years and it does tell at times like these. I watched
the movie “What’s Up, Doc?” a couple of years ago. I
remember seeing it when it came out, it seemed really
quickly paced. Now it seems slow. Partly the same
problem here, I’m sure.

Bill Grant? Liking him must be a guy thing, because I
sure don’t see it, even if Foster and Straker liked
him. What I see is an insecure guy trying to convince
himself and Foster of his appeal to the other sex.
Would Straker have liked his as much if he knew Grant
was putting up balloons with Straker’s likeness on
them to pop as a calendar?

Poor Paul Foster gets dragged through the wringer in
this one. First, he watches Bill Grant die in the
decompression. He goes out all macho “we won’t need
any help” to get the UFO but the UFO almost kills him
and he hurts his leg. He befriends the alien who
killed Bill Grant – who also happens to save Foster’s
life. The rescuers kill the alien and Foster cries!
Then his girlfriend dumps him. But then he acts as if
it was no big deal. I guess that’s the reason I have
trouble reading Foster in this episode. Sometimes
he’s the usual hot-tempered, fiery Foster and
sometimes he’s a little too laid back. And I had to
laugh at one point where Foster is looking up at the
sun. It’s so like those typical scenes in westerns
where somebody is lost out in the desert. I was
expecting Paul to take off and throw away his helmet
and canteen at any moment.

Straker is unusually antsy while trying to get that
UFO intact. He’s not quite the cool commander that
we’re used to. What’s really scary is he already knew
where Paul Foster would go on his time off and he was
able to give Alec the woman’s address from memory!
Would you want a boss like that?

It’s a good moment when Straker tried to talk about
Foster’s apparent death and Alec calls him on his
impersonal demeanor. Straker ended up being
confronted with another instance where he had to trade
his all business attitude for something a little more
personal when he chewed out and cajoled Mark into
taking the post of commander.

But what I don’t get is Straker and Space Tracker
Harrington. As Straker arrived at Moonbase, she was
trying to anticipate what Straker would want. He
overheard her and what does he do? It certainly
looked like he was trying to slap her down asking her
for coffee while he paid compliments to Nina. Anybody
have any insight into this?

Diorite