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.
Skimpy clothes can be stylish too. I don't really know of a modern TV series that goes that route anymore. So many things died - look at Married with children, the first five seasons. Such jokes are simply no longer made. It's strange how the world changed.
On youtube I recently had tons of auto-censoring where f*ck was removed in the audio with a bleep silent sound, but in the subtitles or in-titles, it was spelled out just fine. I hate censorship.
As for sexism, well - a male audience is more interested in certain elements. How high was the female audience percentage? Most probably were bored by the repetitive nature of that series. Always UFO and aliens. Dallas on the other hand, as TV show, had more elements, so a wider range of people were interested in it.
There's an entire industry of women's fiction made entirely of improbably bulging and muscular men (as seen on the cover, sometimes headless) with limitless drive and passion (as described, in physiological detail, in the text.)
Being dutifully concerned about miniskirts in a 60s TV show seems a little quaint in 2026.
That aside - UFO was originally sold as a show for kids, in the tradition of its predecessors, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet, which were hugely popular.
The weirdness wasn't the sexy dresses - which were designed by the wife half of the co-production team - it's that it was clearly an adult show about adult themes with some toy franchise branding mixed in.
Some of the themes are still progressive today, like the episode about unconscious racism.
It was of its time, but so are most things, including the things being created and talked about today.
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.
Not a fashion expert but mandarin jackets seem like one of those prospective futures from the 60s that never came to pass. Probably that was the time culture in the West just started discovering Asian culture.
I went down a YouTube rabbit hole of Gerry Anderson and I think it’s fascinating how (from watching the intros) how machine and (cynically) perhaps toy centric the shows appeared to be - this rabbit hole ended with watching the 2004 Thunderbirds movie (do not recommend even though the star made The Brutalist)
Mel Brooks also lessened the effect of Blazing Saddles by reusing a lot of the gags in other of his movies -- like the joke where dramatic music is played and the characters look around wondering where the music is coming from, implying that they can hear it too.
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.
The first episode of Star Trek: The Original Series where we hear the ship's computer speak is "Mudd's Women" filmed starting June 1966. UFO had SID talking from the very first pilot, filmed starting April 1969. So, less than three years apart, and not much time for the public's perceptions to change. On the other hand, HAL showed up on screen in the interim, so maybe that helped. And big shout out to Lost In Space's Robot B9, with more personality than all of them put together, and who showed up before for all of them, in 1965.
There is a torrent. Objectively it’s uneven but the I’m biased toward it because I watched it on release. Space Bastard Travis is a terrible villain but Servalan is very attention getting. The simple fact that none of the characters felt safe made it compelling on first viewing and Avon’s cynicism vs Blake’s idealism makes for satisfying viewing despite the obvious budget constraints on the screen. Definitely seek it out but don’t expect Firefly production values.
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!
Definitely, the vibe of an international secret organization with cool vehicles is very much in line with the series. Although funnily enough I found contradicting interviews with Julian Gollop (the lead designer) as for what the level of influence was.
"I remember going out and buying a video tape of the old Gerry Anderson UFO TV series, and the thing that inspired me from that was the idea of having a worldwide organisation that was set up to stop this alien menace."
- Now Gamer, 2011 (https://web.archive.org/web/20111026175106/http://www.next-g...)
"Despite such inspiration, Julian actually hadn’t seen Gerry Anderson’s 1970s UFO TV series before writing the game, despite the identical title and scenario. “After we finished I bought one of the videos, but to be honest I found it a bit boring.”"
- Amiga CD32 magazine, 1994 (https://archive.org/details/amiga-cd-32-gamer-issue-5/page/n...)
An incredible show and such a creative vision of a future that alas never came to pass.
The conspiratorial angles and the continued mystery around the aliens were engrossing. Add terrifying episodes like "A Question of Priorities" and UFO probably scarred a generation of kids for life.
The Andersons created it as a show for adult audiences which explains the dark storylines and sexy outfits, but somehow it ended up being slotted in children's viewing hours!
I love the soundtrack (the future used to be groovier), and the understated Earth civilian wardrobe, but I tried to rewatch it and it's so sexist and misogynistic it's almost disturbing. And I find it cool there was never an in-universe explanation for the purple wigs.
My 1970's self liked it. My 2026 one not so much.
I also think Benedict Cumberbatch's mom was an early crush because of this series, but 1970's me didn't quite know what to do with those feelings.
