As a child, some of the more captivating series of programs I was exposed to were the shows created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Beginning with their “Supermarionation” spectacles like Thunderbirds, Stingray, Joe 90 and Captain Scarlet, my affection for their work would reach its zenith with their mid 1970s science fiction classic, Space 1999. However, it would not be until later in my adulthood that I would really appreciate who these people were and that they were responsible for all of these shows.
The appeal of the marionette shows, for me, was primarily down to all the models and vehicles they used and their mid-century modern sense of futurism. A lot of that came from Sylvia’s sense of fashion and design, something else I’d learn to appreciate later in life. As a little kid, it was the appeal of the spaceships and ultra-modern cars that drove me to covet those old diecast Corgi Toys. Once I got older, however, I started to appreciate the more adult and sophisticated stories of their most acclaimed series, Space 1999. However, what I’d missed out on, in this equation, was the live action series which preceded Space 1999, the single season, 1970/71 series, UFO. Because it never aired in any of the local markets I lived in during its initial run nor in subsequent syndication, it’s only very recently that I became aware of it, who produced it and how it set the stage for Space 1999. I recently had the opportunity to watch the entire series on YouTube, at long last, and found it more than a little fascinating to compare and contrast UFO to the series which would follow it.
There’s a lot of very striking evolution that goes on between the two, but you have to back up a bit to the “puppet” shows to understand how a lot of these dynamics played out. Watching these shows in close succession, you can see how lessons and techniques from the past had to be modified for the present or redeveloped entirely. Things that worked in the small scale world of marionettes for a children’s show didn’t necessarily translate to the full scale landscape of flesh and blood people with an adult audience. The same things applied to scripts and characterizations and all these learning curves played out in UFO. There was also a cultural breach as the producers attempted to adapt their work from “kid” focused to something engaging for adults. In this regard, there was a certain overstepping that occurred, particularly in terms of gender relationships and sexuality, but I’ll save that for a bit as it deserves some special attention.
Space 1999 Medical Eagle
UFO Interceptor
Let’s start with the overall look and feel of the UFO series. As mentioned, there were issues in coming to grips with the scale and proportion of things. Models and set pieces which were perfectly acceptable for a puppet show just didn’t carry enough weight, literally, for interacting with humans. One of the most egregious examples of this is the actual UFO spacecraft in the series. The scale of them looks completely off, like they’re no bigger than a tin cup. The rapid spinning action of the model also undermines its appearance and contributes to a sense that they lacked substantiality. That horrible, high pitched screeching sound they make doesn’t help things either. The same thing applies to models like the SHADO moon base and Skydiver submarine. Then there’s the absurd design of the Interceptors, with their ill-proportioned nose missile. It’s still aiming towards a child’s toy rather than a serious looking fighter spacecraft.
Space 1999 Moonbase Alpha
UFO SHADO Moonbase
Contrast this with the model work done on Space 1999. In the context of the times, the improvement is vast and impressive. The ships are a much better, more mature design with the Eagles looking and feeling like they’ve actually got some mass to them. Exterior shots of them landing on planet surfaces or on the pad at Alpha are done with a much better sense of scale and substance, using high speed frame rates to create a feeling of mass. When it comes to the look of Alpha, the exterior is crafted to give a look of something large and sprawling rather than the little golf ball pods of UFO. The interiors are another massive leap forward as well. Compare the somewhat clunky, cobbled together look of UFO’s SHADO underground HQ or the moon base interiors with the interior of Space 1999’s Main Mission in Moonbase Alpha. There are a few nice design elements for the UFO sets, but the scale and scope and the coherence of design for the Alpha interiors, at least in the first season, are astonishingly well rendered. Everything looks like it’s all part of a singularity of fully integrated aesthetics. The curves, the colors (or lack thereof), were much more updated and appropriate for the mid-70s times. UFO was released in 1970, but a lot of its look seemed dated by then, belonging more to mid 1960s mod fashions, something that worked great with the puppet shows, but seemed a bit out of touch by the end of that decade.
UFO Moonbase interior
Space 1999 Alpha Main Mission
The fashions underwent a similar evolution from the wacky one piece jump suits to the more streamlined, efficient look of the Alpha uniforms. There’s some notable changes in terms of how men and women dress between these shows. In UFO, the dress for the female cast is uniformly skewed towards overtly sexualized fashions, with tight fitting catsuits, belted and form fitting and made to enhance the figure. For the first season of Space 1999, the uniforms were essentially identical between the men and the women. The women, overall, were given far more equal footing to the men in Space 1999 than in UFO. Lord knows what they were thinking with those ridiculous purple wigs for the moon base female uniforms on UFO. Why they had to wear them was never explained, even though they showed the crew not wearing them on Earth. It may have made for a fab & kinky look, but it made taking the actors seriously an impossible task. I should note, however, that Space 1999 took a bit of a step backwards in its second season, introducing some differential elements between the male and female attire and also some scenes, like the recreation area, where bikinis could be flaunted for a bit of a flesh parade.
