Joe 90 (1968)

Joe 90 was the last of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s science fiction TV series to be filmed entirely using puppets. His next series, The Secret Service, used a mix of puppets and live action. Joe 90 originally aired in Britain in late 1968 and early 1969 and was syndicated in the US in 1969.

Joe 90 represented something of a departure from the earlier Anderson Supermarionation series, being a blend of science fiction and spy thriller concepts.

The series did not do quite as well as earlier series. There are several possible reasons for this. Ironically the sheer technical sophistication of the series may have counted against it. The previous Anderson series, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, had introduced the new-style puppets with realistic human proportions. The puppets were now extraordinarily life-like but they lacked the character and the charm of the older-style puppets used in series like Thunderbirds. This had not been a huge problem in Captain Scarlet with its very dark and brooding tone but it does take some of the fun away in Joe 90.

Joe 90 also suffers from having one of the worst introductory episodes in history. While it does the job of introducing the characters and explaining the background it makes use of a certain plot technique that is just about certain to have most viewers looking for a housebrick to hurl through the TV screen. It’s also the kind of thing that is likely to make viewers suspect that it might turn up again in later episodes. And, unfortunately, it does turn up again, in the very poor episode Three’s a Crowd.

This is a pity because in fact the series as a whole is not all that bad, although it is very uneven.

The central premise is clever, although it has to be said that it's also slightly disturbing. Professor Ian McClaine has invented a machine called BIGRAT which can record a person’s brain patterns and then implant those brain patterns into someone else’s brain. BIGRAT can give any person all the skills and knowledge of any other person. Not surprisingly the World Intelligence Network (WIN) is very interested in this invention. Professor Ian McClaine demonstrates the technique on his nine-year-old son Joe.

WIN super spymaster Sam Loover then comes up with a daring plan. Young Joe can be turned into a truly formidable secret agent. He can be given the skills and knowledge most suited for any mission and he will have the perfect cover - no-one is going to suspect a nine-year-old boy of being a secret agent!

Of course you’d have to wonder whether anyone would agree to have his nine-year-old son sent on incredibly dangerous undercover spy missions but Professor MacClaine rather surprisingly thinks it’s all a splendid idea. Joe McClaine becomes Joe 90, WIN’s Most Special Agent.

Another problem with this series is Professor MacClaine’s jet car. The futuristic aircraft and vehicles in the earlier Gerry Anderson series had always managed to look not just futuristic but sleek, sexy and at least vaguely plausible. And never silly. The jet car in Joe 90 by contrast does look a bit silly and a bit dorky. Gerry Anderson was very unhappy with the design, and rightly so.

By the time Joe 90 entered production Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s team had become extraordinarily technically proficient. The puppets really do look quite life-like. The models of aircraft and vehicles had always looked good but the production team were now able to make them move in a fairly convincing manner. Aircraft really do look like they’re flying. And of course the explosions, which had always been impressive, were now very impressive indeed.

Being essentially a spy thriller series with some science fiction trappings Joe 90 obviously has a different feel compared to Anderson’s earlier series. That’s a good thing in some ways although I do get the impression the writers were less comfortable in the spy genre. Finding story-lines in which a nine-year-old boy (even with expert knowledge) could plausibly play the leading role was a challenge and some of the stories have an edge of silliness. This silliness had been an occasional feature of the very early Anderson series that had largely disappeared by the time he did Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet (in which the standard of writing was generally quite high). To my way of thinking the Joe 90 episodes penned by Shane Rimmer (such as Splashdown, Relative Danger and Big Fish) are more action-oriented and closer in feel to the great Anderson series of the past.

Tony Barwick contributed the dreadful Three’s a Crowd but he also wrote Hi-Jacked (which  is a fun gangster tale) and International Concerto (which includes a clever use of Joe’s abilities). The Unorthodox Shepherd (another Barwick episode) experiments with the use of actual location shooting mixed with the miniatures work, a feature that would be taken much further in the next Anderson series, The Secret Service.

The idea of doing something a bit lighter after the very dark Captain Scarlet was not altogether bad but on the whole Joe 90 was a backward step. Each previous Gerry Anderson series had been just a touch more grown-up than the previous one, which made sense since the kids who’d started out watching Supercar back in 1961 were now that much older. Having a nine-year-old boy as the central character made Joe 90 seem more kiddie-oriented, perhaps just a little too much so. The idea of doing a spy series rather than a straightforward sci-fi series was also by no means bad but it doesn’t quite come off. 

Joe 90 has its moments but after Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet it’s just a little disappointing. If you’re a Gerry Anderson completist you’ll want it, otherwise rent a few episodes before risking a purchase.

