EJ
Hello folks, and welcome back to Ultraman Connection’s Watch Club. I’m EJ Couloucoundis, editor-in-chief.
SL
And once again, I’m Sarah Last, content creator and staff writer for Ultraman Connection!
EJ
So Sarah, I’ve been watching The Prisoner lately. Great show. Totally irrelevant to today’s subject, Ultraseven Episode 7, Space Prisoner 303. However, I do feel confident in saying that both The Prisoner and this episode are all-time greats.
SL
Do both of them involve a giant inflatable sphere fighting our main heroes? Because I’d kind of like to see that as a big Kaiju Seven would have to face now, but we’re getting off topic a little faster than usual here.
Honestly, when I think of this episode, I think of… lesser quality science fiction from around this time, but not because I think this particular part of Ultraseven is bad — quite the opposite! Instead, I think this episode is really classic and memorable because of how it elevates a lot of common cliches and tropes that we’ll run into here in the next twenty-five minutes or so.
EJ
We start where any properly spooky story starts: In the woods, with a pair of hunters. I don’t know about you, but the way the episode opened on these two almost made me think the two were poachers, which made their inevitable fate maybe a little less terrible?
Anyway, the two hunters come across a strange bit of fallen space debris, only for them to get picked off by the terrifying “monster” that the craft seems to have brought with it…
SL
I’m sure our readers can imagine dozens of sci-fi B-movies from this time which follow similar tracks. You have people out walking around in the woods, getting picked off by a monster who appears just out of frame, and a town caught in its path. There’s a couple of things this episode does however, which I think elevate it into a legitimately gripping plot.
In addition to the bodies the alien leaves behind, there’s also a mysterious message that the TDF picks up. Is it a threat? A warning? Or something else? How is it connected to the newly-arrived mass-murdering alien? There’s a lot of questions and mysteries beyond just a half-glimpsed alien suit running around terrorizing people.
EJ
Agreed! Though, actually, I wanted to run back and talk about what I think is one of the best sequences in the whole of Ultraseven, which is a big thing to say considering what’s coming next week.
This episode is the introduction of recurring Ultra Guard asset, Space Station V3, and the slow zoom in on it floating and rotating in space is, in my opinion, one of the coolest shots in the series.
V3 is one of those things that shows just how much Eiji Tsuburaya appreciated and referenced the works of Gerry Anderson, as it has a lot of similarities to Thunderbird 5, one of the most famous space stations in fiction, and I personally think that V3 lives up to it. The way the camera cuts cleverly from a wide shot, but still matches the speed of V3’s rotation is just so cool, and almost makes it feel like a continuous zoom.
SL
I love seeing how the different defense teams evolve over time through this era of Ultraman, but it’s hard to beat the V3. I agree, it looks really cool, and the studio must have taken a lot of pride in it too because of how often it shows up again!
The V3 isn’t just there for eye candy though, it also houses another Ultra Guard member, Mizuno, who is introduced as the world’s foremost authority in cryptography. He’s puzzling over the message from space, while all the rest of the action is happening down on Earth.
EJ
He’d better decipher it fast too, since bodies are piling up. What’s curious from moment one is why people are being killed, though. Bodies are literally littering the gas station, but there isn’t a clear purpose — and knowing how the story ends, I get a sense of dread thinking back on the truth of this mysterious alien.
Once they start actively investigating the threat, the Ultra Guard immediately start putting together some odd puzzle pieces, like how the creature seems to feed on gasoline. Finding one of the hunters from the start of the story in his last moments, the team is led to the odd spacecraft, which Dan identifies as a “single-occupant Space Pony.”
Dan, c’mon. You’re supposed to be a regular human, remember? Don’t ID the mystery ship at a glance.
SL
Lucky for him, everyone takes his suggestion that it couldn’t have possibly been made with Earth-based materials as evidence enough that he’s right.
I also find it funny that when the team investigates the grisly scene at the gas station, the others immediately run in to check on the victims while Dan is the only one to think of inspecting the gas pump itself for bite marks.
Anyways, this is another part of the episode I enjoy a lot. All of these jump scares, the monster attacks, the ramping tension as the manhunt (alienhunt?) intensifies, all happen in broad daylight! In another movie, this kind of a plot would’ve been a slog, but little details like keeping the alien suit partially hidden off-camera here help to make each attack a little creepier and dramatic even in familiar surroundings.
EJ
And then the reveal finally comes as Mizuno personally travels down from V3 to deliver the decoded message. The villain is from Planet Quraso, but he’s no invader with grand plans and designs. Prisoner 303 is a Quraso serial killer who has escaped custody, and is so bloodthirsty that he is wanted dead on sight by the Quraso authorities.
