“Mindbender” is episode fourteen of season one of UFO.
Starker is talking to MoonBase which will be out of contact thanks to sunspot activity. Interceptors are ready to launch, and when communications are lost, they are launched when a UFO is detected. However, it explodes when it gets near MoonBase. Straker decides to go to MoonBase with Foster.
They are in one mobile and have nothing. The two pilots in the other may have got a possible crash site. Straker wonders why the UFO destroyed itself when it was in a perfect position to attack MoonBase.
The two from the other mobile are talking back at MoonBase, one playing with a rock he picked up. One, Conroy, blanks for a few seconds, then head to control. Where he sees three Mexican bandits. He fights them, though they’re actually the MoonBase staff, and runs back to where the other pilot, Dale is. Who he sees as another bandit with a knife. Conroy shoots him. Straker and Foster hear him shoot someone else, and Conroy sees them having a shootout in a village. He backs into a room, where another pilot tries to grab him. Before Conroy can shoot, he’s shot from behind.
Foster and Straker speak to Lt. Barry, who explains what she saw and that Conroy didn’t seem to know who he was hitting. They go over the reports; everyone had the same experience. And Conroy’s last medical was fine.
Heading back to Earth, Straker heads to SHADO Control, where Henderson is waiting to talk to him. Straker takes Lake with him. Henderson wants the finance report. After he’s gone, Lake says the general is right. Yes, but Straker still needs to know what happened to Conroy.
At SHADO Control, a man, Beaver, suddenly attacks another and takes his gun. He shoots a guard and Straker and Foster find out what happened. Beaver contacts Control, but can’t seem to hear anyone. Straker wants him taken alive, but Beaver is seeing aliens and he ends up shot.
That’s not the last hallucination either. In the final one, the various locations become sets on a television show that’s being filmed. One about aliens invading the Earth. Yes, UFO, in this episode, becomes a television series called UFO inside the episode itself.