Warrior Queen (1978)

Warrior Queen is a six-part 1978 British television series dealing with Queen Boudicca’s revolt against the Romans in AD 61. It’s an ambitious idea and it’s not without interest but it is sadly somewhat let down by a minuscule budget.

Warrior Queen was made by Thames TV and was undoubtedly inspired by the huge success the BBC had had with the superb I, Claudius series a year earlier. Welsh actress Siân Phillips had played the wicked but fascinating Empress Livia in that series and had created something of a sensation. Starring her in another historical drama, especially in such an iconic rôle, must have seemed like a splendid idea at the time.

The series begins with the death of the king of the Iceni, a British tribe that had been allied to Rome. Roman imperial policy in dealing with client kingdoms was to annex the kingdom on the death of the client king. The king of the Iceni has tried to forestall this by making a will leaving half his kingdom to Rome and half to his two grand-daughters. The king has however not counted on the rapacity and foolishness of the Roman procurator Catus Decianus (Nigel Hawthorne). The procurator has the king’s widow Boudicca (sometimes known as Boadicea) flogged while Boudicca’s two daughters are raped.

Boudicca is not prepared to let this outrage pass. Encouraged by the druid priest Volthan (Michael Gothard) she decides on open revolt. To have any chance of success she will need allies from other British tribes. She establishes herself as leader of the revolt by defeating Morticcus, king of the Catuvellauni, in single combat.

The revolt goes well at first but challenging the Roman Empire was not something to be undertaken lightly. The Roman Ninth Legion is destroyed in battle and Boudicca’s Britons sack the cities of Verulamium, Camulodunum and Londinium. The Britons will however still have to face the army of Suetonius Paulinus, a tough professional soldier.

The casting of Siân Phillips as Boudicca is generally successful. She has the kind of charisma to make a believable leader although she’s less confident in action scenes. Her single combat with Morticcus is ludicrously unconvincing and quite embarrassingly badly staged.

Nigel Hawthorne as Catus Decianus gives exactly the kind of overripe performance you’d expect from the actor who went on the win fame as Sir Humphrey Appleby in Yes Minister. Hawthorne plays the procurator as a full-blown melodrama villain. He doesn’t actually twirl his moustaches when contemplating evilness (Romans being clean-shaven) but you know that if he did have moustaches he’d be twirling them. Surprisingly the performance works.

The standout performance however is by Michael Gothard as the druid priest Volthan. Volthan is actually the most interesting character in the series. Catus Decianus is pure wickedness and Boudicca is brave and noble but Volthan is more ambiguous. To a certain extent he manipulates Boudicca for his own ends but at the same time there’s no question of his ultimate loyalty or of the ferocity and sincerity of his hatred of the Romans. At times he’s a wise adviser, at other times he can be seen as an evil genius propelling Boudicca towards a tragic fate.

The series does take a rather sceptical (or at least ambivalent) stance towards the druids. If the Romans are stereotypical bad guys and the Britons are depicted as stereotypical good guys then the druids are something else again. The series makes it plain that the druid religion was pretty savage and Volthan is most certainly a fanatic. He is not however an outright villain. He is totally sincere in his belief that cataclysmic disaster will inevitably follow if the Britons turn away from their old gods. 

Michael Gothard goes totally over-the-top, all crazed eyes and doing some delightfully creepy wolf growls. The scenes where Volthan writhes on the ground in a wolf-skin are probably the most striking scenes in the whole series. And the most effective - those scenes really do convince us that we are dealing with a civilisation that is very alien in its values. It’s also makes it easy to understand why the Romans regard the Celtic inhabitants of Britain as complete barbarians.

The sets and costumes are reasonably good and the makeup (when the Britons paint their face prior to battle) is effective. The problems with this series arise when it comes to the battle scenes. This is after all a story of war. The battle scenes are crucial. And it’s not easy to do memorable battle scenes when you only have a couple of dozen extras. The method chosen to get around the difficulty is to use lots of freeze-frames and close-ups but it’s hardly satisfactory. Most fatally we just don’t get any genuine sense of the might of Imperial Rome, or of the awe the Roman soldiers must have felt when facing Boudicca’s army which at its peak certainly numbered many tens of thousands.

In 1978 British television’s obsession with gritty realism was starting to reach its high-water mark and at least some of that obsession is on display here. Warrior Queen does pull its punches at times, perhaps not altogether surprising since the half-hour format suggests the series was originally aimed at younger viewers. On the other hand there are some quite grim moments, and some very grim concepts, so I can't say I’m entirely sure it was ideal viewing for the kiddies.

The overall atmosphere is fairly convincingly grungy, very much in the style that became increasingly popular for historical dramas.

