jblum's Journal

UFO
Okay, it's the tail end of the Sixties, and you've got a team of purple-wigged women wearing tinfoil on a moonbase, a submarine that launches a fighter-plane from the seabed and a crew in string-vest-tastic uniforms, a secret underground base buried beneath a film studio with operatives riding around on little buggies and prancing in more skintight uniforms, a moon-shot rocket-plane and supersonic jets, a hardass boss fighting off secret UFO attacks to a score by Barry Gray...

...how can you make this dull?

But sadly that's what's been dominating my sense of the first four episodes of UFO -- there's so much material which should be delightful, but it's absolutely crushed by terrible pacing. It's not just that it's 1970 -- put it up against even contemporary stuff like the Tara King Avengers or The Persuaders! or Star Trek or even those years of Doctor Who, and their events move along so much faster, and with so much more personality. Derek Meddings' modelwork is gorgeous, but the editing is so limp, and the live-action they intercut with it is so often monotone shots of astronauts moving controls. In terms of plot-developments-per-running-time, the first half of each episode usually feels at least one beat light.

I can't fault the cast -- when they get a chance to breathe, and display a bit of personality, they rise to the material, and Ed Bishop is already showing what a sharp cookie Straker is: clever, relentless, and perhaps the tiniest bit unhinged. But so far, it's really making me appreciate Space: 1999. I'd love to see this show cut to a modern syndication running time -- keep all the same scenes, just tighten them up to 42 minutes rather than 50, and it'd feel like a whole different show.

Still, next episode is "A Question Of Priorities" -- I've been told this is a good one...