That one was Survival. The thing I particularly liked about it was that it used the implications of being on the moon to good dramatic effect. If you crack a window on the moon, bad things will happen! And although we hear spaceships roaring past in vacuum, it's made clear here that the characters can not hear sounds in space. This too is put to good dramatic effect, as Paul Foster, with his damaged radio, is unable to converse with people standing a yard away.

Compare that with a recent Sarah Jane Smith adventure. The evil Slitheen family, for no terribly convincing reason, switch the sun off. When that happens, there's no eight minute delay before its effects are felt, and apart from some of SJS's neighbours remarking that that's unusual, there are no lasting consequences once it's been switched back on again. Really, why bother taking on big concepts if they aren't going anywhere?

That's the aptly-named A Question of Priorities.

I think I probably saw this one as a boy when it was first broadcast. I probably found it sad at the time, but that sort of thing is generally more depressing when you're much older. In the playground, one routinely guns down one's schoolmate several times a day. Even the actual death of one classmate (aged 10) distressed me less then than it would now.

But yes, in dramatic terms, the death of Straker's son was pretty darned devastating. We'd already been shown the flashback episode when Straker had got married and his wife had given birth, and other episodes referred to his family situation - it wasn't as if his son was introduced just to get a cheap shock.

The rest of that episode was pretty good too. A UFO apparently firing on another UFO, an alien occupying the home of a very frightened blind old lady, and then - most movingly - the alien leaving the home when he knew he was going to be killed so that she would be spared.

Straker's ex-wife's reaction to her son's death after Straker had promised her everything would be all right was also very powerful. Some critics of UFO have remarked that the characters are even more wooden than the puppets in Gerry Anderson's earlier shows, but this is lazy and inaccurate. Episodes like this found the balance between exciting sci-fi action and genuine human drama. Most other shows never even tried; certainly few succeeded (alas, none of Gerry Anderson's later work came close). Over two decades later, the Buffy series (and its spin-offs) attempted to mix fantasy horror with domestic reality, and while it was admittedly pretty successful, it was way too smug about it.

Other stand-out UFO episodes include Flight Path. Paul Roper, a SHADO operative very much in love with his wife, is blackmailed into betraying SHADO. When he is found out, he volunteers for a dangerous mission on the moon in order to redeem himself. Unfortunately, following a misunderstanding, the aliens have had his wife executed. But Straker withholds this information, knowing that Roper's chances of surviving his mission are so remote that he might never need to know...

In ESP, the wife of an inexplicably telepathic man hears a strange sound outside her house. She pulls back the curtains, and the last thing she sees is a UFO flying low above her lawn, approaching the house on a high-speed collision course. Later, the widower manages to convey just how desperate the aliens are to survive.

In the banned episode The Long Sleep, a young couple on LSD encounter a group of aliens who are burying something in the grounds of a house. The young couple have no conception of how much danger they are in - and not just from the aliens. When the young man decides he can fly from the roof of the house, he learns the hard way that gravity doesn't make exceptions.

But one of the most disturbingly amoral episodes has to be Four Sided Triangle. A young woman, bored of her marriage to an older man, is persuaded by her lover (Patrick Mower) to murder her husband when he comes home from work. So when the front door opens, she guns down the man who comes in before realising she's just killed an alien... When SHADO arrive, they assume she killed the alien in self-defence, and they administer a drug to her and Patrick Mower and her husband to make them forget the events of the past day. Only afterwards do Straker and Freeman realise they've walked in on a murder which not only was going to happen, but which still will happen! "Should we do something about it?" asks Freeman. "We're not in the morality business," replies Straker. So they let events run their course, and an innocent man is murdered.

They don't write 'em like that any more.

Yes that was exceptional - There is another episode, where a couple romantically linked are on a mission - One has to watch the other killed during an alien attack, because to try and help her would spring the trap they were laying

I don't recognise that one. Can you give some more detail?

Unless you mean The Psychobombs. Paul Foster becomes romantically involved with a young woman who has been turned into a psychobomb as a result of alien conditioning. Two previous candidates managed to do serious damage to SHADO (a Skydiver and Fairfield Tracking Station) but the third one - a beautiful woman - is behaving so normally that Foster can't believe she's part of any plot. So he lets her into SHADO HQ. Big mistake...

