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Unidentified Flying Terror: The Unknowable Horror of the UFO

The first thing you notice is the unsettling sound that emerges from above. An atonal whirring buzz that sounds too high-pitched to be a helicopter or an airplane and too droning to be a missile. Flashes of eye-catching light indicate something approaching, closer and closer, louder and louder. A glimpse of some metallic spinning sphere is caught, but seen far too late. A shriek of firepower erupts rom the object, causing horrific carnage. The aliens are here – and are waging war!

UFO on positive track

The flying saucer of which Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s 1970 live action sci-fi drama UFO is named after is a machine of intriguing juxtapositions. Its simple, uncomplicated, egg-like design is at odds with the unstoppable level of terrifying destruction that it can bring. The mere presence of just one of these machines evading the outer defences of S.H.A.D.O. is enough to send the organisation scrambling into red alert to combat the latest invasion from an alien menace intent on harvesting human organs for their own survival.

Where so many classic Anderson vehicles are adorned with intensely detailed designs and ludicrously memorable names, the comparative simplicity of the UFO captures an altogether different tone. The vehicle itself is just one of hundreds, possibly thousands, all the same in design and not given any distinct designation. It is simply known as the UFO. Alien spacecraft were no new thing to Century 21 Productions’ ground-breaking special effects unit. The team had regularly been devising fanciful alien craft since the earlier days of Supercar and Fireball XL5 in the early 1960s. But with UFO, Century 21 was finally shifting away from the Supermarionation puppets and into serious, adult-orientated, live action drama, partly inspired by the ongoing phenomena of real-world accounts of UFO sightings. The design of the main antagonist’s means of transport then demanded a touch of reality about it compared to the more outlandish offerings seen in Fireball XL5 and Captain Scarlet.

The UFOs themselves boast a disarmingly compact design that tunes into a sort of universal visual acknowledgement of what anyone’s idea of a UFO might look like. If UFOs, by their very nature, went unseen, then this take on the outer space invaders’ vehicle would have to mirror that ‘unknowable’ factor. This would be achieved by the craft’s spinning capabilities and silverly form, granting it the ability to exist in an obscured manner and blend in with most atmospheric environments when invading the Earth, but with enough otherworldly menace to instil some palpable terror when seen up close.

Its functionality is left mostly unrevealed during the course of the series, infusing the machine with a constant unnerving energy. Why does it spin like that? Why does it glow when endangered? How is it able to fire destructive lasers at any given target? The answers can only be guessed at by Commander Ed Straker and the rest of S.H.A.D.O., but from a narrative viewpoint, the lack of anything definitive is the point. The UFO is an otherworldly force meant to astound, perplex, and terrify in equal measure.

Model menaces

Behind the scenes, these flying saucers initially proved to be a nightmare to film for Derek Meddings and his special effects crew. The UFOs themselves were designed to be purposefully disorientating to the eye, like a flash of lightning. Attempts in past productions to create UFOs with moving parts weren’t entirely successful. Earlier efforts saw the special effects crew attempt to fix the models with out-of-shot motors to elicit the desired spinning effect, but this in turn gave them a staggered, unconvincing appearance. The lumbering Mysterons UFOs seen in Attack on Cloudbase from Captain Scarlet spring to mind as a forerunner to what UFO would eventually achieve.

The constantly improving nature of Meddings and his team, regularly building on their skills and experiences from series to series, paved the way to a simple yet effective solution being found. When creating the UFO models, a motor was built into the body of the vehicle itself and a transparent dome placed around the internal mechanism, which was then suspended on wired flying rigs. To aid further in producing a frighteningly unreal visual style, the dome itself was adorned with reflective panels. That combination of light-bouncing components and spinning motion created a dizzying yet compelling look to the craft, imbuing it with mystery and menace.

For UFO, the company’s special effects unit also created some of the most realistic outdoor sets ever seen in a Gerry Anderson production, and crafted some terrifically authentic crashlanding sequences whenever a UFO managed to be intercepted by S.H.A.D.O. It was common for a UFO to make its emergency descent into some remote woodland with nearby lakes and mountain backdrops, all of which were produced in spectacularly ‘real’ style – even if these moments were driven more by plot convenience baked into the scripts that the UFO would always crash-land somewhere helpfully remote instead of a more populated area!

Nevertheless, the UFO itself has become synonymous with the darkly minded appeal of Gerry Anderson’s first live action TV series itself. The alien craft is a symbol of the speculative intrigue and body horror that comes with the alien invasion that S.H.A.D.O. finds itself swept up in.

You can relive UFO‘s fantastic alien terrors with our brand new UFO collectable model! This wonderfully produced model authentically recreates the alien craft’s stunning original design and features its very own spinning mechanism.

Pre-order the UFO collectable model now from the Official Gerry Anderson store!

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Written by
Fred McNamara

Atomic-powered writer/editor. Website editor at Official Gerry Anderson. Author of Flaming Thunderbolts: The Definitive Story of Terrahawks. Also runs Gerry Anderson comic book blog Sequential 21.

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