Your First UFO Ep.

I don't recall my first episode, but then I saw UFO on tv I was hooked by the hardware.
Skydiver was my favorite, followed by the Interceptors. Moonbase was fascinating, but the girls were the hit with the boys. I admit that I was a Gay Ellis fan from the start.

The only episode that I have a distinct recall, was watching the Ten Commandments and the tv in the kitchen had UFO on and 'sub smash' was on. That was in Mass in 1972


Steve Christensen

Sent from my iPad

On Jun 13, 2013, at 8:29 PM, "Marc Martin" <[hidden email]> wrote:

The first UFO episode I saw was the very end (last ten minutes) of "Reflections in the Water". The next week, "Confetti Check A-OK". I was ten at the time but it didn't matter, I was hooked. My brother was a Gay Ellis fan, but me, Virginia Lake, all the way. (Like I need to tell anyone that. *grin*)

--- In [hidden email], Steve Christensen <christensensteve@...> wrote:

My first ep was Identified when it was on channel 9 here in northeast Pa back when it first premiered in usa !

<< As a dedicated Gerry Anderson fan who had watched Four Feather Falls, Super Car, XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and some of Joe90, I knew UFO was premiering that night and made sure I got to see it. >>

Yes - bib. I was a Stingray, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet fan and had seen the UFO trailers so my dear mother sat me down in front of the tv to watch The New Gerry Anderson show. It was considerably more adult than she was expecting.  Didn't bother me - though it surprised her when she finally watched it about 6 episodes in. I was about 9 at the time.

I saw it on ATV Midlands (UK) and I thought it was scheduled on a Saturday evening at 5 / 6pm or thereabouts. But I may be misremembering and I've never bothered to go and check the listings. I'm pretty sure from my original memory of the episode - lots of talking as they did the scene-setting exposition thing - that the episode was Identified.

Mine would be the first one that was shown by Tyne-Tees in the original run, probably Identified. I was already a fan of the Supermarionation shows and sci-fi in general, so I'd been looking forward to it for a while. What year would that have been .. 1971?

Hello everyone by the way. I'm an occasional contributor to the list since the late '90s.Nice to be here in our new home.

My first ep was the pilot episode when it premiered here in Scranton Pa area back in early 70s on channel 9 !!

I can't remember the first episode I saw way back as a kid. In my ongoing rediscovery of UFO, my first episode was Identified.

I'm pretty sure I got in on the premiere in Sept. 1972 in Illinois.  So my first episode would have been the pilot, "Identified."  I don't remember when it aired at first, but it ended up late night Saturdays after the 10 pm news and often was pre-empted for something else.  Looking back on how poorly the network treated the series, I'm surprised I even got to see all the episodes!
Yours,
Denise Felt

I saw 'Identified' back in '72 when I was seven.  I'm in the NY area, like Mr. Sherman, and I watched at least a couple of episodes when it was shown back then.  I largely forgot about the show until I came across it one day on the Sci-Fi channel in 1995 (it was 'Conflict' - one of my favorites to this day).  For a few weeks I enthusiastically waited for each Sunday afternoon so I could catch another episode, but then Sci-Fi pulled the plug on it!!  In desperation, I checked out this thing called the "world wide web", and discovered a mailing address for the SHADO-USECC fan club, which I promptly joined and was able to dub all the episodes on VHS eventually!  I eventually picked up the series when it was first released on DVD some years later.

Mike

UFO's world premiere was at 8pm on Wednesday the 16th September 1970 in the UK.One of the the biggest ITV franchise ATV Midlands ran the series for 17 episodes in the same slot through to February 17th 1971.A few weeks were missed for the periodic and very popular Benny Hill Show that interrupted the schedules of all the franchises at the time,and continued to do so for the next 10 years.

The last Wednesday night episode on ATV Midlands was Timelash.This was the  episode I saw that started my obsession with UFO,an obsession that remains to this day.Nothing has gripped my imagination on television as much as UFO from that day to this,despite all the sophistication of  modern day broadcasting.

