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  • Hacker News
  • "Mindbender" is a brilliant episode.

    "A Question Of Priorities" is quite dark.

    "Reflections In The Water" is pretty cool, too.

    by dofm
  • I lapped this up eagerly when it was first syndicated in the US, I was in high school at the time. It wasn't until a few years later that I saw Doppelgänger, probably the first time it was on TV.

    I was actually introduced to Gerry and Sylvia Anderson as a much younger kid, when I saw Fireball XL-5 on Saturday morning TV. But I missed Thunderbirds until I was an adult!

    by themadturk
  • For UK readers: all of UFO is available on the itvX player.

    So is Fireball XL5! (And Terrahawks, Space Precinct etc.)

    Also The Secret Service but after one episode of Unwinisms you will probably have had enough.

    by dofm
  • Let's keep this pertinent to Hacker News: The nicely intoned computer voice of SID on UFO was way more advanced than the clunky monotone of the Star Trek TOS ship's computer.
    by drfuchs
  • I watched it when I was a kid. I also liked it a lot, surprisingly enough.

    Some things I liked about it:

    - Intro music. One of the best for a TV series IMO. I also liked other great intro music, such as Dallas, but never watched Dallas. Other great intro themes are e. g. The Saints, and of course Tom and Jerry etc... (the german intro though, that one was oddly enough better than the english one, e. g. Udo Jürgens singing it. I always hated it when it was over.).

    - The flashy outfits and colours. It looks like a joke today, but I liked it back in the days.

    - The futuristic models and style and design overall. It looks aged today, but in the early 1980s it was great (I guess I watched reruns ... I was not aware it was made in 1970, which can explain why it looked so dated now).

    - The main actor was kind of interesting looking, almost like an albino in style.

    One episodes I remember a bit was some cat ... or some great confusion. I was confused too. That episode ended with the explanation that he was confused by some alien or some cat as messenger. (If you are now confused about it, this is all I remember and some scenes where the room was very disordered. Normally the rooms are clean and ordered in the TV series).

    Odd how only a few episodes were made, on IMDB it has very high rating. Reminds me a bit of Twin Peaks. People kind of liked a lot about it but some other things didn't win them over, so things get cancelled.

    by shevy-java
  • My kids enjoyed UFO S01E01 (the pilot?) but never got into the series. They really like Space 1999 however.

    I've found it useful to use my kids as a barometer of what bits of culture have persevered (as opposed to whatever ancient thing I still like).

        Barney Miller:  Lasts
    Blazing Saddles: Didn't age as well as I thought.
    I put on Magnificent Seven (1960) last night and had an audience pretty quick.
    by WarOnPrivacy
  • I just watched through this over the summer. It’s a fascinating specimen of a show. I am highly confident much of the Austin Powers aesthetic is borrowed from this, from the featureless suit coats to the everyone-is-mad-sexy to the swinging soundtrack.

    It’s a Gerry Anderson production, so lots of great Thunderbirds-style miniatures too. And wild cars. All the action sequences have the delightful feel of an eight year old playing with toys. In fact a lot of it seems to have a fun child’s-idea aspect. “And it’s part submarine and part fighter jet! And they slide down chutes into the cockpit! And his office is a secret elevator! And all the grownups are doing computer things! And to get a whiskey you push a whiskey button! And the whole thing is under a movie studio!”

    But god yes, Stryker’s family story is harsh. Way overbearing the trope that he’s such a powerful dedicated man keeping the world safe that his utterly neglected family has to suffer so badly. Particularly when much of the time, he’s standing around the office smoking and drinking and asking the nearest woman to go fetch him some coffee. You thought you were getting a show about high tech futuristic alien defense. Well, you have to watch a lot of office banter too, that’s the deal.

    Still, super stylish. And its cousin “Space: 1999” might be more interesting/bonkers sci-fi, but UFO (pronounced YOOFO) is just relentless with the looks and swagger. Each episode is worth watching for the intro alone.

    by jmbwell
  • I rewatched this series a few years ago and was surprised that it held up as well as it did. Yes, lots of sexism, but not untypical for that time. Like Star Trek, it had women in authority roles, but also in sexy outfits, so a bit of a mixed bag. They also got handsome Michael Billington out of his shirt a few times, which I found quite interesting for reasons that didn't become clear to me until some years later :)

    Space:1999 started as a sequel to this series, set ten years later, on a greatly expanded Moonbase. They eventually abandoned that connection.

    The opening credits theme music and editing are just brilliant.

    by rootbear

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