Talk about hearing something you didn't want to hear ...

Tonight, I was looking for some data on the Thunderbirds TV show (specifically, one of the machines "used" in the show) and I happened across some unsettling news. Two of the lead actors from Gerry Anderson's "UFO" died two months ago, and within days of each other.

http://www.fanderson.org.uk/news2.html#EdandMike

OK, so most of you out there don't know either of these guys, and even if you did you probably don't care ... but I have to say something. UFO was, in many ways, the show that turned me around when it finally showed on US television in 1973 or so. Not knowing anything about it, other than it had something to do with spaceflight, I sat at my grandmother's house with my brand new cassette recorder all set to tape the theme music (this was a very big deal to me when I was younger) and when that OC montage hit ... well, it really makes an impact. It turns out that I'm not the only one that it made an impact on: watch it and then watch the Evangelion OC and tell me that one isn't drawn from the other in editing if not the whole thing. The similarities don't stop there, either: the entire thing with the buildings that slide underground is right out of UFO (as well as other Gerry Anderson shows). But this thing floored me like nothing before it did. Certainly nothing on TV, and that includes the original Star Trek which I had watched as they showed each week on their original run (ie: a few years before).

The show was amazing ... it's one of my favorite things to this day. Grim, creepy ... this wasn't a lightweight, throwaway show at all. It dealt with death, with secrecy at all costs, with life-changing decisions, with friendships strained to breaking and beyond, with estrangement and with top-down conflict. The good guys didn't always win: like Captain Scarlet (another Gerry Anderson show), the end of the show was only one chapter in a much longer and more difficult story. In fact, the good guys RARELY won. I could talk about this show for hours (maybe one day, in some other post and at some other time when I'm not so damned upset about this, I will), and I was very pleased when A&E released the DVD set a few years ago.

But, let me put this into perspective: how would you feel if you learned that two of the leads in Buffy TV had died within days of each other?

How did you feel when you found out that Jimmy Doohan passed? How about DeForest Kelley?

How do you think you'll deal with it when Shatner or Nimoy go?

What did you think when you learned that John Colicos had died (if you're more newschool)?

UFO was responsible, in many ways, for me going back to reading SF (which I'd mostly abandoned for hard science and aeronautics), and from that many other things opened up to me. When I started going to conventions, one of the first things I actually bought was the UFO Town Mook ... not a word of which I could read, of course ... for a then exorbitant price. This book, in fact, was the very FIRST book that I ever bought that I could not read ... my very first Japanese volume. Turns out that the Japanese loved the stuff that Gerry Anderson had done and was doing too (and do to this day: Konami is a company that must be destroyed!*)

I won't say the show was perfect: while it attempted things not typically done at the time, they're typically done now. Since Captain Scarlet and everything before were basically devoid of sexual content of any sort, UFO addressed that problem in a sometimes jarring and sometimes effective way. I still love it, though and probably always will. It told one continuous story in sequence, and to this day I wonder where it was going to end. There was only the single season (26 episodes), and then Gerry went off and did Space: 1999 (which lasted TWO seasons). It was because UFO was such a groundbreaking show that Space: 1999 always felt like a letdown to me. Space: 1999 toned down the sex a lot, but it was frequently very sterile and sometimes even (in the first season, particularly) painful to watch. I don't think they that Gerry ever really found that balance, but I'll take the sometimes heavyhandedness of UFO's content any day.

Most of the diehard Gerry Anderson fans will talk about watching Thunderbirds or Captain Scarlet when they were kids (but when I was that age, it was more like Fireball XL5 and Stingray later on), but for me the Gerry Anderson show is and will always be UFO.

I can't even put into words how upset I am about this. Not a good way to end the evening at all.

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*Konami has a series of UFO toys and figures ... in sealed boxes, so you don't know which of the standard six you're getting. When they released these (all of which are incredible, btw), for every 50 regular toys they had a single Lt. Ellis ... of course, the coolest toy in the series. When they reissued the toys, in every 50 boxes they had a DIFFERENT Lt. Ellis figure (this time in her off-duty uniform). The series 1 and series 2 Lt. Ellis show up on EBay every once in a while for stupid money (the series 1 figure is typically double or triple the cost of the series 2, but of course it's almost infinitely cooler, too), but money that I would gladly spend if I had it. To make matters worse, they ALSO did Space 1999 toys, and the rare chase toy was a Mk IX Hawk ... which is perhaps the coolest thing in THAT entire damned show. Konami must be destroyed.