Warrior Queen has its problems. As spectacle it falls pretty flat. It does feature some fine acting though, Volthan is a wonderfully larger-than-life figure, and the series moves along at a pleasingly brisk pace. The basic story is reasonably accurate historically. And it’s generally quite entertaining. I’m quite happy to give this one a recommendation and if you’re a fan of British historical dramas you’ll definitely want to see it. Worth a purchase. Network’s single-disc DVD release looks perfectly fine.

The Invaders, season one (1967)

The Invaders, which aired on the US ABC  network from January 1967 to March 1968, is one of the many TV series and movies to take its inspiration from the original 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie.

All these series and movies could be described as belonging to the secret alien invasion paranoia genre. The basic idea of course is that we are facing an invasion by aliens who look just like us. Anybody could be an alien. No-one can be trusted. There is always one person, or sometimes two, who knows the truth but no-one will believe them.

The opening episode, Beachhead, sets things up pretty effectively. It gives us enough information to get us interested but wisely it doesn’t attempt to fill in any details. We know as much as the hero knows. He is aware that he has stumbled onto something big and that it involves aliens here on Earth. At this stage neither Vincent nor the audience knows anything about the origins of the aliens, or their intentions, or their methods. He knows they can be ruthless. This first episode also adds an intriguing suggestion of ambiguity - perhaps not all the aliens are entirely hostile and perhaps there is some disagreement among them about their policy towards humanity.

At four o’clock in the morning architect David Vincent (Roy Thinnes), returning in his car from a business meeting, loses his way and finds himself at a deserted diner. He sees a flying saucer land, and that’s all he remembers. He is, perhaps a little naïvely, determined to alert the authorities. Not surprisingly the police think he was over-tired and imagined the whole thing. But David Vincent knows what he saw and his life will never be the same again.

The second episode, The Experiment, gives us a bit more information. We learn something of the capabilities and the methods of the aliens and we get an inkling that they may be more well established on Earth than David Vincent originally thought. This episode also reinforces the all-pervading atmosphere of paranoia as Vincent discovers just how careful he has to be in deciding whether or not to trust anyone else with his knowledge.

The Mutation offers some more hints that the aliens may be divided against themselves and that some aliens may be potential allies. The Leeches picks up on ideas about brainwashing that were so popular in the late 50s and early 60s. The next couple of episodes are just treading water but things pick up in episode 7, Nightmare. Killer insects are always fun and this story definitely has the kind of vibe that the better episodes of The X-Files had.

The difficulty with a series with this kind of premise is to keep coming up with new and interesting conspiracies on the part of the aliens. The Innocent adds mind control to the mix, with a fairly well-done dream sequence.

The premise of the series is fairly dark to begin with but with episodes 10 (The Ivy Curtain) and 11 (The Betrayed) it takes a very dark turn indeed - surprisingly so for a 1967 American network TV series. This works well, emphasising just how high the stakes are in this contest and the personal price David Vincent will have to pay.

The Invaders first went to air as a mid-season replacement which is why the first season comprises only seventeen episodes. This was followed by a full second season, which sadly proved to be the last.

The special effects are quite adequate by the standards of 1960s television and there are some reasonably impressive (and effectively sinister) sets. The production values are quite respectable.

Roy Thinnes makes an effective hero. He comes across as a fairly ordinary kind of guy but with a strong streak of determination and stubbornness and just a hint of obsessiveness, but without overdoing things. He isn’t impossibly brave or impossibly clever - he just doesn’t give up.

It’s very important in a series like this not to make the aliens excessively omnipotent. They have to be capable of making mistakes, but they still have to be convincingly menacing. Both the hero and his alien adversaries have to suffer their share of setbacks. The mistake made much later in The X-Files was to make the odds against the hero just a little bit too high so that he never really seemed likely to win. The Invaders manages to avoid this pitfall - at times David Vincent seems like he is getting close to success. The X-Files did copy one important ingredient from the Invaders - just when David Vincent seems to have found the evidence he needs to convince the authorities that evidence always seems to vanish completely.

The parallels between The Invaders and The X-Files are quite close. In both cases the hero knows the truth but he can’t prove it and in both cases he finds himself labelled as a nut. In both cases the hero faces enemies who have infiltrated themselves into positions of power and influence, and apparent respectability. In both cases the hero is faced with the problem of not being able to trust anyone. The principal difference is that the aliens in The Invaders are the only enemy - the government is often unhelpful or even obstructive but it isn’t the enemy. This means that the paranoia level is not quite as overwhelming as in The X-Files but the advantage is that the conflict seems slightly more evenly balanced.