I watched this series as a kid, and bought both seasons on DVD a couple of years back. I was a little shocked as to the subject matter (seeing people slaughtered with machine guns in episode 1!) but the only thing I remember that shocked me as a kid was seeing our hero putting on one of the aliens helmets and seeing the faceplate fill up with green liquid!

I was disappointed that they never made a 3rd season, and even more disappointed to find the budget for that season ended up funding the 1st season of Space:1999! Arrrggh!

Has anyone a clue as to why the characters pronounced it "U-foe". Is that a british "thing" or what?

Early on, it was apparently a common pronunciation that eventually gave way to pronouncing each letter individually.

There was a commentary on that in the Wiki article.

Yeah! I love those Anderson designed ships and the purple haired girls in charge of launching them.
I saw the series for a while as a kid and the only two things that bothered me back then; we (the Earthlings) opened fire on the aliens the moment they showed up in episode 1, and later we never really get to see the aliens. Later they were shown to have evil intentions.

P.S. I just got the DVD of the Night Stalker series, (minus the outstanding Las Vegas Vampire pilot movie,) and its great. Really dig the witty repartee scenes at the newspaper.

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"Insignificant molehill sometimes more important than conspicuous mountain." - Charlie Chan

And always sent them right past the Moon, where the interceptors were based. They should have just waited two weeks.

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I just looked through my episode guide - And the episode was Computer Affair. I might be confused about the ending - but I recall two ground units closing in on a downed UFO - one comes under attack, the other holds fire to avoid detection. The last part I am working on a 20 year old memory, but I am sure the final scene is Straeker and Foster talking about the event, and wondering if ultimately they did the right thing

Ah yes!

You've got the final events slightly confused.

Early in the episode, a UFO had survived its encounter with the three interceptors, and was heading on a collision course with them. Lt Gay Ellis on Moonbase had to compute evasive courses for all three, but she gave priority to the one piloted by Mark Bradley. As a result, one of the other pilots was killed.

Ellis and Bradley were sent to Earth, and various tests were run on them. The conclusion drawn - by the computer, not by them - was that they were in love, but in denial.

Meanwhile, the UFO, which had survived a near-miss by an interceptor, a glancing hit by Peter Calvin in Sky One, and a bad landing in Canada, was still at large.

Three mobiles went after the downed UFO. The first mobile was destroyed by it. With two remaining, Gay Ellis deliberately put the one with Mark Bradley in danger by sending his one in, even though the other was better placed.

Bradley survived, and even managed to bring in a surviving alien.

The episode ended with Ellis and Bradley going out to dinner together, unsure of their feelings towards each other.

SID (Space Intruder Detector) was on the other side of the orbit. SID's long-range (and FTL) scanner would have alerted them in time to get there.

Except in one episode when the UFO was coming in so fast they didn't have time to do anything.

Are you confusing this with Captain Scarlet? (Heck, I sound like Comic Book Guy!)

In the first episode, "Identified", we see an encounter that took place ten years earlier. A UFO had landed and a group of young people (including the sister of Peter Carlin, the Sky One pilot) went to investigate. They were butchered.

The action returns to the "present", with Commander Straker and General Henderson in a car (with a security escort) looking at photographs of the victims of alien attacks. While they are doing this, a UFO arrives and attacks the small motorcade. Straker survives, Henderson is blinded and confined to a wheelchair for several months, and the driver and escort are killed.

Later in the episode they are able to fight back. They shoot down a UFO and recover the body of the alien. He doesn't survive for long. When they do an autopsy, they find the internal organs of Peter Carlin's sister inside him.

We do get to see aliens in later episodes, but they are just humans whose skin got discoloured. In one episode, "The Cat With Ten Lives", it's implied that the aliens can occupy any living body (including a cat's) - the only reason we see them as human-like is because those are the bodies they stole in the first place.

It's also strongly implied that the aliens aren't evil - just desperate.

Thanks for the update! I did miss some of it.

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"Insignificant molehill sometimes more important than conspicuous mountain." - Charlie Chan

Ahhhh ty muchly, nice to see the old brain still has a few cylinders still in action lol