“Flight Path”
This is another character-driven episode involving blackmail, murder, and treason, and a rather disturbing one at that… there are a number of times when this show reminds me of the ruthless side of
The Twilight Zone, and this episode is definitely one of them. The ability of the aliens to influence human minds makes its first implicit appearance, and suggests answers to some of the ongoing security issues facing SHADO.
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We jump right in with a shot of a landed UFO in the forest, emitting a venomous green glow. Cut to a man stumbling out of the forest to a road, pausing to wipe his brow and generally looking like death warmed over. He gets into one of SHADO’s odd little trucks, and picking up a microphone says “Dawson, medical technician, SHADO HQ. I’ll be on duty in an hour.”
On Moonbase we see Paul Roper, bags packed for home and frowning as he examines one of SHADO’s odd computer printouts. One blast-off/flight/landing sequence later we see Roper driving his Straker-model car down a tree-lined, half-overshadowed road [which are apparently the only ones England has...

] and anxiously checking his watch. He pulls over to the side and, after checking his watch again and mopping his forehead, answers his carphone when it chirps. When asked is he’s made a decision, he says “the answer’s no, I won’t do it” and “I can’t go through with it”, but the caller apparently threatens his wife and hangs up.
Cut to the beautiful young wife at home [begging the obvious question of how a dumpy guy like Roper got a gorgeous thing like her as a wife, but then that’s TV lol], waking up and hearing someone outside – she thinks it’s him but realizes as the door is tried slowly that something is up, and she does her best Fay Wray scream as the door opens and an ominous black-gloved hand comes through. Next we see Roper driving up, but upon seeing the door unlatched he enters carefully and just misses getting blasted by his wife with a shotgun! She explains what happened and that she thought the intruder had returned. Proving that 1980 is no different from 1970, he gives her a pill and tells her everything will be fine. He tells her he’ll phone the police but the phone rings and he says “All right you swine” and agrees to meet the next night at 12.
In the morning he goes to work at SHADO and we see Dawson, the medical tech from the teaser [cue ominous music] watching as Roper goes through one of those infamous computer psych stress tests with electrodes stuck to his forehead as he presses a button for a positive or negative reaction to a series of images.
Most of them appear to be harmless images of scenery, but Roper grows increasingly agitated as he proceeds until the doctor tells him to stop. On the way out the still-shaken Roper runs into Alec Freeman, who was coming to ask him to go for a drink.

Roper puts him off and when Alec asks if he’s all right says the test threw him off… they part but it’s obvious Freeman is concerned.
Roper and the missus go out for dinner, with a joke about their age difference and a fetching pink dress.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Straker and Freeman are going over Roper’s exam reports, which are not good. Stress, anxiety, tension, neurosis, poor reflexes and judgment – he’s a wreck. Freeman protests that he’s known Roper for years, and Straker says that while no one knows why, the facts are plain and he’s an obvious risk. “Check him,” Straker says.
Next we see the Ropers driving home after what she says was a wonderful evening, though as usual he looks as though he’s undergoing a colonoscopy while agreeing. As they pull up to the house and smooch we see a shadowy figure lurking in the bushes. The wife thinks she sees someone out there, but Paul reassures her that they’re both just tired and they go inside – though he gives a nicely-worried backwards glance himself as they do. Saying he’s going to put the car away, he goes outside, looks towards the bushes, and then gets in. As he’s backing it up, the phone rings and a voice says “Roper. Calculations.” He agrees but tells the other person to never call him or his wife again, and on that condition gives him a set of coordinates involving minutes, degrees, and angles. We cut to the bushes, where we see the exchange being recorded with a remote microphone by the lurker – Alec Freeman.
We next see Roper in a chair at SHADO HQ, facing the doctor and a vidscreen of a very-unhappy Straker demanding answers. Roper’s head lolls back and forth, either drugged or exhausted, as the commander demands answers. He does not reply, and a frustrated Straker cuts the link as we move back to him and Freeman in his office. Freeman says they’re pushing him too hard, and Straker suggests there must be some other motive at work. He rejects a profit motive but doe agree that Roper is crazy about his wife and might do anything to protect her and he’d understand that to a degree, which Straker disagrees with. The key question is what he told them, not why, the commander notes, and opens the link back up [where we see the doctor starting on him again with the classic line “Let’s take it from the top, Roper”] to interrupt and tell him that the best way to protect his wife is not to stay silent but to tell them what they want to know. He tells them that he was given a series of numbers to enter into SID and to memorize the results, but not told what they were for. Since SID’s primary job is to analyze UFO flight tracks and project targets, the implications are unsettling to say the least -- so they set about trying to figure out what the coordinates mean.
From Moonbase, Lt. Ellis reports that SID says the coordinates are a 3-dimensional flight path, presumably for a spaceship, and they continue to work on finding out what course it is. Straker and Freeman reason that Roper was selected because of his access to SID and knowledge of its systems and because he was vulnerable to pressure on his pretty young wife, but the key question is who was on the other end of the phone call. Straker assumes that it is someone at SHADO HQ because of the access and info required, so he orders a yellow alert and “accidentally” leaves his general-broadcast key down while ordering Roper released in an hour. Freeman admires the technique, which will presumably allow them to see whoever trails Roper.
Ellis calls back and says that assuming the coordinates refer to the positions of the Sun, Moon, and Earth the data fits, but that the final set is an as-yet-unknown time reference. Really spooked now, Straker tells her to keep working on it. [Like she was going to stop?

