SHADO built under new or existing film studio?

Dandello wrote:
> Look again, dear - SHADO was built beneath an existing film
> studio - Britain had a surplus of bust studios in the early
> 70's and was practically GIVING them away. Allowing a new
> studio to be built when most of the others were looking at
> bankruptcy would have raised a lot more questions than putting
> a big hole in the ground for SHADO HQ.

The UFO series is set a long time after 1970, and by then the economics of the
UK film industry might have changed much.

The main timeframe given for UFO is 1980 (says so right in the title
sequence). Since SHADO is stated to have been started ten years prior, that
puts its establishment quite firmly in 1970, - therefore the writers were
writing about SHADO being started as they were writing (at least within 12
months).

There is no reason to assume the writers meant a different Britain than the
one they were in (other than aliens and SHADO) and therefore no reason to
assume the economics of the late 60s-early 70s they were writing about was
substantially different than what they were living through. The main
differences would come in the discrepencies between in the story reality
they predicted for 1980 and the one that came to pass in the real world.
(Their predictions were much more hopeful and peaceful than reality proved
out.)

Deborah

-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony Appleyard [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 1:18 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [SHADO] SHADO built under new or existing film studio?


Dandello wrote:
> Look again, dear - SHADO was built beneath an existing film
> studio - Britain had a surplus of bust studios in the early
> 70's and was practically GIVING them away. Allowing a new
> studio to be built when most of the others were looking at
> bankruptcy would have raised a lot more questions than putting
> a big hole in the ground for SHADO HQ.

The UFO series is set a long time after 1970, and by then the economics of
the
UK film industry might have changed much.





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Hi Deborah et al - When I wrote my cross over with the Man from Uncle (SHADO
Library and File 40 sites), I went with the premise that in 1972, SHADO was
in the construction phase of building their HQs UNDER H-S Studios - that the
building itself was already there, and had already been utilized as studio
property - in other words the studio infrastructure had already been there
for some time. I also included the surrounding grounds with exterior
settings (a la the old MGM and Paramount backlots) for Illya and Napoleon to
get lost in. My idea for this came from the seeming "permanent" look the H-S
Studios had in the series in general and CCAOK in particular. Soooo, I have
to agree with Deborah on this issue of the Studio being a de facto extent
locale for movies before SHADO entered the picture.

Pam

[hidden email] wrote:-
> ... And I'm still blurry on where Harlington Straker Studios] was.
> I think canon says southern England? Is that address given in Exposed
> and in ESP an actual Brit area?

I remember the address as "West Harlington, Wessex". Wessex is correctly the
modern name of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Westseaxna = the West Saxons, which
was part of southwest England. Its capital was Winchester. But "Wessex" is
sometimes used in fiction as a name of an unspecified imaginary English modern-
type county. Some companies and public bodies use Wessex as a name of some
part or another of southwest England, when they need organizational areas
bigger than the counties. There is a little canon evidence that HS Studios was
on the edge of Greater London. But I hadn't noticed that when in my story
http://www.buckrogers,demon.co.uk/ufo/end.txt and .../end2.txt I placed HS
Studios in the Somerset and Wiltshire sort of area right out in the country.