It doesn't really seem that sexist for a 60s show. There's definitely a ton of male gaze, much like the miniskirts in TOS. OTOH the men are also in tight fitting clothing as well, and just like TOS it has the women in positions of power and authority which was progressive for the 60s.
While the show is campy as hell (in a fun way) many of the plotlines are extremely heavy and dark, like the episode where Striker has to choose between his duty and saving his son's life. Or the episode where his marriage falls apart because he's working too much.
From the perspective of Striker the show honestly shows the destruction of a man. He's left with nothing in life but his job, which also tortures him.
> And I find it cool there was never an in-universe explanation for the purple wigs.
I saw an interview with the costume designer (a woman FWIW) and she liked the idea of the purple wigs both as both a sign that fashion is more flexible in the 1980s and also that the wigs maybe play some practical purpose on the moon. The moon women are in some scenes on earth and they're not wearing wigs.
The silver miniskirt/leotard moon suits the women wear with removable leggings were supposed to be incredibly sexy of course, but also the designer was playing around with the idea of "modular" clothing that could be "reconfigured" for different contexts.
The fishnet shirts the submariners wear is likewise supposed to imply something both practical and highly modern. Of course, talking about male gaze the women in the submarine wear an undershirt under the fishnets whereas the men don't!
The episode (_SURVIVAL_) that stuck with me as a kid was the one where Col. Foster is lost on the surface of the Moon with an alien and they have to work together to survive. The end of the episode was gutting.
Thanks for the extra information. I do remember the series being repeated broadcast but only I saw the occasional episode.
Recently, I got the box set from a charity shop, struggled with the misogynistic imagery and attitudes just watching the first couple of episodes. I put the box set on the shelf.
Perhaps, I need to try again to watch for the character development. Especially as my wife recently dyed her hair purple. My younger self would have stunned at that and my grey hair.
>There's definitely a ton of male gaze, much like the miniskirts in TOS.
"I was wearing them on the street. What's wrong with wearing them on the air? I wore 'em on airplanes. It was the era of the miniskirt. Everybody wore miniskirts" —Nichelle Nichols, 2001 <https://web.archive.org/web/20011115192358/https://www.bbc.c...>
Arguably, because they were on a naval(? not military because Starfleet isn’t, but…) vessel in professional roles. If women had been in the air force in the 60s I doubt they’d have been in mini skirts.
I loved, loved, loved this show when I was a kid (I saw it as a syndicated show in the US around 1971, I am guessing). Yes, the soundtrack was the hook: I came for the (at the time) great theme song, but I stayed for the mystery of the UFOs, the spaceships and moon base, and Michael Billington (who, for some reason, I liked better than the star, maybe because he was younger and actually went out into the field).
Edit: Interestingly, Ed Bishop and Michael Billington both died within five days of each other in 2005, despite Billington being quite a bit younger.
This is US centric, because it's what I'm familiar with.
I'd think really hard about how the characters are coded. I haven't seen this particular show. Short skirt and ditzy is a cash grab to sell beer. Short skirts and extremely competent? that's a whole different thing. There are a million problems with the dukes of hazard. Daisy Duke is not one of them. Extremely competent character. Echoed by Marisa Tomei in my Cousin Vinny. the us has a whole other suite of issues around race, that I'm going to avoid. Wonder Woman falls into the same category I think.
The lesson, repeatedly, don't judge a book by its cover. at the time, it's funny, but it's gently poking fun at the audience for their sexism.
maybe it's some dumb campy show. maybe there's something more subtle that's being pushed, that's only really possible to push in science fiction. this isn't us, this is some far-away future.
Gloria Steinem continued to wear mini skirts. a playboy bunny is a ditzy girl with no value beyond delivering drinks, which is gross. Legally blonde fits into the category as well, you can't just look at the surface, you have to look at the whole person.
I can't speak to this particular show. but maybe try to put yourself into the mindset of that time, and see if they're showing you something about that worldview.
This was one of my favorite shows when I was 10. When I am too old and demented to remember my own name, I will still remember the first four notes of that theme music.
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.
Ah, the memories. The joyous days spent imagining the future...
As a 70's child, I grew up with the UFO Interceptor[1] toy, a treasured possession, and fondly remember blasting it around the house, scraping it on the floor, shooting off the rocket missile, chasing the cat, pew pew... but gradually getting tired of it, losing the missile in some corner of our backyard.
I wasn't allowed to watch the TV show, but occasionally caught glimpses of it, mostly only ever interested in the scenes involving the models and spaceships, never quite getting the gist of the story...