Wow. It’s rare we get such a monstrous villain in Ultra like this.
SL
All the other episodes to this point have pitted humanity against what seems like entire alien societies who organize themselves to attack the Earth. This episode really stands out by having the main threat be an individual who is so evil that even his own people are terrified of what he might do after escaping.
But before they can stop this serial killer from beyond the stars, they have to catch him first. The Ultra Guard try to corner him after taking an entire household hostage, but the Quraso escapes — now with Anne held hostage instead!
Actually, on rewatch I just noticed something. There’s a sort of logic to the attacks rather than it being random outbreaks of murderous violence. The alien left one of the hunters and a gas station attendant alive (if barely) before leaving, and now leaves the family behind unscathed, because it’s in a hurry to get to the Ultra Guard’s base and steal their ship! It’s very clear that the killer — while still being a killer, don’t get me wrong — has motivations and a rational sense of his own.
EJ
Of course, but at the same time — he didn’t need to kill any of those people. In fact, other than the hunters, most of the kills just got in 303’s way.
SL
Now that you point that out, the first humans he killed, the hunters, it’s almost like he left the first one so he could sneak up and murder his partner too. There’s deliberate thought put into his actions, which makes it scarier than just if a random monster or kaiju were attacking.
EJ
Sure, he needed a distraction. Both of them knew about his ship, both needed to die. It’s simple reasoning, but that is dangerous in itself. The gas attendants would have seen him, so he killed them first, and consumed the gas. It’s all responding to basic needs with heightened violence. 303 is messed up, bad.
He could have snuck around at night to get at the gas, or bud the ship, but he didn’t, and just killed anyone who saw him or his stuff. This isn’t a knock against him — it makes him scarier to me.
SL
It scares Kiriyama and the rest of the TDF to learn that Anne is being held hostage by the same alien now! Even when it steals their jet, they’re not worried about it escaping — they helpfully point out that it can’t go outside of the atmosphere anyways — but rather they’re at a loss to think of a plan for how to rescue her. Until Dan suggests an idea that just might be crazy enough to work, not the first or the last time in this show.
What if they try to dock with the ship in mid-air, and board it to rescue Anne?
EJ
Man, Dan is such a cowboy. No wonder everybody loves this guy. Of course, when you’re secretly a Giant of Light, the plans are guaranteed to work!
I’m trying to recall quickly -— is this the first time we’ve seen Alpha, Beta, and Gamma undocked like this? It’s one of the coolest traits of the UG’s ships, and it gets referenced a lot in future shows with future teams.
SL
I remember the Super GUTS ships in Ultraman Dyna took a lot of influence from their designs, right down to being named Alpha, Beta and Gamma too! They definitely are some of my favorite designs from the classic defense teams’ vehicles, and this long sequence of the ships jockeying with each other, trying to get into place for the docking, makes them look even cooler.
EJ
Yeah, those little sparks as the Beta shudders against the greater combination due to being misaligned? Perfection. Once the three are connected, Anne is rescued, but the Quraso, panicking, spits fire onto the Beta’s control room, setting it ablaze and forcing Dan to tell the others to disconnect the Beta before the fire spreads. Surely he’ll die!
Except, y’know. Ultraseven, and all that. Dan walks out of the wreck totally fine. 303, however…?
SL
Man. I know we talked about how the episode played up how evil 303 is, and the audience by this point probably has no sympathy for him, after murdering all those people and kidnapping Anne. Neither does Dan, watching him literally burn alive in the aftermath of the crash. But it is decidedly… uncomfortable to watch?
EJ
There’s definitely a… corporal punishment feel to Quraso’s final moments. Dan even says it himself, “you reap what you sow.” Dark, Dan. Dark.
Less dark is the aftermath, where the UG decides to reach out to Planet Quraso after the incident, to form friendly relations; a distinctly rare step in this period where every alien that approaches Earth had sinister intentions. It’s this ending that helps elevate the episode into one of my favorites.
SL
It’s a real shame that the Quraso never show up again in the series, or as far as I know, in the rest of the franchise! The note of thanks they sent to the TDF at the end of the episode left things on a positive relationship that I wish was followed up on later. Still, it is nice to know that humanity has some friends in the wider universe now. For as bad as Prisoner 303 was, it’s almost comforting to think that other alien societies are also made up of individuals, who can be good or evil.
Leaving off on that thought — of individuals in society and the choices they make — also makes an interesting digression for the next episode we’ll see.