] Freeman walks Roper out, who is suspicious of his release but is told to not look a gift horse in the mouth. Cut to Straker at his desk, trying to work on the calculations himself [with a slide rule!!!] He emerges and is told that Freeman has let Roper go early, which does not make him happy. He orders a maximum security alert and we get a nice montage of SHADO systems going hot from Moonbase to Skydiver with a voiceover of Straker telling everyone that a probable attack is coming against one of their facilities anytime. Interceptors launch, mobiles roll, Skydiver prowls… all we’re missing is stock footage of the Women’s Institute applauding. Sky One launches and is ordered to fly CAP over SHADO HQ.
The UFO from the teaser rises out of the forest as Roper drives along the ubiquitous overshadowed road, and SID spots it right off. Straker orders Sky One to follow the car and observe. [Captain Carlin has a nice momentary frown upon being ordered to follow an automobile with a UFO in the air lol] The UFO buzzes Roper’s car – and I mean buzzes, about ten feet away – and then pulls up as he drives away. It then fires an energy-blast at the road in front of the car, and in trying to avoid the explosion Roper veers off the road and his car flips into a gas – excuse me, petrol

– station and causes a massive explosion. Carlin flies over and reports no sign of life to Straker’s dismay, but we see that Roper apparently miraculously survived by falling out beforehand and though scraped and bloodied is seemingly OK. Sky One smokes the UFO.
An ambulance brings Roper back to SHADO HQ, where he sarcastically assures Freeman he’s fine. Back on the tree-lined roads, we see a Foster-model car with a couple of SHADO goons and hear Straker’s voice-over saying “Continue surveillance of SHADO medic Dawson.” So though we don’t see the set-up, they have apparently found some reason to suspect him as the contact.
Back at the office Straker says “This is a war, Alec. People have to be at risk!” and Freeman replies “I don’t buy that. I never will.” He goes over to make a drink

and archly declares “It’s too complicated for people like me. And too simple for people like you.” Straker tells him they’ve discovered that Roper had reversed two numbers in the time-code part at the end of the sequence – not surprising given his stress levels – and assumes that it would have taken the aliens a lot less time to realize it than they did. Freeman realizes that the aliens must have thought he did it intentionally, which was why they tried to kill him – and they realize that the wife is the next target. Like James T. Kirk, nothing makes Alec Freeman move faster than a threat to a beautiful woman, and he’s off like a shot – but Straker says he’ll send a couple of guards there instead.
Cut to the lovely Carol Roper looking worried and reading a fashion magazine to calm her nerves

