Memories of UFO...

Hi all

I'm new to the group and would like to say how
impressed I am with what I've seen. Great to see the
series on Sci-fi channel in England.

When I was young (about 7yrs old), I used to dream
about being in an organisation like SHADO, where I
could be the hero, drive gull-wing sports cars, fly
spaceships, combat against the aliens, wear the
coolest clothes and the coolest haircuts and be
surrounded by gorgeous female SHADO staff. A world
where I could even dress in silver suits occasionally
and kidnapped by the aliens and forced to wear alien
suits that looked even funkier. All this so that I
could be resuscitated by gorgeous Gabriella Drake and
status raised within the organisation all paid for by
the government. Great stuff.

I couldn't get enough of UFO in the seventies. In the
Midlands it used to be on our screens once a week on
Wednesday evenings. All the family used to watch it
because we only had one TV in the house. If you were
lucky an episode may feature UFOs landing in leafy
woods or on top of a pensioners house in the middle of
the night in a secluded lonely landscape. Real luck
was to catch an episode, which featured menacing
aliens walking unsteadily, presumably after their long
space flight, in red suits with chain mail and laser
guns.

UFO was important back then. I remember spending a
lot of my time drawing alien spacesuits, Skydiver, the
Interceptors, UFOs and the SHADO logo!

Viewing TV was very particular to the tastes of Mum
and Dad. Seven-year-olds had little power in those
days. So I consider myself quite fortunate that my
parents did not intently dislike UFO. This meant
though that I had completely missed out on the whole
Dr Who experience and partly some Star Trek.
Nevertheless, those were always anxious tense moments
before every Wednesday night screening of UFO as Dad
could be quite unpredictable and was prone to suddenly
switch channels midway through a programme. The more
popular a programme amongst the young the more likely
this would happen! Those anxious moments before each
screening... The apprehension... The excitement...
21st Century logo whooshing in... The alien's eye -
which in fact is Col. Paul Fosters, the hero in one of
the episodes who is captured and put in an alien
suit... The music... This was heady and powerful
stuff, which made the start of each show a mix of
emotions that made UFO an experience I will never,
forget.

The UFO bubble gum cards were the first time I saw UFO
in colour (sad I know). You can imagine how fantastic
those cards must have looked to me. Seeing SHADO in
all its colourful glory. The red alien space suits...
The purple hair... of the female moonbase crew which
I had never seen or imagined... The white of the
Interceptors... which seemed strange after seeing
those metallic green Dinky models for so long... The
mobiles looked a different colour too, they were
white! Fantastic... Or were the white ones the Dinky
models?

It really was a fantastic show. Years later, when I
was in my teens, though still in pre-video age, I
would search for that UFO 'feel' and similarities in
other TV shows like Space 1999. But these shows never
delivered the same punch. Can anyone even remember
how the theme tune to Space 1999 went? But we all
remember the pace and urgency of the "red alert" theme
tune of UFO. And how versatile that theme tune was.
Played at a slower speed it made you feel good, that
all was right in the world. Even Straker could smile
every now and again. This cheered you up. Made you
feel the world wasn't that bad a place even if we were
at war with the aliens! What a show!

Karl

P.S. has anyone got any scans of those bubble gum
cards?




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