A couple years or two later, I received the SPACE:1999 Eagle[2] toy for a birthday, must have been my 6th or 7th year - my Mum obviously realizing I'd outgrown the UFO Interceptor, having long lost the rocket bit that made it the most fun. For some reason by then I was allowed to watch the odd SPACE:1999 episode, but stopped after the trauma of the "Dragon's Domain" episode. (If you know, you know.)
I was enamored with the Eagle for a few months, but after a short period of use it then sat mostly unused as a trinket on my shelf, alongside my Capsela[3] constructions - themselves later supplemented by Denshi Blocks[4].
I have this sense that these devices were how the consumer cycle was imprinted on me as a kid, as well as a deep longing for a computer of my own.
The Interceptor->Eagle path was obvious consumerism, but something else happened .. losing the Interceptors rocket frustrated me immensely, so I fashioned a new one out of a pencil. My engineering mind was thus born.
As I recall, the latch mechanism that made the UFO Interceptor so satisfying as a projectile launcher required that I notch a groove into the pencil, a process that took me an afternoon of whittling, my first practical use of my Swiss Army knife, resulting in various waves of fun and disappointment as the latch/spring eroded the pencil down with each launch .. there was a curve of fun at which the top of the crest the pencil being launched was so satisfying, but after repeated blasts, also kind of boring as the wood wore down. I jammed the pencil in one last time and sat the Interceptor on the shelf, my own space-age Mr. Squiggle[5].
I was also, as a kid, immensely frustrated that the launched projectiles never went straight, rendering it quite useless for shooting things. Especially the cat. Still, my engineering senses had been cracked, the seed began to grow ..
I moved on to Capsela, which was an utter delight to build things to take to the bath tub, and then I was gifted a Denshi Blocks kit by a wise old HAM-fanatic uncle of mine.
Capsela and Denshi were mind-expanding to an 8 year old kid who by then was utterly enamored with any electronic technology I could get my hands on, and I even attempted wiring up the Denshi Blocks and the Capsela to try to make a kind of robot, which never got too far, although my imagination took it into cosmic realms. An imagination flavored by the UFO and SPACE:1999 model sequences, indeed.
This all faded away of course, until I touched my first computer - a Commodore Pet some business associate of my Dad had added to his office without knowing what to do with it whatsoever, just knowing he had to have one .. I think the only use it ever got was as a babysitter for me while he and Dad did whatever it was they did, as I tapped away and learned all the key combo's to make pretty pictures that were, in my mind, maps of the universe. And then, BASIC, and oh what a journey that became!
There was a sexual awakening happening in me too amidst all of this, although I didn't realize it at the time but came to know too well - the crush/trauma I'd had on the lost female crew member from "Dragon's Domain" resurfaced in my teens, and she's still the kind of girl I like. Fatal, pretty, technologically savvy yet doomed to be a victim of the dragon. A smart, imperiled girl I probably could've saved with my Capsela Denshi Robot.
(Replaced not long after with Leela from Doctor Who as a fantasy figure, I recall now fondly .. the Doctors sonic screwdriver sending me into a life-long dedication to the hobby of synthesizers, too!)
What a time to remember how the future used to be...
I've still got the Denshi Blocks kit, managed to keep them for my own kids, who haven't quite engaged as much as I'd liked, but it'll be there for the grandkids when they arrive.
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.
"…it had women in authority roles, but also in sexy outfits…"
Oh, (Nick Drake's sister) Gabrielle Drake, my heart…
"…it had women in authority roles, but also in sexy outfits…"
We shall not be surprised that Jeffrey Epstein was exploring remaking this show https://www.justice.gov/epstein (search 'ufo')
> The opening credits theme music and editing are just brilliant.
Absolutely. The Andersons knew how to craft a vibe.
I'm convinced the UFO opening was an influence on Neon Genesis Evangelion's famous opening.
Skimpy clothes can be stylish too. I don't really know of a modern TV series that goes that route anymore. So many things died - look at Married with children, the first five seasons. Such jokes are simply no longer made. It's strange how the world changed.
On youtube I recently had tons of auto-censoring where f*ck was removed in the audio with a bleep silent sound, but in the subtitles or in-titles, it was spelled out just fine. I hate censorship.
As for sexism, well - a male audience is more interested in certain elements. How high was the female audience percentage? Most probably were bored by the repetitive nature of that series. Always UFO and aliens. Dallas on the other hand, as TV show, had more elements, so a wider range of people were interested in it.
