Posted by Anthony D on
URL: https://www.shado-forum.com/Identified-tp1497333.html

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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