Identified

Hi!

Disclaimer: As you may know, UFO is not my favorite Gerry Anderson series -
but I enjoy it. I have attempted to write my reviews as neutral as possible,
but at times they may lean negative. I hope they provide some discussion
points, if not mere entertainment. :)
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Hi all,

I won't get into the details of the episode -- I'll leave that to someone
else. :)

Overall, I wasn't that impressed with Identified as the first episode. It was
rather slow with not too much going on. Also, there seemed to be a lot of
"beauty shots" and "dumb dialog". By beauty shots, I'm talking about showing
Moonbase, SkyOne and SHADO just for the sake of showing them. For "dumb
dialog", I'm talking about dialog that was added to scenes to explain things.
For example, Straker dresses down an operative and in the process explains
that SHADO is hidden beneath a movie studio, etc, etc. Also, the scene with
Alex Freeman descending into SHADO via Straker's office was unnecessary, too.

I do realize that I am viewing these episodes 30 years from when they were
made and 22 years from the "future" they were set in. I know if I watched this
series as a kid all the "Gee Whiz" things would really be cool and neat, but
in 2002 they aren't that impressive. I mean, why have an entire office descend
into SHADO when you could have put a small elevator in a closet or something?
That doesn't make sense. Great on the "geez whiz" factor scale, not so great
on the common sense one.

The male chauvinist pig point-of-view is also way too evident in this first
UFO episode. They were probably trying to be more adult [than the puppet
series] and attract an older male audience [than the puppet series], but I
could do without blatant ass-shots throughout the episode. Alex Freeman is a
bit more of a lech than "swinger" - I could have done without all his hitting
on women. Really, Alex, you're NOT "all that"!

Also -- would a female head of Moonbase REALLY stop to put on lipstick moments
before going into action? Talk about stereotypes!! And what's up with the
endless phone use in this episode? The smoking on SkyOne was silly (why would
you smoke on a sub???) -- don't recall if they smoked on Moonbase, but I have
the feeling they will be someday. :)

There are tons of "nits" like that and I don't mean to trot each one out, but
they do blemish an other wise decent episode.

My one big "ugh" factor is the crux of the episode -- at the end, we find
human organs in the captured alien. They must be abducting humans for our
organs! OH MY GAWD! Well, it's fairly stupid for several reasons:

1) we currently can't interchange organs between animal species here on Earth
(I know about pig valves and baboon hearts, etc. I'm talking wholesale
swapping) so how would aliens do it between human and alien?

2) what about the suppression of their immune system to not reject the human
organs? Should these aliens with new human organs really be the ones to jump
around and capture more humans? :)

3) they use bullets (or what appear to be bullets) to kill humans -- aren't
they afraid that they will ruin a perfectly good heart/liver/intestine, etc.
with one of those bullets?

I will suspend my disbelief and go with the flow. I liked that idea that the
aliens are taking human organs -- it fit into the UFO hysteria of that time.

Because this is the premiere episode that is supposed to want me to continue
watching the series, I'm going to grade it a bit more harshly than normal, but
even then it gets a very respectable gentleman's average:

Identified: C

Launch Interceptors!
Anthony
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Hi Anthony and all:

First off, I felt A had some really good critiques of the eps and the series
in general and his views reflect mine that UFO gathered a cult following
based more on its potential than its reality. GA had a chance to so
something special and he permitted poor scenarios and bad writers to ruin
the show.

As for the sterotypes of male and female behaviour pointed out (i.e. Alec's
womanizing and Gay Ellis' lipstick app) pure crap. He's right. It was even
poor taste and unrealistic by 1969-70 standards. Being an ardent non-smoker,
I share A's view on the idiocy of lighting up on a sub or on a Moon Base
where keeping the right balance of breathable air is vital. The aliens using
projectile firing weapons is equally stupid. We'd been imagining the idea of
lasers or even Trek's phasers for years, so why did GA allow his aliens to
be so technically backwards?

I like to write UFO fan fic. The reason? The 26 extant eps are mostly very
poor. maybe 6 eps pass muster with me. It is UFO's potential that attracted
me, and it's lack of established "canon" (unlike Trek which has basically
established everything, including what kind of undies StarFleet personnel
wear!) means I can be creative, AND correct all those dumb mistakes myself
in my own writing. I've noticed alot of other UFO fan fic writers are doing
the same: addressing the mistakes of series and trying to either make sense
of them, or dispensing with them altogether.

I cannot fault A for what I consider to be a right on the money critique!

Pam

Okay Pam, I have discussed why a hand weapon laser type weapon is not a good
idea before. I know in the series GA had the UFOs firing a laser type beam
so why couldn't the aliens have a small hand held one? The U.S. military has
been working on a laser weapon system for 40 years. They now have a
operational one that is a test bed, that is to say a prototype which works
and from which a better one can be developed for use. Its big. How big? It
takes a 747 to carry it. And it takes a lot of power to run it. How much?
That of a small city. It also generates a lot of heat, not just on the
target but on the craft carrying it. So a lot has to be done to keep it cool.
Okay you say that our problem but the aliens being more advanced having
faster than light ships and all they would have got around this having on on
their UFO's that is smaller than a 747. Maybe but probably not. It has
taken us more that 600 years to develop firearms from old muzzle loading
cannons to the current state of the art. It took us only 40 years to get
from the first rockets to putting a man on the moon but we have done very
little development past that point. Just because you have the technology
doesn't mean it will continue to develop.
It was said in Identified that the aliens are probably from a dying
civilization. so they have faster than light ships with a beam weapon why
spend more money and valuable resources just to have a hand weapon that can
fire a beam?

James K.


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Hi Pam, all,

Thanks for the feedback. I haven't seen the entire series uncut in over 20
years -- so there are a lot of stories that I don't remember or perhaps may
have not seen. Hopefully there will be more than 6 that I like. :)