There's an entire industry of women's fiction made entirely of improbably bulging and muscular men (as seen on the cover, sometimes headless) with limitless drive and passion (as described, in physiological detail, in the text.)
Being dutifully concerned about miniskirts in a 60s TV show seems a little quaint in 2026.
That aside - UFO was originally sold as a show for kids, in the tradition of its predecessors, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet, which were hugely popular.
The weirdness wasn't the sexy dresses - which were designed by the wife half of the co-production team - it's that it was clearly an adult show about adult themes with some toy franchise branding mixed in.
Some of the themes are still progressive today, like the episode about unconscious racism.
It was of its time, but so are most things, including the things being created and talked about today.
Dallas was a ridiculous soap opera with hammy over-the-top acting.
And I lived in Dallas so I never missed an episode.
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.
> featureless suit coats
Not a fashion expert but mandarin jackets seem like one of those prospective futures from the 60s that never came to pass. Probably that was the time culture in the West just started discovering Asian culture.
Eg: Dr No and probably lots more. https://i0.wp.com/www.retrozap.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/0...
I went down a YouTube rabbit hole of Gerry Anderson and I think it’s fascinating how (from watching the intros) how machine and (cynically) perhaps toy centric the shows appeared to be - this rabbit hole ended with watching the 2004 Thunderbirds movie (do not recommend even though the star made The Brutalist)
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).
I put on Magnificent Seven (1960) last night and had an audience pretty quick.Mel Brooks also lessened the effect of Blazing Saddles by reusing a lot of the gags in other of his movies -- like the joke where dramatic music is played and the characters look around wondering where the music is coming from, implying that they can hear it too.
UFO is surprisingly "adult" and dark in places.
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.
It was also recorded the best part of a decade later than TOS too. People’s expectations of computers had grown.
The first episode of Star Trek: The Original Series where we hear the ship's computer speak is "Mudd's Women" filmed starting June 1966. UFO had SID talking from the very first pilot, filmed starting April 1969. So, less than three years apart, and not much time for the public's perceptions to change. On the other hand, HAL showed up on screen in the interim, so maybe that helped. And big shout out to Lost In Space's Robot B9, with more personality than all of them put together, and who showed up before for all of them, in 1965.
Oh wow, was UFO really that early on? I thought it was a mid 70s. Though admittedly I did watch the reruns rather than the original airing.
Space 1999 was another interesting show.
One Sci-fi I never got to see was Blake’s 7. I’ve heard a lot about it when I was a kid but never actually got to watch it.
There is a torrent. Objectively it’s uneven but the I’m biased toward it because I watched it on release. Space Bastard Travis is a terrible villain but Servalan is very attention getting. The simple fact that none of the characters felt safe made it compelling on first viewing and Avon’s cynicism vs Blake’s idealism makes for satisfying viewing despite the obvious budget constraints on the screen. Definitely seek it out but don’t expect Firefly production values.
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.
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!
"Mindbender" is a brilliant episode.
"A Question Of Priorities" is quite dark.
"Reflections In The Water" is pretty cool, too.
Apparently, this UFO series was one of the influences that went into the 1994 game UFO: Enemy Unknown (X-COM).
Definitely, the vibe of an international secret organization with cool vehicles is very much in line with the series. Although funnily enough I found contradicting interviews with Julian Gollop (the lead designer) as for what the level of influence was.
"I remember going out and buying a video tape of the old Gerry Anderson UFO TV series, and the thing that inspired me from that was the idea of having a worldwide organisation that was set up to stop this alien menace." - Now Gamer, 2011 (https://web.archive.org/web/20111026175106/http://www.next-g...)
"Despite such inspiration, Julian actually hadn’t seen Gerry Anderson’s 1970s UFO TV series before writing the game, despite the identical title and scenario. “After we finished I bought one of the videos, but to be honest I found it a bit boring.”" - Amiga CD32 magazine, 1994 (https://archive.org/details/amiga-cd-32-gamer-issue-5/page/n...)
For U.S. readers, it's on Tubi (https://tubitv.com/series/300001114/ufo)
also on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/show/SChpdkdxOigE-DcGa7De6IEg?season...
An incredible show and such a creative vision of a future that alas never came to pass.
The conspiratorial angles and the continued mystery around the aliens were engrossing. Add terrifying episodes like "A Question of Priorities" and UFO probably scarred a generation of kids for life.