, and the redshirts previously trailing Dawson checking in to say they’ll be there in six minutes. Will they make it in time? We intercut shots of the door being tried by an unknown assailant, the lilac car speeding down the road, and the door opening with the trembling shotgun she’s holding in the foreground – and she shoots through the door, nailing Dawson in the face! But though wounded he claws for his dropped pistol, and despite being initially brave , she’s now paralyzed with fear like a good 60s TV heroine and sobs as the scene cuts to Straker and his slide rule, and then SID and the ladies of Moonbase saying they can’t make sense of the numbers either. Ellis tells Harrington to “permutate them” again.
Straker stares for a while at the Earth-Moon-Sun
orrery in his office [including a nice camera angle from behind it, inside the wall], and then Freeman comes in to tell him that Dawson died from his injuries – and that the doctors found a tiny electronic probe fitted into his temple. Straker runs the orrery and points out the key moment to Freeman – sunrise on the Moon, when the aliens will channel the Red Baron and use the sun as cover for an attack. While such an attack would normally be picked up by radar, it wouldn’t work during a period of high sunspot activity – like that predicted in two days. Roper’s flight plan was the vector needed to take advantage of the sun’s position. Without a way to visually or electronically track the UFO, Moonbase is in serious danger.
Freeman thinks they’re screwed, but Straker says that since they also known the flight path, perhaps one man on the surface with a rocket launcher and a polarized visor could take down the UFO. Freeman protests that it’d be a suicide mission, and Straker calmly says “possibly.” Alec says they can’t expect anyone to volunteer, and then realizes he means to send Roper. Alec asks if he told him about “it”, pointing at a photo in the file the commander’s holding. Straker tells him Roper actually asked to do it to “even the score” – and when Alec asks when he’s going to tell him, Straker chillingly says “maybe he’ll never need to know” – as the camera closes in on the photo of Carol Roper dead on the floor.
On Moonbase we see Roper suiting up and being briefed, then taking the bazooka and heading out to the surface. Straker and Freeman smoke nervously back at SHADO HQ while the Moonbase ladies watch their screens go to static under the sunspots’ influence.
The UFO does indeed ride out of the sun, and though he misses his first shot Roper manages to reload and splash it with the second. It crashes and explodes, and burns fiercely

on the Moon’s surface for a while.
Ellis tells Roper to hang on and a moonhopper is dispatched to rescue him, but shrapnel from the explosion has torn his suit and he’s leaking air. He tries to use a tube of sealant goo to patch the hole, but he slips into unconsciousness and the camera closes in on bubbles forming in the goo, then stopping as his oxygen runs out… and we cut to the credits!
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Good grief, what an ending. All they need is for Burgess Meredith to have played Roper and the TZ comparison would be complete. Straker is a cold fish [and we’ll see why in the course of the series] but that “maybe he’ll never need to know” is perhaps his most cryogenic. He will stop at nothing to preserve humanity from the UFO threat, as opposed to Freeman who still has a belief that people shouldn’t be sacrificed so blithely no matter what the cause. Rewatching these early episodes make me realize how much I miss Freeman later on, because he provides a real foil and sounding-board for Straker’s obsessions that Foster and Lake just couldn’t compare to.
My major objections are obvious ones – even assuming you buy the whole lone-man-with-a-rocket-launcher idea [why not a dozen of them??], putting Moonbase’s fate in the hands of a stressed-out traitor trying to redeem himself seems to be not the best plan Straker ever had

. Eventually they’ll have cool mobile rocket-launchers on the lunar surface, but those have apparently not been developed yet. [“Sorry Mr. Sulu, I know it’s cold. Too bad those shuttlecraft are scheduled to be added at our next stop!”]
They tried to cram a lot into this, and I think we’d have been better off seeing them get onto Dawson’s trail onscreen. The lack of follow-up on the alien implant in his head is also frustrating, but the implications of it show how wide-ranging and detailed the alien threat really is. SHADO faces threats from above and within, and knowing who to trust will obviously be an ongoing concern.
Next up: “Exposed”
A test pilot sees a UFO shootdown... will it cost him his life?