Posted by Railhead on
URL: https://www.shado-forum.com/IDENTIFIED-tp1497167.html

Ok, I just re-watched "Identified", and my comments are as follows...
Although Gerry Anderson himself says his production of this episode was
slow-paced, I actually thought it went quite well. There was a lot of
information that had to be "disclosed" in a short amount of time to
introduce the viewing audience to the concept of the series, and I thought
it was handled well. There are moments of poor acting, but that's true in
just about any TV series or movie, but overall it was great. I did notice
one thing. When the UFO shot at the Rolls Royce, the "laser" beam was
red. Isn't it green in the rest of the series? Perhaps it was a special
beam just to blow up a Rolls. <grin>

I do have one question...why do the UFO's never attack Sky One or the
Interceptors? Perhaps my memory is failing and there is an episode or two
that will appear on Set 2 that shows this...but in all of Set 1, I don't
recall a single instance where the UFO's attacked SHADO's air/spacebourne
vehicles. I do recall the UFO firing on the mobiles in one or two shows,
but they never fire at the other air craft (except of course for the SST
type plane in Identified that Sky One was protecting). The Interceptors
are totally defenseless after they expend their one rocket each...a UFO
could blow all three interceptors up after they miss. Another question
is...why don't the aliens just send 4 UFO's (or more) at a time. They have
to know moonbase only has 3 Interceptors, as they seem to know everything
else about SHADO, so just send a larger fleet and obliterate all the
Interceptors AND moonbase at the same time. They could also give all the
Sky aircraft (Sky One and however many others there are supposed to be) a
run for their money. Imagine 10 or 20 UFO's coming at the same time.

I also wish they would have explained why it would be advantageous for
people to breath oxygenated "liquid" for deep space travel. Straker and
Foster discuss that "we" (meaning earth scientist) had been experimenting
with that, but that "they" (the aliens) were actually using it. I don't
recall ever hearing anything in science to suggest that breathing liquid
would make faster than light travel easier on a human being, but I'm sure
there is some basis for this.

I've also always wondered why the aliens, who obviously do have some type
of "energy beam weapons" (laser or whatever) in the UFO's don't have some
type of handheld "ray gun" weapon. Perhaps the technology doesn't permit
for an efficient hand held weapon without tremendous size, weight and
bulk. So, the aliens use machine guns that fire some type of metallic
(presumably) projectiles, just like our lowly earth firearms.

Another thing I've always wondered, why are some of the aliens wearing
space suits that have little chain type "accessories" attached, but in
later episodes, this is all replaced with what looks like a sewn on
metallic foil fabric (the fabric looks better though).

Lastly, there is one other question, which the title of this episode helps
to add to the perplexing situation...

Why do they continually call them UFO's? I know that's the name of the
show...but they are not Unidentified Flying Objects. They know exactly
what they are...they are hostile alien space craft. The only unknowns are
exactly where they are from and all the reasons that they are here...only
the speculated reasons. I know that if they called the series IFO
(Identified Flying Objects) it wouldn't have had the impact, so this is a
point that I just have to let go. <grin>

Overall...this is a very good episode and a great introduction to a great
series.