The Andersons created it as a show for adult audiences which explains the dark storylines and sexy outfits, but somehow it ended up being slotted in children's viewing hours!
I love the soundtrack (the future used to be groovier), and the understated Earth civilian wardrobe, but I tried to rewatch it and it's so sexist and misogynistic it's almost disturbing. And I find it cool there was never an in-universe explanation for the purple wigs.
My 1970's self liked it. My 2026 one not so much.
I also think Benedict Cumberbatch's mom was an early crush because of this series, but 1970's me didn't quite know what to do with those feelings.
> so sexist and misogynistic
It doesn't really seem that sexist for a 60s show. There's definitely a ton of male gaze, much like the miniskirts in TOS. OTOH the men are also in tight fitting clothing as well, and just like TOS it has the women in positions of power and authority which was progressive for the 60s.
While the show is campy as hell (in a fun way) many of the plotlines are extremely heavy and dark, like the episode where Striker has to choose between his duty and saving his son's life. Or the episode where his marriage falls apart because he's working too much.
From the perspective of Striker the show honestly shows the destruction of a man. He's left with nothing in life but his job, which also tortures him.
> And I find it cool there was never an in-universe explanation for the purple wigs.
I saw an interview with the costume designer (a woman FWIW) and she liked the idea of the purple wigs both as both a sign that fashion is more flexible in the 1980s and also that the wigs maybe play some practical purpose on the moon. The moon women are in some scenes on earth and they're not wearing wigs.
The silver miniskirt/leotard moon suits the women wear with removable leggings were supposed to be incredibly sexy of course, but also the designer was playing around with the idea of "modular" clothing that could be "reconfigured" for different contexts.
The fishnet shirts the submariners wear is likewise supposed to imply something both practical and highly modern. Of course, talking about male gaze the women in the submarine wear an undershirt under the fishnets whereas the men don't!
The episode (_SURVIVAL_) that stuck with me as a kid was the one where Col. Foster is lost on the surface of the Moon with an alien and they have to work together to survive. The end of the episode was gutting.
Thanks for the extra information. I do remember the series being repeated broadcast but only I saw the occasional episode.
Recently, I got the box set from a charity shop, struggled with the misogynistic imagery and attitudes just watching the first couple of episodes. I put the box set on the shelf.
Perhaps, I need to try again to watch for the character development. Especially as my wife recently dyed her hair purple. My younger self would have stunned at that and my grey hair.
>There's definitely a ton of male gaze, much like the miniskirts in TOS.
"I was wearing them on the street. What's wrong with wearing them on the air? I wore 'em on airplanes. It was the era of the miniskirt. Everybody wore miniskirts" —Nichelle Nichols, 2001 <https://web.archive.org/web/20011115192358/https://www.bbc.c...>
Arguably, because they were on a naval(? not military because Starfleet isn’t, but…) vessel in professional roles. If women had been in the air force in the 60s I doubt they’d have been in mini skirts.
Not miniskirts but:
https://myairmanmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Nellis...
Anyway in the 1960s the navy was making movies like this:
https://youtu.be/rUKcHe0-m_I?t=234
I loved, loved, loved this show when I was a kid (I saw it as a syndicated show in the US around 1971, I am guessing). Yes, the soundtrack was the hook: I came for the (at the time) great theme song, but I stayed for the mystery of the UFOs, the spaceships and moon base, and Michael Billington (who, for some reason, I liked better than the star, maybe because he was younger and actually went out into the field).
Edit: Interestingly, Ed Bishop and Michael Billington both died within five days of each other in 2005, despite Billington being quite a bit younger.
This is US centric, because it's what I'm familiar with.
I'd think really hard about how the characters are coded. I haven't seen this particular show. Short skirt and ditzy is a cash grab to sell beer. Short skirts and extremely competent? that's a whole different thing. There are a million problems with the dukes of hazard. Daisy Duke is not one of them. Extremely competent character. Echoed by Marisa Tomei in my Cousin Vinny. the us has a whole other suite of issues around race, that I'm going to avoid. Wonder Woman falls into the same category I think.
The lesson, repeatedly, don't judge a book by its cover. at the time, it's funny, but it's gently poking fun at the audience for their sexism.
maybe it's some dumb campy show. maybe there's something more subtle that's being pushed, that's only really possible to push in science fiction. this isn't us, this is some far-away future.
Gloria Steinem continued to wear mini skirts. a playboy bunny is a ditzy girl with no value beyond delivering drinks, which is gross. Legally blonde fits into the category as well, you can't just look at the surface, you have to look at the whole person.
