U.F.O. The birth of S.H.A.D.O. (1970-1971)
26 episodes of 45 metric* minutes each, rated 7.9 by 3,690 televisualistas.
Genre: Sy Fy; Subspecies: The Andersons.
Verdict: ssslllooowww.
Tag line: ahead of and behind the times simultaneously.
This is episode 1.
One-expression Ed convinces the world to fund S.H.A.D.O., well the Western European world. Though Russian food is labeled in one scene no reds were part of this stellar NATO. Then there are the Arab, African, and Asian worlds more or less omitted. Defending Earth is the white western man’s burden.
By the way, that is the Supreme Headquarters of the Alien Defence Organisation.
Instantaneous passage of ten years to or from (I forget which) 2056 and after an evident truce, it is now game on.
Neat idea to HQ it below a film studio that will explain the oddities. But we never see Stone-Faced Ed being his cover as movie mogul. Nor any movie sets used by the aliens to infiltrate humanity.
Neat idea that the aliens have come to harvest organ donors. Their brains got bigger than their other parts and they can no longer reproduce. Alan Jones often has said too much reading leads to impotence. Could he be one them! That would explain a lot.
That no relatives can ever know the truth of the incident from which their offspring disappeared. See organ donors above.
No communication and no negotiation. Nor any effort at either.
The result is a humourless melodrama that is directed at a snail’s pace.
All the signatures of the Andersons are displayed.
Actors whose cannot act like Ed Bishop and many others. Stuck among this dross is one superb actor who slums his way through, George Sewell, remember him from Special Branch, or Smiley’s People where he briefly stole the show from Alec Guinness.
In one scene stone-faced Ed berates a carefully selected, highly trained other rank for sticking chewing gum on a computer screen. The other rank hangs his head like an immature schoolboy. It’s a trifecta of bad writing, bad acting, and bad directing.
The Andersons always thought, I have read, that the toy models and fashions were the stars. The actors were there to point to the models while wearing the clothes. They achieved their goals with the puppets in Thunderbirds. Wooden actors and plenty of toys.
In SHADO all the important stuff is on paper. Everyone smokes constantly even on Moonbase. Whiskey is free and on tap at the office, so none of the sots ever leave which helps security.
Outlandish costumes in garish primary colours. For men style ranges from onesies with Nehru jackets to open weave mesh pullover shirts that reveal hairy chests. For women it was aluminium foil micro skirts, oh, also those Moon-base purple wigs which are never explained, remarked, or otherwise integrated. Speaking of wigs, Ed’s decade transformation in one scene is by changing wigs from boyish blond curls to the ash grey of responsibility was cute and unconvincing.
Notably in one scene a man fetched coffee for a woman rather than the other way around. He was a West Indian and not a European so maybe it was colonial servility and not egalitarian courtesy in the dark ages of the 1970s.
The camera is constantly on women from the back: up and down hips to heels, and from the front: up and down chest to head. Sexism at its 1970s best. The fraternity brothers gave this show 10.0. There were no crotch shots of the men that I noticed, and I was looking!
Model craft is an end in itself. In this case they are pretty good, though I can almost see the elfin Gerry Anderson pulling the invisible strings.
Having watched with pleasure the French OVNI (UFO) a few months ago when this came up on You Tube, I watched it. It is as bad as I remember it to be. Age has not improved this film.
*As a meter is longer than an Anglo yard, so a metric minute is longer than an Anglo minute by 15 seconds with a total of 75 seconds in every minute. This fact can be verified at the World Institute of Time website.