Beyond the wardrobe, there’s a huge disparity between the two shows in terms of how the female characters are treated on UFO vs Space 1999. As I mentioned earlier, it seemed like an assumption was made that, for UFO, in order to make the show more appealing to adults, the producers decided to insinuate all sorts of sexual innuendo into the interactions between the men and women. It was fairly common to have men leering at and engaging in vaguely inappropriate touching and suggestive remarks with the women. This is the kind of stuff that gets you sent to HR these days, but it was par for the course at SHADO HQ in UFO. On Moonbase Alpha, however, these kinds of shenanigans were nowhere to be found. Women were treated as professionals and professionally. Side glances at passing booty were not to be found!
This leads me to the general area of character development, which was virtually nonexistent on UFO. It was as if they forgot that they weren’t working with puppets anymore and just assumed human actors would just be as stiff and lifeless. The only character who ever managed to get some sort of a backstory was commander Ed Straker, played with appropriate gravitas by Ed Bishop. Initially, Straker comes off as cold, detached and efficacious, but there are a number of episodes which delve into his failed marriage and the tragic fate of his son which manage to show how tormented he really was and how torn he was between his personal life and responsibilities with SHADO. Keeping the planet safe from alien invaders is a pretty big burden for anyone, even more so when you command a secret organization and can’t be honest with the people closest to you in your personal life. Other than that, however, the rest of the cast are no more than mannequins doing things for some reason or other that you just don’t care much about. And the antagonists of the show are never developed beyond being mere bogeymen who fling their tin cup UFOs at Earth each episode mostly to be blasted out of the sky, unceremoniously, and without ever delving into their motivation, nature and objectives beyond the occasional glancing blow. The only exception to that is one episode which strikingly mirrors the plot of the film, Enemy Mine, as it attempts to give some sense of “humanity” to the aliens, though this is never pursued again in any other episode.
SHADO commander Ed Straker
Despite all that, UFO is still a fun show to watch if for no other reason than for the kitsch and camp of it all. It’s got some wonderful silliness to sink your teeth into if you’re interested in retro science fiction cults. Space 1999, however, manages to craft a much more thoughtful series with characters that have actual personalities and behave with real emotions. It’s not light years ahead of UFO, by any means. It’s still a bit stiff and heavy handed at times, but it manages to be a show that can, occasionally, be taken seriously with its attempts to examine human nature and the meaning of life. Either way, they’re both shows that are worth watching, not just for historical significance, but because they can be damn entertaining. And I’d be happy to drive Straker’s car any day.
diecast model of official SHADO car driven by Commander Ed Straker
May 16th marks the 40th anniversary of the release of DEVO's third and most successful LP, Freedom of Choice, released this day in 1980.
For me, this album represents DEVO achieving the perfection of their final form. Everything they'd been building towards and carefully crafting came into exact alignment on this album, from the song writing to the balance of instrumentation between guitars and synths to the image to the politics. In a way, it's almost too perfect because I never found any subsequent album as compelling. It's those first three albums which encompass the totality of the DEVO journey for me and, after this, it was pretty much just "more of the same".
Prior to this album, DEVO were a curiosity for most people, oddballs on the fringe in funny suits doing wacky robot moves. They'd been around for a good many years before this, forging their vision in underground clubs and managing to gain some attention with their first two albums within the burgeoning "New Wave" scene. I was an early adopter of the DEVO vision as soon as I saw them on SNL that first time performing Satisfaction and Jock Homo in 1978. The future was clear and it was obvious we were all slipping backwards down the evolutionary slope. As anyone can see by the current state of our planet, DEVO were more than musicians or artists, they were profits.
Freedom of Choice, in its very title, lays out the conundrum of human civilization as we struggle with the our sense of self and the desire to give up responsibility. "Freedom from choice is what you want" and all you have to do is look around to see humanity abdicating its responsibilities as the absolute worst of us flood into that vacuum of power and assume control over a system they never build and have no idea how to operate. The US is currently in the hands of a president who is the quintessential manifestation of the theory of "De-evolution". Booji Boy is all grown up and he's got his finger on the button. No one could more perfectly represent the corruption of our civilization and no one more precisely predicted this than Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale.
Freedom of Choice managed to take DEVO out of the shadows of obscurity and thrust them into the mainstream zeitgeist, particularly with the iconic single, Whip It. The song and its refrain to "whip it good" have become permanently ingrained in the collective consciousness of western pop culture. The domed red plastic hats have equally become fixtures when it comes to identifying the band. If you're looking for the pure stuff, there's no other record that's more DEVO than this.