I can't speak to this particular show. but maybe try to put yourself into the mindset of that time, and see if they're showing you something about that worldview.
This was one of my favorite shows when I was 10. When I am too old and demented to remember my own name, I will still remember the first four notes of that theme music.
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.
Ah, the memories. The joyous days spent imagining the future...
As a 70's child, I grew up with the UFO Interceptor[1] toy, a treasured possession, and fondly remember blasting it around the house, scraping it on the floor, shooting off the rocket missile, chasing the cat, pew pew... but gradually getting tired of it, losing the missile in some corner of our backyard.
I wasn't allowed to watch the TV show, but occasionally caught glimpses of it, mostly only ever interested in the scenes involving the models and spaceships, never quite getting the gist of the story...
A couple years or two later, I received the SPACE:1999 Eagle[2] toy for a birthday, must have been my 6th or 7th year - my Mum obviously realizing I'd outgrown the UFO Interceptor, having long lost the rocket bit that made it the most fun. For some reason by then I was allowed to watch the odd SPACE:1999 episode, but stopped after the trauma of the "Dragon's Domain" episode. (If you know, you know.)
I was enamored with the Eagle for a few months, but after a short period of use it then sat mostly unused as a trinket on my shelf, alongside my Capsela[3] constructions - themselves later supplemented by Denshi Blocks[4].
I have this sense that these devices were how the consumer cycle was imprinted on me as a kid, as well as a deep longing for a computer of my own.
The Interceptor->Eagle path was obvious consumerism, but something else happened .. losing the Interceptors rocket frustrated me immensely, so I fashioned a new one out of a pencil. My engineering mind was thus born.
As I recall, the latch mechanism that made the UFO Interceptor so satisfying as a projectile launcher required that I notch a groove into the pencil, a process that took me an afternoon of whittling, my first practical use of my Swiss Army knife, resulting in various waves of fun and disappointment as the latch/spring eroded the pencil down with each launch .. there was a curve of fun at which the top of the crest the pencil being launched was so satisfying, but after repeated blasts, also kind of boring as the wood wore down. I jammed the pencil in one last time and sat the Interceptor on the shelf, my own space-age Mr. Squiggle[5].
I was also, as a kid, immensely frustrated that the launched projectiles never went straight, rendering it quite useless for shooting things. Especially the cat. Still, my engineering senses had been cracked, the seed began to grow ..
I moved on to Capsela, which was an utter delight to build things to take to the bath tub, and then I was gifted a Denshi Blocks kit by a wise old HAM-fanatic uncle of mine.
Capsela and Denshi were mind-expanding to an 8 year old kid who by then was utterly enamored with any electronic technology I could get my hands on, and I even attempted wiring up the Denshi Blocks and the Capsela to try to make a kind of robot, which never got too far, although my imagination took it into cosmic realms. An imagination flavored by the UFO and SPACE:1999 model sequences, indeed.
This all faded away of course, until I touched my first computer - a Commodore Pet some business associate of my Dad had added to his office without knowing what to do with it whatsoever, just knowing he had to have one .. I think the only use it ever got was as a babysitter for me while he and Dad did whatever it was they did, as I tapped away and learned all the key combo's to make pretty pictures that were, in my mind, maps of the universe. And then, BASIC, and oh what a journey that became!
There was a sexual awakening happening in me too amidst all of this, although I didn't realize it at the time but came to know too well - the crush/trauma I'd had on the lost female crew member from "Dragon's Domain" resurfaced in my teens, and she's still the kind of girl I like. Fatal, pretty, technologically savvy yet doomed to be a victim of the dragon. A smart, imperiled girl I probably could've saved with my Capsela Denshi Robot.
(Replaced not long after with Leela from Doctor Who as a fantasy figure, I recall now fondly .. the Doctors sonic screwdriver sending me into a life-long dedication to the hobby of synthesizers, too!)
What a time to remember how the future used to be...
I've still got the Denshi Blocks kit, managed to keep them for my own kids, who haven't quite engaged as much as I'd liked, but it'll be there for the grandkids when they arrive.
I wonder what they'll do with it, if anything.
[1] - https://www.brightontoymuseum.co.uk/index/UFO_Interceptor_(D...
[2] - https://dinkytvspace.com/359-eagle-transporter/
[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsela
[4] - https://www.elektronauts.com/t/gakken-denshi-blocks/136198
[5] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Squiggle