Directed by Toshitsugu Suzuki. Written by Shinichi Ichikawa. Airdate June 16, 1968.
As the prelude to another dastardly alien attack on Earth, an attractive young woman deceives the Ultra Guard and steals Dan’s transforming device. We’ve seen something like this before — more than once — but this episode features an interesting twist in how the aliens operate that shows the developing dramatic maturity of Ultraseven.
However, maturity doesn’t automatically translate into excitement. Despite the episode’s intriguing alien agent and Dan’s connection to her, it’s largely lacking thrills. In terms of action, this is the most modest episode since “Space Prisoner 303.” It’s modest for the same reason: a restrictive budget. The quieter moments are superb, but the balance of the show feels off when the Ultra Guard and Ultraseven have to do their stuff.
Let’s start with what works: the dilemma of Maya (Yuriko Kono), an agent from the planet Magellan. Like apparently all intelligent alien species, the Magellans want to annihilate Earth. No reason given, and Ultraseven has established that aliens don’t need one. Maya calls Earth a “crazy planet” — while grooving to a psychedelic rock band in a garish nightclub — so why bother invading it? Simply blow the rock up. If you’re an alien, Earth just sucks.
Anyway, the Magellans drop Maya off for her sabotage mission. She easily slips past Amagi and Furuhashi because she’s an attractive woman — see the previous episodes. (Amagi is uncharacteristically a prick in these scenes, getting testy at the TDF dispatcher. Did Furuhashi’s lines accidentally get swapped with Amagi’s?) Maya quickly completes her operation: she forces Dan’s car off the road and steals the Ultra Eye so he can’t transform into Seven. Maya reports back to Magellan and requests her ride home. To which the Magellans answer, “No.” They already have their super-missile on course to blow up Earth, and Maya is going to die with everyone else, too bad. The Magellans seem like nice folks.
All of Maya’s scenes are layered with melancholy. Even before she knows her own people have abandoned her, she acts adrift. She sits in a planetarium staring at an artificial sky as a host speaks about how aliens might be among us right now, a scene that echoes the final speech in Ultra Q’s “Space Directive M774.” She goes to a discotheque to dance alone, staring emptily as she makes mechanical moves. Yuriko Kono’s performance is excellent, hinting at the possibilities that Maya was chosen for this mission specifically because her own people view her as expendable. The way she phrases her later message for help, “Are you coming to get me yet?”, is perfect quiet desperation. (Thanks, Thoreau.)
The nightclub scenes have a sinister magic. It’s unusual to see modern Japanese nightlife in one of these shows, so a late-‘60s psychedelic dance club is a striking stylistic shift. But club life isn’t portrayed as fun. It wavers between weird/unsettling and sad/hollow. Maya is here to dance at the end of the world, dance with nothing left. It’s like the last hour in a bar, when everyone is burnt out and drinking the dregs of regret. No one in the club even seems to notice Maya, a beautiful woman in a bright white dress, except for Dan, the other alien.
When Maya encounters Dan in their telepathic final confrontation, there’s a shared feeling of isolation between them as extraterrestrials disguised on Earth. This meeting has little dialogue but great weight. That mood carries over into the appropriately solemn conclusion where Dan wonders along with the audience about what motivated Maya and why she made her choices.
If the rest of the episode had this same level of creativity and suspense, it would’ve been a winner. But the action doesn’t do it. I don’t need a giant monster to close every episode, but I do need something more than what we get, which is a quick use of Seven against the boring-looking Magellan rocket, with Seven mostly at human size. It’s over too fast, and the earlier scenes of the Ultra Hawks trying to stop the missile don’t exactly ignite the TV screen. The reduced budget is too obvious, especially considering how epic “Terror on the Moon” was just two episodes ago. That must have eaten up all the funds, leaving “The Stolen Ultra Eye” with only petty cash.
This action minimalism could have worked. Look at “Return to the North” and all the tension wrung out of two planes on a collision course. But that episode had director Kazuho Mitsuta at the helm, a master of weaving character with action. “The Stolen Ultra Eye” is directed by Toshitsugu Suzuki, who paces the character story perfectly, but not the action. Suzuki certainly isn’t a bad director: he has the mega-classic “Super Weapon R1” on his résumé. But he’s unable to maneuver around the low budget here, and the action ends up closer to his lesser outings, “Space Prisoner 303” and “The Suspicious Neighbor.”
I’d love to give higher praise to this episode because of its melancholy and the character of Maya. When I total everything up, however, the final tally is too uneven. It’s frustrating to see something with this potential fall short of greatness. Still, falling short of greatness isn’t the worst thing.
Rating: Good
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