UFO series

UFO pronounced as a word (“you-foh”) is a British television science fiction series created by Gerry “Thunderbirds” Anderson and Sylvia Anderson and produced by Century 21 Productions company. The Andersons had previously made a number of very successful marionette-based children’s science fiction series including Stingray, Thunderbirds, and Captain Scarlet.

UFO series

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With silver space suits and space girls with purple hair in 1969 the series made interesting predictions about what life would end up like in the 1980s. I remember the Car telephones and mobiles as well as the use of computers in day-to-day life, electronic fingerprint scanning and identification against a database.

UFO had 26 episodes, including the pilot, were filmed over the course of more than a year, with a five-month production break caused by the ultimate closure of the MGM-British Studios in Borehamwood, where the show was initially made.

There was promise of a second season of UFO. Unwilling to let the UFO 2 pre-production work go to waste, Anderson instead offered ITC a new series idea, unrelated to UFO, in which the Moon would be blown out of Earth orbit taking the Moonbase survivors with it. This proposal developed into Space: 1999. When Space:1999 was broadcast there was no trace in its plot of the show which had been its precursor.

Anyone else remember the bubblegum cards and dinky models that came as a commercial spin off from the above. Even Jigsaws by Arrow and board games followed, but that’s another blog for another day.

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