UFO - THE COMPLETE SERIES
Umbrella / September 2007 / 650 minutes / region 4 / 8 disc set
cast includes Ed Bishop, Gabrielle Drake, George Sewell, Wanda Ventham
Back in the late sixties Gerry Anderson was king of the TV puppet show genre, despite his shows being amongst the most sophisticated on the box and made for a general audience, he was disappointed though. As good as shows like Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet were they were classed as children's television, his solution was to appy the same technical skill and top special effects to a live action series - UFO was born.
Umbrella have once again shown how TV box sets should be put together with a fantastic 8 disc set choc full of extras and great stuff.
Ed Bishop, an American based in England, starred as Ed Straker, who uses the cover of a film studio, Harlington-Straker, to run an organisation called SHADO (supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organisation). An outfit who, like Torchwood today, are responsible for keeping the Earth safe from Alien attack. For what most humans don't realise is that we are being targeted by an alien race who have an urgent need for human internal organs - nice!
Set in the nearish future this is a fantastic series full of outrageous and sexy costume design and some top notch special effects, Anderson able to utilise many of the props and vehicles from his earlier "supermarionation" shows. The show itself falls into two quite distinct parts, the first upto the closing of the Boreham Wood studios belonging to MGM which meant a major halt in the production whilst a new location was found, when Pinewood became available a couple of things had changed, George Sewell who had one of the lead roles as Colonel Alec Freeman was no longer available, his place was taken by Wanda Ventham who had featured only briefly at the start of the series.
When a planned second season of UFO fell through Anderson ended up using many of the ideas and themes for his later series Space:1999 but UFO is a wonderfully camp and retro vision of the future that is must see television.
Extras are as usual with these Umbrella ITC box sets superb and feature Audio comentaries with cast and crew (including Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, George Sewell and Ed Bishop; Audio intros by prominent guest stars Derren Nesbitt and Jane Merrow; Documentary on the series and never aired footage from most of the episodes, audio out-takes from Kill Straker; A look at the fashions seen on the show; A full length feature called Invasion UFO and the trailer for it.
Theres an excellent audio interview with Ed Bishop, a look at the restoration work undertaken for the release, extensive production nots, dvd-rom features of the original ITC press book, 3 original scripts (in PDF form), a look at memorabilia associaited with the show, a huge selction of images and a great collectable of a reprint of the original ITC publicity booklet.
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