Trivia / UFO (1970)

• The Danza: Ed Straker is played by Ed Bishop.
• Defictionalization: Funds were raised for The Explorer Motor Company to produce a real-life version of the futuristic gull-winged car driven by Straker. A plastic mold of the vehicle was made (to be called 'Quest'), but the company never got off the ground. Part of the reason for this may have been because Ed Bishop (Straker) and Micheal Billington (Foster) were very loud in their criticism of this car in interviews, calling it impossible to drive due to a steering wheel that was designed for looks rather than function. The gullwing doors were supposedly also very unreliable, either they refused to open at all or required a crewmember to keep them aloft out of shot so that they didn't fall down onto the actors' heads when they were trying to get out.
• Out of Order: Every TV broadcaster showed the 26 episodes in different order, due to the then highly-localized nature of the ITV "network" in Britain (this was completely normal at the time, and explains the absence of multi-episode plotlines) - in fact, three ITV regions once premiered different episodes of the show at the exact same time! And some episodes didn't air in some parts of the UK until a year or two after the series had completed its run elsewhere.
• Science Marches On: "Conflict" shows SHADO operatives in orbit clearing old still-orbiting junk from prior missions out of Earth's local space by attaching devices to the masses and ... blowing them up. Today with the vastly greater amount of material flying about and the proposed danger of Kessler syndrome shows just why that is a horrible idea. Funnily enough Straker was arguing for this clearing of orbits using explosives specifically because SHADO space operations were made more risky due to how much was already in orbit.
• Short-Lived, Big Impact: UFO ultimately only lasted for one series of 26 episodes, but it has influenced a huge amounts of other media properties, especially in Japan, where it attracted a very passionate local fanbase, and reached Cult Classic status much quicker than in the West. The show's influence can probably most overtly be seen in Hideaki Anno's smash-hit anime series, Neon Genesis Evangelion (to add more to it, Anno had in his youth been in a short-lived amateur film production group named "SHADO" along with some high school friends). But that is not to say that its impact in the West is entirely negligible, as the show was cited as the main inspiration for MicroProse's X Com UFO Defense.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • UFO can be seen as this to Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.
  • The series also had its own Spiritual Successor in Space: 1999. Especially given that it was originally planned as continuation of UFO.

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