About 5 or 6 years ago, I started to look up Gerry Anderson's early work on Youtube. I managed to see a few episodes of some of his earliest projects, as well as a competing puppet show, SPACE PATROL. Cool stuff.
I saw FOUR FEATHER FALLS, 15-minute a comedy-western series. This was delightful fun. I remember thinking TERRAHAWKS had paid tribute to multiple earlier shows, and discovered having a song in each episode came from FFF. At some point, I found out that "Rocky", the talking horse, was voiced by Kenneth Connor, one of my favorite members of the CARRY ON crew. I eventually put together a "Rocky" icon for some of the message boards I was a member at.
Then I saw SUPERCAR. I bet most of them I'd never seen before. The show's fun, but I wasn't too crazy about it. But I do plan at some point to go back and get it and FFF on DVD.
Then I saw FIREBALL XL5. This was almost traumatic, in a good way, as I had not seen it since the end of August of 1965. The website that had the episodes posted was set up in such a way that you could only watch 3 or 4 of them for free. So once I passed the limit... I ordered the DVD set. OHHH yeah. I've been buying DVDs, and later, Blu-Rays, ever since, on a regular basis. I often hear "the memory cheats", that a show you remember from being a little kid is never as good as you thought it was. NOT in this case! I loved this show all over again.
STINGRAY was also fun, though as when I was a kid, to me, it was always a bit of a step down. But I had to agree with my now-late friend in Wales, who felt it was "more fun" than VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. Crazy enough, the guy who voiced "Phones" had played "Sparks", the radio man, in the 1961 VOYAGE movie! I never made that connection before.
THUNDERBIRDS -- When I got to this, since it was all one-hour shows, I decided to stop watching nightly and switch to ONE episode PER WEEK. So it took me more than half a year to slowly plow through it. I'm convinced I enjoyed each episode more that way. Also, my friend Robin had steered me to an Anderson fan site, where someone had figured out a running order that made MORE sense than either the production order or the broadcast order, as both of them had their own different "continuity" issues.
As I went thru this, I didn't bother (yet) upgrading the 2 movies, which to me have always been TERRIBLY-inferior compared to the regular series. But maybe at some point.
CAPTAIN SCARLET AND THE MYSTERONS -- Another case where the production order varied from broadcast order (and the DVDs were in broadcast order). Yes, the show does make more sense seen in production order. This show came under fire from censors in America, lambasting it as one of the "worst" offenders (along with GIGANTOR and SPACE GHOST) when it came to "violence on children's television". For me, it was great to FINALLY see all of them INTACT, UNCUT. My one frustration was that they never "finished the story". I remember discussing it with Robin on one of our countless long-winded e-mails... and without even meaning to, I speculated right then on HOW they could have wrapped it up in ONE single episode. Blew my mind how easy it just came out like that. I'm sure I still have that e-mail on the server. One of these days, I've got to find that, so I can pass it on. To me, if you're going to tell one "big story", it not only needs a beginning and middle, but, AN ENDING.
JOE 90 -- I had only ever seen 4 episodes of this, edited together as a "movie" on cable in the 80s. I didn't know what the heck to make of it. But, eventually, as I kept watching, it grew on me. By the way, after THUNDERBIRDS, I stuck to the one episode per week schedule on Sundays nights. I'm STILL doing it!
THE SECRET SERVICE -- Another "What the HECK am I watching?" things. Also, some fun. But I understand Lew Grade (who cancelled TB 6 episodes into its 2nd season, and in the process screwed over HUNDREDS of licensing contracts) saw one episode of this and immediatley demanded Anderson STOP doing it at 12 episodes. Oh well.
JOURNEY TO THE FAR SIDE OF THE SUN -- I never liked this THING. It's an over-blown "Twilight Zone" story with a pointlessly downbeat feel from start to finish, especially the ending. Somebody really should have told Gerry & Sylvia to hire REAL writers. All 3 of their feature films border on unwatchable.
UFO -- This was a SHOCK. No kidding. I'd initially seen it in reruns in the mid-70s, then, it became the first Anderson series I taped in its entirety off The Sci-Fi Channel in the 90s. But none of that prepared me for my reaction to the DVD set. First off, I quickly found out Sci-Fi had cut 6 MINUTES from every episode. Okay, bad enough. But more. The show was run COMPLETELY OUT OF SEQUENCE in England and in America. The DVDs, with 2 minor exceptions, are in PRODUCTION order. And-- MY GOD!!! What a collossal, huge, mind-blowing difference it makes. There's far more continuity and evolution of characters and story on this than on any other Anderson series (with the possible exception of SPACE PRECINCT). It neatly breaks down into 2 parts of 13 episodes each. The first 13, you see the SHADO organization desperately trying to gets its act together, and barely scraping by in their secret war with the mysterous aliens. Then, in the 2nd half, they really start to make headway. But this is countered by the aliens upping their game, repeateldy coming up with more and different bizarre tactics. ALL of this is completely destroyed if you watch them in broadcast order. I saw someone at the IMDB complaining, "Why are the DVDs out of sequence?" IDIOT!
I'll tell you the only 2 instances of episodes being out of sequence. The first is, "Survival" was filmed before "Exposed". "Survival" was the 1st Paul Foster story, but he was only supposed to appear in that one. While making it, they realized he was just what the show needed (Paul's like a "Riker" to Straker's "Picard"). So they quickly wrote & filmed "Exposed" to "introduce" Paul. The DVDs have "Exposed" before "Survival", which makes perfect sense.
The 2nd instance is right near the end. Inexplicably, someone decided to swap the order of "Mindbender" and "Timelash". On the DVDs, "Timelash" is first. Out of curiosity, I watched them in BOTH orders, just to compare and get a feel. OH man. There was NO doubt in my head. "Mindbender" (filmed first) SHOULD be watched first. "Mindbender" was almost certainly moved to after, because part of it qualifies as a "clip show", and Anderson did several of those LAST. However... BOTH episodes take place almost entirely outdoors in the movie studio, and, if watched back-to-back, form a loose "two-parter". "Timelash", seen that way, is not only the 2nd half of said "two-parter", by the time it's over, you find yourself EXHAUSTED from watching. And then, after, you have the relatively low-key (and tragically downbeat) "epilogue", of "The Long Sleep". In that, Straker begins to fall in love with a young girl who was victimized by the aliens years before. Until, SUDDENLY, she dies of old age at the end, leaving him in a state of shock. The last scene, without words, has Straker walking away into the distance, with Virginia Lake at his side.
Straker & Lake had a difficult relationship in those later episodes, but watching them all, when I get to the end, it was so clear that, IF the show had come back for a 2nd season, they would have become a couple. Who else could he confide in but someone else in his own obsessively-TOP-SECRET outfit? It's another case of where, I get to the end, and I scream at the TV, "THIS WAS NO TIME TO CANCEL THE SHOW!!!"
The insanity was all Lew Grade's. Two-thirds of the way thru, the studio they were filming at closed down. It took at least 6 MONTHS to set up elsewhere, by which time several cast members had left and been replaced. But ITC never aired a single episode of UFO until all 26 were in the can-- then, ran them out of order. THOSE IDIOTS! With nothing else on the agenda, Century 21 had to CLOSE DOWN, all its people found other jobs, before UFO ever got on the air. That's how Derek Meddings wound up working on LIVE AND LET DIE.
I now see UFO as one of Anderson's BEST shows-- which was TOTALLY-sabotaged by the networks. Its slow sense of long-term world-building was DECADES ahead of its time. What a tragedy. But nothing as tragic as what came later.
