ALL SCI-FI

[Bongopete]

From the people that brought you Stingray and Thunderbirds came 'UFO'. The Anderson's first live action series and one that the critics loved to jump on and call the acting wooden and of course comparing the actors to the Anderson's puppets.

Still, some really great sfx and several really good episodes.

One episode I remember more for the ending than anything else has a UFO being forced down near a farmhouse where a couple are having an elicit affair (do people still have those??). The alien decides to go into the house whereupon the woman shoots him!

The surprise of course being that she was expecting her husband and was planning on killing him. The Shadow team looking for the alien arrives, gives the couple an amnesia drug so they won't remember anything to do with the alien and let them go.

Straker I think encounters the husband and knows what the couple were planning but can't really do anything about it. The episode ends, but I think for the only show in the series, instead of the credits playing over a camera pullback from Earth, we see the woman standing looking down onto what the camera reveals to be the grave of her now late husband. She turns and walks off to join her lover.

We viewers know that she still winds up killing her husband.

I don't know about anyone else, but I think compared to what was then on USTV where crime must always be punished, THIS episode was a bit of a surprise!

[Pow]

Always was impressed with the epic scope of this for a weekly TV series.

S.H.A.D.O. headquarters, a moonbase, spacecraft, submarine with a detachable front that was a jet aircraft, & so forth.

American TV shows were rarely so ambitious as UFO.

Never did warm up to the alien saucers — always looked like a toy top to me.

[Krel]

I watched the series a couple of years back, and I was very impressed with the stories, and with Ed Bishop. Ed Bishop gave a very impressive performance as Straker, who is a very damaged man. The job, and his sense of duty had so wrecked his life, that the only thing he has left in his life is the job.

David.

[Pow]

Cool sf show but I always found the fact that SHADO HQ being hidden beneath a movie studio was dopey.

A movie studio, even a bad one, would receive too much attention & be in the spotlight by the media.

Not intelligent circumstances in which to conduct clandestine operations.

[Bud Brewster]

Although I think it was done just to be quirky, it does make a strange kind of sense to "hide in plain sight" the secret operations of S.H.A.D.O.

The two best ways to hide something like that are (1) to put it in a place your enemies can't even find, or (2) to put it a place where your enemies won't think to look.

The problem with the first choice is that even though the location might be remote and the facility well disguised, the activities generated by the coming and going of personal and materials tend to call attention to the location.

A remote location (the Amazon jungle, the American Midwest, etc.) is hard to reach, so you have to house your personnel on site and build roads and runways for vehicles and aircraft.

Ah, but if you choose the second option — hide in plain site — you get a better location (convenient to schools and shopping, as they say ) which employees can get to quickly just by driving on the existing city roads (without having to live there), and the movie studio's normal activities will cover the activities of S.H.A.D.O.

The more I think about it, the better I like the idea that S.H.A.D.O. was under the movie studio. It just seems to have more advantages than disadvantages.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[orzel-w]

[Pow]

Movie studios are generally built in the heart of a city, and those cities grow. The nearby schools, shopping centers, businesses, homes, hospitals, etc that would be convenient for the agents at SHADO would also be in danger from alien attacks, accidents, or offer hostages.

[Bud Brewster]

[Pow]

I believe the aliens did know about SHADO HQ, Bud.

Why they never mounted a direct attack against it eluded me as it would be a monstrous blow to earth's defensive war?

Then again, the age old query exists regarding any of these movies, tv shows, or books where an alien civilization that has tech light years beyond our current tech, just how could we ever really stop 'em.

They wouldn't even need to come down here in cool spaceships & blast us. Although it looks terrific in The War of the Worlds or Earth vs the Flying Saucers.

A truly advanced race would simply park their ships in orbit & do a Klaatu on us. Turn off all power on earth.

We'd capitulate within weeks if not sooner.

[Bud Brewster]

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Better yet, turn off our power and then charge us a monthly rate to keep it turned on.

Wait a minute . . . those guys at the power companies . . . they must be . . . aliens!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

In "UFO", they really didn't know why the Aliens were coming. They knew from the pilot episode that they were using some of the abducted for spare parts. There was even some speculation that they were using the whole body, and the real Aliens had no corporeal form*. They also speculated that the Aliens were short on resources, and could only send a few ships at a time, which is why the Aliens were fighting a kind of guerrilla war.

The Aliens also knew where SHADO HQ was located, they tried to attack it in "Time Lash", with the help of a SHADO traitor. They also went after Straker a couple of times.

*I read a book a few years back, it was an old one. In it the invading Aliens were intelligent bacteria, that would take over a victim's brain. The plot was uncovered by a man that was a hidden Telepath, and could 'hear' the Aliens, telling them apart from humans.

David.

[Bud Brewster]

[Pow]

The flying saucers from The Invaders TV show was way cooler looking.

[Bud Brewster]

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Well, some folks like that one —



— and other folks think it could have been better. To each his own, eh?


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]