UFO (1971)

So much average

Sick Product of a Sick System

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

UFO was a live action series created by Gerry Anderson and his wife Sylvia. The series ran from 1970-1973. The series stars Ed Bishop, George Sewell, Gabrielle Drake and Michael Billington.The Earth is under threat by Aliens who are abducting humans and harvesting their body parts. SHADO is a secret military organisation whose sole mission is to fight the Alien invaders and protect humanity. The SHADO headquarters are based underneath a film studio.The head of SHADO is Commander Ed Straker(Ed Bishop), his deputy and closest friend is Colonel Alec Freeman(George Sewell). Together these two are in charge of a team on Earth and of a team on their Moonbase. Up on Moonbase you have Lt. Gay Ellis(Gabrielle Drake)and her team of purple haired colleagues, why they have purple hair is never explained and is utterly bizarre. The Moonbase crew track incoming UFO's and warn the SHADO Earth base.Other team members include Colonel Paul Foster(Michael Billington), Colonel Virginia Lake(Wanda Ventham)and Captain Peter Carlin(Peter Gordeno).An episode called A Question of Priorities shows Straker faced with an impossible choice, does he use a SHADO craft to fetch medical supplies that can save his dying son? Or does he use it to help defend Earth against an incoming UFO? This is a very memorable episode and Bishop does such a good job of showing how this choice tears Straker apart.A very good series with a very catchy theme tune and memorable title sequence. Many of the episodes feature some quite dark content and creepy moments. I've never been a fan of Anderson's puppet series but I've recently seen this for the first time and love it. I wish it had lasted longer. I'm not a fan of remakes or reboots but I think a new series of this set now would work well.

I believe that this was the first Gerry Anderson TV show that utilized real actors and not marionettes. It depicts an international anti-UFO organization hidden deep below a British movie studio. Each show involves a chess-like interplay between the aliens, a dying race who come to Earth allegedly to scavenge human body parts and re-incorporate them to enhance their own survival. Ed Bishop, one of the Orion moon-ship pilots from 2001, A Space Odyssey, plays the embattled director, Commander Ed Straker, complete with a platinum-blonde wig which makes him look a little like one of Anderson's marionettes from an earlier show. Is this show campy...Yes ...Is the acting Emmy quality?...No ...But it still is so much fun to watch. There are well-thought-out spaceships, flying subs and the best model-made UFO to date in my mind. The moon-base girls are sexy in a very tongue-in-cheek kind of way with purple hair and skin-tight foil mini- skirt uniforms. And if you place it back in the context of late 60's early 70's technology...it's damn imaginative and simple fun! Loved this show as a kid and still occasionally enjoy taking in a Youtube episode. Many thanks to the late brilliant producer/creator Gerry Anderson!

This series is about another invasion of UFOs from space (Well, where else, eh!?) SHADO, (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organisation)is set up to protect Earth from a race bent on destroying us, intelligently, it should be said with a plot involving using human body parts to replenish their own. Basically, the 'spacemen' as it were, were humanoid with a small amount of variation (They had green liquid inside their space helmets). SHADO uses a film studio as 'cover' for its operation.This was a fantastic series, with the 'Commander' Ed Straker (Played by Ed Bishop) aided by British actors, Michael Billington as Colonel Paul Foster, George Sewell as Colonel Alec Freeman and the beautiful Wanda Ventham as Colonel Virginia Lake.As with all Gerry Anderson productions, a fantastic array of craft, not least the UFOs themselves provided the action and excitement and was very well handled, even in spite of today's CGI generation.Particular favourites, were the Interceptors - the name speaks for themselves, which were guided from SHADO's 'Moonbase' to intercept the UFOs before they hit Earth. These had a bulbous 'one shot and forget' missile mounted in the front of the craft and there were three of them that emerged from craters on the moon/Moonbase. Although of course, many attacks were engaged against SHADO's Moonbase. The Moonbase itself was staffed by sexy looking girls (Gabrielle Drake, Antonia Ellis and Dolores Mantez) in skimpy outfits with purple-metallic wigs! Some uniform! But in spite of this, the scenes involving the girls were serious, with them monitoring and co-ordinating counter-attacks against UFO activity.Although the UFOs DID look like they were twirling around on a string, the 'flying' was done quite well. Another craft was the 'Skydiver' - a submarine basically with a submersible aircraft at its front end (Bow?!) which of course would launch from beneath the water into the atmosphere to take on the UFOs. Land-based 'Mobiles', tank-like APCs that had a machine gun turret and missiles took them on at times also.The fashions by Sylvia Anderson, shows she definitely had an eye for style. The men tended to wear many one-piece outfits, with suits that had buttons all the way up to a stub collar (It's been forgotten, but a style of suits like this appeared in Britain in the early 1990's). Why go on about fashions? It seemed to be an integral sub-conscious part of the show. On the Earth base, the women went around in - you guessed it -skimpy tight outfits (apart from Colonel Lake unfortunately!).Although a British series, obviously Ed Bishop was employed to catch an American audience, where the series was very well received. He was sometimes at odds with the gruff 'General Henderson' who acted as the UFO operations sceptic constantly at loggerheads with him.Interesting to note that, Michael Billington, now sadly departed in just 2005 was a handsome actor, and was added to give the series just that bit of sex appeal for the ladies, as most Sci-Fi would be seen as a more 'boys' own' adventure - unless of course you had 'reality Sci-Fi' TV shows in some form! He actually died within a couple of days of Ed Bishop in that same year.Episodes took a strange turn at times. One was where Ed Straker's son was seriously ill following a road accident, showing the angst between him and his missus. But this tied in with Straker desperately searching for a quick way to have vital drugs flown in from America for his son's aid using SHADO's craft - only to have to let his son die when he needed the craft for SHADO operations at the last minute. My favourite episode, I'm unsure of the name, was when 500 UFOs attacked the over-stretched SHADO defences at once.Currently in the UK, the series is being re-run on ITV4. Though the repeats are only a few of the run's episodes and the fact my favourite episode hasn't made it into these re-runs shows they are only running select or minimal ones to keep the sale of the DVD box set firmly on the cards. A lot of British talent appeared, strangely the likes of George Cole, Windsor Davies and Derren Nesbitt along with Canadian Alexis Kanner and even playwright Steven Berkoff appeared as one of the interceptor pilots.

1: Send more than one UFO at a time. SHADO has only a few defense vehicles, so they could easily be overwhelmed.2: Don't pass the Moon on your way to Earth. Approach from the opposite side of the planet, where you'll be hundreds of thousands of miles away from those pesky Interceptors.3: Even if you do conquer the Earth, don't touch Moonbase. My wrath will be terrible if you do anything to harm those spectacular purple-wigged silver-suited moon maidens.4: Land somewhere other than England. All SHADO Mobiles are based there, so you'll have plenty of time to act. Try landing in central Asia, as far as possible from Skydiver.5: Appointing me your leader will assure your victory.