'Mindbender' is indeed that, and the scenarist Tony Barwick may well have been tripping at the time. On the moonbase, one of the SHADO team sees everyone as villainous western characters and tries to kill them. He's gone off his head, so Ed Straker reluctantly kills him. Then Straker himself goes crazy. He sees himself as part of a film set, an ingenious use of Pinewood studios - he's an actor with not just the UFO sets all around him, starts seeing his own life play back in a screening room. His friend Colonel Paul Foster insists upon being called Mike (the actor's name is Michael Billington). They both seem to be wearing eye shadow.
'Timelash' by Terence Feely just four episodes later, is a load of crap with no budget. It plays on the former idea, but has Pinewood (the Straker studio) frozen in a millisecond of time - cue extras to stand very still. Then some ghastly loon keeps firing at Straker and his gorgeous Col. Virginia Lake (Wanda Ventham) and they chase him all over the studio. Interesting to see but zero plot. Vladek Sheybal is usefully on hand to bring Straker back to life.
Ventham turns up in Sherlock playing Sherlock's mum, and she is of course Benedict Cumberbatch's real life mum, with Timothy Carlton, who plays his dad.
The model work holds up very well.
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