Tying in with the publication of the Comic Countdown that featured UFO as it's main attraction,UFO was switched immediately to Saturday afternoons,straight after the huge digestion of Saturday afternoon sport.The usual start time was around 5.15.A number of the other franchises also picked it up at this particular period.
The show featured continually in the same slot from 27th February 1971 until the 24th July 1971.
Mostly the series was repeated,starting again with Identified,and ending with the episode  Reflections in the Water (it's first airing).Other episodes also got their first broadcast during this particular slot (Computer Affair-odd given it was the 2nd episode ever made),Ordeal,Sound of Silence and Confetti Check A OK.My favourite recollection from this period is the lovely in vision ATV announcer Joan Palmer,previewing the evenings programmes and then coming out with those immortal words...but now,here's U,fo.
ATV Midlands then didn't show UFO again until 1973.Four episodes were transmitted,in a late Thursday night slot.March 8th to March 29th.The Responsibility Seat  and The Long Sleep were also shown for the first time.The other two episodes were The Psychobombs and Mindbender.These were very special as they were the first I saw in Colour.
Co-incidentally the following week in April 1973 George Sewell starred in the very first episode of a TV series in which he would also be highly regarded, Euston Film's Special Branch as Chief Inspector Alan Craven.Patrick Mower (Cass Fowler in UFO The Square Triangle) was later brought in to Special Branch to bolster the ratings.Mower was told by the producer that Sewell was a good actor,but he wasn't a star.We want you to take the show by the balls and kick it up the ass,he was told.
To be honest Mower wouldn't have been much cop on his own,it was the conflicting characterisations of Craven and Haggerty (Mower's character),that served the show so well,and in my view made it superior to the later,more successful The Sweeny also made by Euston Films.

Having digressed,UFO re-appeared in December 1973 on ATV,running from December 30th until May 12th 1974.This was a Sunday lunchtime slot at 1.15.Important for me because I got to see all the other episodes in colour.This particular series airing,I remember, became like a Sunday ritual,as I would endlessly wait for the preceeding programmes to finish ,so that I would not miss the start of the episode so that I could make a sound recording on my newly acquired cassette recorder.As I 'd record through the microphone,all other extraneous noises would be picked up.Also being impatient I'd start the cassette tape long before UFO started,and let it run on after the episode had finished.I wish I still had these cassettes,as they contained a wealth of contemporary programmes and adverts,not to mention toilets being flushed,cars driving past,dogs barking and other sundry historical audio curiosities.

These are my memories of UFO,and I hold them dear.UFO stands clear in my nostalgic TV landscape.I tag and bag every TV series I ever liked and saw at the time by it's relationship to UFO,and whenever I watch the DVD's my mind is taken back to that Golden Era of Television.  
 

After a couple weeks of hearing the 1972 lunchroom cafeteria chatter about this cool new series called UFO, I decided to check it out for myself.  Unlike many of you who started off properly with "Identified", my first episode of UFO was "The Psychobombs" caught on an autumn Saturday afternoon from either New York WCBS-2 or New York WNET-13 (PBS).

Not only was the series every bit as exciting as I had heard (remember, this was back in 1972 when most television offerings were slow-paced and utterly tepid by current standards), but upon recognizing the 'doom music' from THUNDERBIRDS, I was quite happy to have found what my then elementary-school mind considered 'CAPTAIN SCARLET for grown-ups'.

For what is worth, UFO subsequently aired for several years on WOR-9 at the same 5PM Saturday timeslot that Mark Davies noted with ATV.  Only in the case of the NYC tri-state viewing area, the neighboring sports programs were often RACING FROM ACQUEDUCT and MLB Mets games.

Furthermore, on a family vacation to Los Angeles in spring of either 1973 or 1974, I was pleased to discover that UFO also aired at 5PM Saturdays in that market as well.  Does anybody know if this was some sort of a scheduling guideline or strong suggestion put forth by ITC?

JEK