- [Narrator] UFO was Gerry Anderson's first
fully live action television series,
after more than a decade spent producing shows with puppets.
The series entered production in 1969,
but was set in the then future of 1980.
As aliens from a distant planet began harvesting
human organs for use in transplant surgery
to keep their own failing bodies alive.
S.H.A.D.O, a top secret international organisation
with their headquarters beneath a film studio
in England, is established to combat the alien threat.
But would even the best of the best
be enough to deter to continual visits from the aliens?
The first signs of an incoming UFO are usually
picked up by the orbiting super satellite S.I.D.
- [Electronic Voice] This is Space Intruder Detector.
- [Narrator] S.H.A.D.O's moon base will then
scramble interceptors to destroy the intruder.
And once all three of them have missed the target,
the next line of defence is often Skydiver I.
One of a fleet of skydiver submarines
on permanent standby around the world.
As the UFO enters the atmosphere,
Sky I is launched to seek and destroy it.
But should the UFO still somehow make a landing on Earth,
conveniently usually not too far
from S.H.A.D.O. headquarters, then it's up to
S.H.A.D.O ground forces to close in with the mobiles.
But sometimes the aliens can still
sneak through undetected and S.H.A.D.O. will need to
keep their wits about them as they face threats
the likes of which they can not imagine.
- Now don't panic, Alec.
- [Narrator] Despite all these star vehicles,
which allowed for stories set on land,
in space, or under the sea, the show also included
a wide cast of regular and recurring characters.
With Ed Bishop's driven and determined
Commander Staker proving to be one of the greatest
character studies ever seen in any Gerry Anderson series.
Despite often seeming cold and calculating,
audiences soon got to see the vulnerable
and flawed human being he really was.
And several episodes focused on the personal costs
Straker had had to pay in order to keep
the S.H.A.D.O. organisation functioning.
- Look, it's pretty quiet here.
There's nothing you can do.
Why don't you go home? - What home?
- [Narrator] In addition to fleshing out
the personal lives of Straker and many of the show's
guest characters, the series also allowed
the organ harvesting aliens themselves
to be presented as tragic figures
on more than one occasion.
- I plan to stay; our national resources are exhausted.
We must come to Earth to survive!
- [Narrator] UFO also wasn't afraid to touch
on issues like sexism and racism,
even if some of its efforts must have seeemed
hopelessly naive, even at the time.
- Racial prejudice burned itself out five years ago.
- [Narrator] Particularly when the show
sometimes undermined its own message
by placing women in positions of authority
and then having the men around them
act like rejects from a Carrion film.
- I think your equipment is fabulous,
but I am committed.
- [Narrator] And no, we don't know
what the purple wigs are about either.
Following the completion of the first 17 episodes,
UFO took a break in production
with the closure of MGM Borehamwood,
the studio where the series was being made.
Nine months later production resumed at Pinewood studios.
But since they weren't under contract,
many of the cast had moved on to other work
and were thus unavailable to return to the series.
This led to the sudden and unexplained disappearance
of many of the show's regular characters.
But since the episodes were shown
in a largely random order anyway,
this wasn't as distracting as it might otherwise have been.
Wanda Ventham returned from the first episode
to fill the void left by the departure
of George Sewell and other returning cast members
would fill vacant slots as needed.
For its final nine episodes, UFO became a noticeably
slicker and faster paced production
than it had previously been.
With Commander Straker usually finding himself
at the very centre of the action
and pushed beyond breaking point on more than one occasion.
Most of the padding that had slowed down
the earliest episodes, was gone.
And even the original concept of the aliens themselves
was refined still further with the chilling prospect
that they may need more than just
human body parts to survive.
- They may have no physical being at all
and therefore need a vehicle, a container,
our bodies.
- [Narrator] Although some schedulers had trouble
working out exactly which age group
the series was aimed at, the hardware suggested
a family audience similar to those of Anderson's
previous series, but the sexual and violent
elements of the show's stories were clearly
unsuitable for children.
UFO won a strong fan following and proved
successful in the ratings, particularly in the
all important American markets of New York and Los Angeles.
A second season was quickly commissioned
and work was already well underway
when a sudden drop in UFO's ratings led to
the premature cancellation of UFO II.
- [Anderson] Everything was gonna be better.
We were poised for that and to not be able
to realise it was a deep, deep disappointment.
Took me a long time to get over that.
- [Narrator] Despite this major set back,
Anderson still felt that the work that had
already been done on the second season
could be salvaged by re-working the UFO II concept
into an entirely new series.
But that's, another story.
- Here we go again.
- [Narrator] Almost 50 years after it first aired,
the 26 episodes of UFO continue to enjoy
repeat screenings around the world.
And the show has recently gained a new
lease of life in high definition.
It is a series that continues to enthral
new audiences by defying their expectations.
The show's bright visual style and jazzy
opening titles are completely at odds
with the tone of the stories it tells.
And its main characters are often forced
to become as ruthless as the desperate enemies
they're fighting in order to protect the planet.
Rumours of a revival have continued
to persist for many years.
With some critics now viewing the series
as a British precursor to such shows as
The X-Files and Fringe, which only proves
once again how Anderson and his team
were frequently ahead of their time with their ideas.
Whether or not we ever see a new 21st century
incarnation of UFO, it looks like Earth
of the 1980s will always be protected
by Commander Straker and S.H.A.D.O.
- I'll tell you how it's gonna be.