Directed by Toshitsugu Suzuki. Written by Shinichi Ichikawa. Airdate June 2, 1968.
Captain Kiriyama’s close friend in the Terran Defense Force, Kurata (Hiroshi Minami), makes his second appearance on Ultraseven after his introduction in “The Man Who Came From V3.” That story put him at odds with Kiriyama in an ethical bind over the best way to handle an alien menace. This episode has the two friends working as a team from the start as they head into space to confront the consequences of one of their past missions.
The episode is a straightforward adventure on the Moon, but the “Moon” part is what makes it a fun watch. The effects and production design departments do a terrific job with the lunar setting and space tech, and the human-sized action is exciting. The kaiju part isn’t up to the same standard, although it doesn’t torpedo the episode.
A TDF base on the Moon explodes — quite spectacularly in an opening tracking shot — and the job of investigating it falls to Kiriyama and Dan from the Ultra Guard, and Kurata and one of his usual crew members, Shirahama (Jiro Tsuruga), from Space Station V3. Kiriyama is happy to be working out in space again with Kurata. He remarks that the last time they were on a space mission, it was three years ago when they destroyed Alien Zamppa on the planet Hermes. This is what is known as foreshadowing; Ultra shows rarely drop info like this merely for background world-building. Alien Zamppa is going to come up again.
The arrival of the UG and TDF on the Moon contains cinema-level visuals recalling both the Ultraman episode “Spaceship Rescue Command” and its inspiration, the extensive lunar action scenes from one of Eiji Tsuburaya’s classics, Battle in Outer Space (1959). Please ignore that this was the same year 2001: A Space Odyssey premiered and rewrote what “cinema-level” means when it comes to lunar-surface VFX. This is still great material for a television show on a budget. In particular, the scene of the Ultra Hawk 1 making its landing is beautiful, with extensive model photography of the Moon’s rocky landscape cutting between a variety of angles of the ship descending. Ambitious work, and it pays off.
What’s waiting on the Moon for our heroes is a trap: an Alien Zamppa survivor from the fleet that Kiriyama and Kurata destroyed three years ago is looking for revenge. He hoped blowing up the Moon Base would lure the two men together so Zamppa could destroy them both.
The episode doesn’t dwell on this point, but Alien Zamppa has good reason to feel wrathful. We don’t learn details about the attack on Planet Hermes and why the TDF felt it necessary to “wipe out” this race. What we do hear makes the TDF’s actions sound rather … genocidal? We’ve seen in Ultraman and Ultraseven occasional behavior from the defense teams against aliens that could be interpreted as overblown and violently reactionary. (The climax of “Shoot the Invader” always hangs over the series.)
I believe this theme is intentional, even if not plot-critical for this episode. It sets the stage for one of the essential episodes in Ultraseven’s run, “Ambassador of the Nonmalt,” which tackles head-on the UG potentially committing genocide. The audience is meant to recognize here that the TDF and Ultra Guard have exhibited annihilationist tendencies against extraterrestrial races in their “defense” of Earth.
Petero, the alien kaiju Alien Zamppa uses in his plans, is an amorphous rocky lump that resembles a dung heap. It gives me flashbacks to another shapeless kaiju, Greenmons from Ultraman. Petero is better: more time and money was clearly invested in designing and building it. It’s still not too interesting.
The final fight with Ultraseven is a weak one, prolonged with slow-motion apparently meant to represent the Moon’s gravity, even though that doesn’t appear to affect the human characters. Seven gets in a brief jam because of his weakness to low temperatures, but the resolution relies on pure luck. Not one of the more satisfying monster confrontations, but the episode has already had its big tension and special effects set pieces.
The alien tampering with the mission creates an intriguing scene between Kiriyama and Dan. As various systems in the Hawk 1 fail, it starts to appear to Kiriyama that Dan failed to make several crucial checks. Kiriyama briefly gets acerbic, but it’s mostly the facial acting of Shoji Nakayama that sells the moment. His acting also leads out of the moment: we watch Kiriyama get hold of himself and realize Dan is as trustworthy as any of his people can be. In the episode’s coda, when Kiriyama discovers Dan is still alive after all the exploding, his joyful reaction shows how much he believes in this man — as well as again hinting that he knows Dan is Ultraseven. In general, it’s a very “camaraderie-ly” episode.
Kurata will return to Ultraseven once more for the epic two-part finale, “The Biggest Invasion in History.”
Rating: Good
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