A really cool episode with lots of hilarious touches! I love how the ship's captain isn't too upset by seeing a UFO for the first time. But see how wired he is when Sky One bursts out of the ocean? It's great! Paul has a wonderful line in Sarah's apartment about people having their hobbies (you have to watch it to appreciate the moment) and the scene in Straker's office where he asks Paul for her key is priceless!!!

Well You Have YOUR Hobbies :D

Exactly! I crack up every time.

If the military in the 1960s was so keen on keeping UFO information secret, why did someone on that ship leak the information to the press? And why should it cause SHADO consternation since UFO stories probably appear from time to time?

Apparently, some guy from the Navy is brought into SHADO later in the episode, and he "just can't believe" that there really are UFOs.

Good to see that even Navy torpedoes can shoot down those nasty old UFOs. Maybe SHADO should hire the Navy to be a few extra guns.

---
Good to see that even Navy torpedoes can shoot down those nasty old UFOs. Maybe SHADO should hire the Navy to be a few extra guns.
---
It was a surface to air missile, not a torpedo.

I thought it was ridiculous that the telescope in the apartment was also a high powered laser!

Lasers don't make effective long distance weapons. Why didn't the British Naval ship detect Skydiver and Sky-One with sonar? The Captain seemed to be totally surprised by Sky One emerging from the ocean.

So who can't SHADO use those amnesia drugs on? I mean being a government defense agency you'd think that the higher ups would have knowledge of what SHADO is. Then again the whole keep UFOs secret garbage is a very poorly thought out idea anyway. One small group keeping an eye on & fighting alien invaders vs. the population as a whole knowing & adding their eyes & inventiveness to the whole situation should be a no-brainer, but no, bad writers have to use the whole government conspiracy to "protect" the public rubbish because they want to pretend the series is set in the "real world". Bah!

This episode really is a change from the MO of the Aliens. Up till The Cat With Ten Lives the aliens were believed to be using humans as organ banks, but in that ep it was changed that they were using humans as vessels & the organ stealing was to keep the vessels around. Here however they seem willing to wipe out the whole race.
Of course if they just wanted humanity dead, then why not use the easiest method? Grab half a dozen or so large asteroids & bombard Earth with them. It would be so much easier then risking their ships being shot down all the time.

Even easier than that, KAM> Fire thir laser beams at nuclear reactors in populated cities and watch the fireworks from the sky.
Of course, then the world would be a radioactive wasteland and useless to these aliens that might be visiting from a dead world, themselves.

And taking the nerve gas scenario further, if the aliens are willing to have it leak into the atmosphere and kill every human, then they must believe that the gas is harmless to them. Otherwise they would land a fleet of their saucers on Earth, expecting to take over the dead Earth, and ZAP! Every alien dies from the nerve gas that's still in the atmosphere.

That was a terrible kiss between Paul and the young lady. Her mouth is partially open like she's not ready for the kiss, instead of puckering up properly. Maybe their noses got in the way!

What a lucky interceptor pilot; he's zapped by the woman's telescope over and over, leaving him paralyzed, his eyes rolled up into his head, his ship just hovering in space, and somehow they managed to bring him back to the Moon, land the interceptor, and a check-up shows he's in good health. The poor guy looked like he was nearly dead and marooned in space the last time we saw him.

The UFO that approaches the ship is speeding in at Mach 5, which is 3,300 miles an hour or 6,174 kilometres an hour! Kinda explains the look on concern on the Captain's face.
It's impressive because even now Mach 5 is a speed that's difficult to reach, as a new Air Force One is in the works that could reach Mach 5. It would be able to travel from New York to Paris in just 90 minutes!

Yes, but this show was set in the then future, remember.

Philip Madoc, who played the ship's captain, was later Commander Gorski on Space:1999.