The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Blockbuster Buzz picks up on news of yet another old show being rebooted, this time one of the wonderful Gerry Anderson’s early live action series, UFO, which is heading fora possible big screen outing, with legendary Hollywood figure Robert Evans producing and effects wiz Matthew Gratzner down for directing duties. I’ve always found UFO interesting – I watched it as a youngster but on repeat viewing as an adult many years later it continued to stand up, partly due to the decent production values, which were always an Anderson trademark (yes, it does look of its time, but the sets, costumes and even vehicles, both model and life-sized, were still terrific), partly because it had a very adult, dark edge to it, with a secret organisation – SHADO – dealing with mysterious alien incursions which didn’t always end well, all decades before conspiracies and darker, harder elements became fairly mainstream in televisual science fiction in the 90s.

And it doesn’t hurt that it had Gabrielle Drake (later of Crossroad fame!) as Lieutenant Gay Ellis (above), one of the silver-suited, purple-wigged space gals who manned SHADO’s moonbase. And those super-cool slides the interceptor pilots used to get to their ships (like any other SF kid in the 70s of course I had the die-cast SHADO interceptor, alongside my die-cast Eagle, and like almost every other kid I lost the firing missile from it within days). With a good mix of conspiracy, alien threat, effects and adult relationships I could see it making a decent movie version and while it will need to be updated I hope they maintain that stylish look the series had as well as the basic premise. There’s a very good UFO fan resource site you can check here.