Directed by Toshitsugu Suzuki. Written by Keisuke Fujikawa. Airdate April 7, 1968.
While doing this website, I’ve discovered that writing about the best Ultra episodes is more difficult than writing about good or mediocre episodes. With a classic episode, there’s more to consider and explore and numerous ways to approach the writing. Discovering the ideal way to concisely discuss a complex, multilayered episode in an entertaining and clear way can be rough. It’s rewarding to get to that final version, but it takes serious effort.
This is my way of saying that, after reviewing two of the best and most influential episodes of Ultraseven, I’m relieved to arrive at “Operation Cyborg,” which is profoundly … just okay. Ah, that feels good. Relaxing.
We’re back with an ole chestnut: aliens trying to infiltrate and destroy the Terran Defense Force while disguised as humans. We haven’t seen this scheme in a stretch, and this is the least interesting version of it yet. The twist this time is that Alien Borg captures Nogawa, a TDF communications officer, and implants a control plate in his brain to manipulate him. That’s not much of a “twist,” but this is what the story has to offer. A TDF doctor says the implant makes Nogawa into a cyborg, but that’s using a tepid definition of cyborg. These Borg have a long way to go to reach Star Trek Borg assimilation levels.
Nogawa (Akira Hirose) is a close friend of Soga in the UG, and he is about to marry his fiancée, Sanae (Keiko Miyauchi). This sounds like a solid foundation for character drama, but it doesn’t emerge. Soga has more to do than usual and gets a few action beats, but there isn’t a strong sense of desperation or grief in what he does to save Nogawa. We don’t know what kind of friendship he has with Nogawa, so it’s hard to feel invested in what happens. Earlier versions of the script that have emerged show a stronger character focus that emphasized a tragic love story between Nogawa and Sanae and explored Nogawa’s loss of humanity to the Borg tampering. The rewrites sanded away these edges.
The production team seems to have been aiming for a suspense thriller, similar to what Samaji Nonagase pulled off in “Project Blue.” Screenwriter Fujikawa has said he was trying to create a Mission: Impossible story with the infiltrator, but the execution doesn’t have that type of tension or clever duplicity. It’s straightforward base infiltration action.
Director Suzuki was clearly attempting a visual style similar to Akio Jissoji’s — an approach that becomes more common in the Ultra Series from this point. Many of the sets are shrouded in darkness, characters are pushed to the edges of the frame, and several shots use heavy diffusion. The interior set of Alien Borg’s ship is unimpressive, but the moody lighting helps to disguise it and add some appropriate weirdness.
The low-key photography helps to heighten the one startling part of the episode. When Dan discovers the alien-controlled Nogawa planting bombs in a lower level of TDF headquarters, the two get into an uncharacteristically brutal fight. It’s more exciting than the later confrontation between Seven and Alien Borg’s giant form, and is another place where Ultraseven tips toward more adult-oriented entertainment.
Nothing goes terribly wrong in “Operation Cyborg,” but aside from some clever visuals and the surprisingly savage beating dealt out to Dan, nothing goes extraordinarily right either. The episode retreads familiar alien plots, particularly “The Secret of the Lake,” “Max, Respond,” and “Vanished Time.” The invaders disguising themselves as two young women make it difficult not to see this as a redo of “The Secret of the Lake,” just without that episode’s energy and fantastic kaiju.
Overall, we have here an adequate piece of Ultra entertainment that feels more at home in the earlier, rocky stretch of episodes than among the classics of the second half. But, as I said, I was hoping for something less all-consuming to write about, and “Operation Cyborg” is absolutely that. The baseline for Ultraseven is still a high one.
Rating: Average
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