The Region 2 The Invaders Believers Box includes commentary tracks for a couple of episode, interviews with star Roy Thinnes plus the extended version of the pilot episode, Beachhead. The extended pilot includes a few extra scenes that are rather interesting. They could be seen as vaguely suggesting an alternative explanation for the events of this episode. On balance I think the episode works better in its shorter form. The Invaders is not a series like The X-Files where we start off not being sure if the protagonist is correct in his suspicions. It’s made clear right from the get-go that this is no delusion - this is all too real. The deleted scenes undermine this certainty just a little. That could have been interesting if they had wanted to go down that path but if they had it would have been a very different series. Given the way the series actually pans out that would have been a distraction. The tension in this series comes from the fact that we are as sure as David Vincent that what he has seen is real, even if he has extreme difficulty in persuading any of the other characters of this. 

The extra scenes also give us a little of the backstory on David Vincent’s past and this is also something that on balance is an unnecessary distraction. We already have a fair idea of the sort of man he is and that’s really all we need to know about him.

It’s interesting to compare The Invaders to the excellent and very underrated 1965 British science fiction TV series Undermind. Undermind’s basic premise is very similar and it also has large helpings of paranoia as the protagonists slowly come to realise they can only trust each other. Undermind suffers from that mid-60s filmed-live-on-videotape look characteristic of British television of that era. The Invaders looks a lot more impressive although Undermind perhaps has slightly more ambitious and interesting ideas.

The Invaders is classic paranoia science fiction and highly entertaining to boot. Highly recommended.

Ellery Queen (1975-76)

The Ellery Queen TV series which aired on NBC for one season in 1975-76 was a very successful attempt to capture the flavour of the very popular Ellery Queen mystery novels. Although critics generally loved it and it is now highly regarded the series unfortunately lasted only one season.

The late 1940s has been chosen for the setting. I’m not sure that settings are always absolutely 100 percent accurate but they certainly look terrific. 

Like any series set in the past it reflects the time that it was made as well as the time in which it’s supposed to be set. That’s always inevitable to some extent but the producers in his case have tried very hard not to make it too obviously 70s. 

They’ve also managed pretty successfully to keep 1970s cynicism out of the series and to avoid making value judgments about the 40s.

The 70s was an era of increasingly graphic violence and sleaze in movies and this trend was starting to become evident in television as well. The Ellery Queen series made a refreshing change from all that. The series captures the flavour of the golden age of detective fiction where the emphasis is on solving an intricate puzzle rather than wallowing in sleaze and degradation.

Jim Hutton makes a very engaging Ellery Queen, perhaps even more engaging (and rather less snobbish) than the Ellery of the novels. He does look rather boyish but his enthusiasm is infectious. David Wayne plays Ellery’s father Inspector Richard Queen and he’s just as personable. John Hillerman has an amusing recurring role as radio detective Simon Brimmer who is constantly trying to prove himself a real detective, except that his solutions to the crime are invariably ingenious but wrong. Simon Brimmer did not appear in any of the Ellery Queen books, being a character created specifically for the TV series. He adds an element of comedy which was presumably considered necessary for television.

The series borrows one of the most famous devices of the early Ellery Queen novels, the famous Challenge to the Reader. Toward the end of the novels the reader would be informed that he or she now possesses all the information necessary to solve the mystery and is challenged to match wits with the fictional detective. In the TV series Ellery breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience directly offering the same challenge. It was quite a bold movie to include this element but it works very well.

Ellery Queen the detective is also Ellery Queen, successful writer of detective novels. Quite a few of the stories have a show business background or deal with some aspect of the literary or art worlds. Several deal with radio. All of this is quite fitting given that the Ellery Queen of the books was for a time a Hollywood screenwriter, and given that there was a successful Ellery Queen radio series. One episode, The Adventure of the Comic Book Crusader, deals with murder in the comic book industry. The Adventure of Veronica's Veils deals (very wittily) with an attempt to revive burlesque.

The Adventure of the Pharaoh's Curse uses a museum as a setting, a slight variation on the show business settings but it’s still dealing with a similar kind of world, a world of riches and glamour. The early Ellery Queen novels appeared during the Depression and part of their escapist charm was that they took place in the world of the wealthy and glamorous. This is one feature that the TV series retains and it’s a very attractive feature although in 1975 it may have been rather unfashionable.

The show business and literary backgrounds do of course have the effect of emphasising the fictional nature of the series. Television audiences generally prefer series that give the illusion of realism and this, combined with the breaking of the fourth wall mentioned earlier,  may have been slightly off-putting to television audiences in 1975. This may have worked to the show’s commercial disadvantage although to my way of thinking it adds considerably to its charm. This is a series that is quite unapologetically uninterested in realism.

The acting also tends to reinforce the feel of unrealism, with the guest performers clearly feeling free to give slightly larger-than-life performances. The series boasts some pretty impressive supporting players and on the whole they appear to be enjoying themselves immensely.

The sets, the costumes and the props (and especially the cars) look magnificent. Everything is very colourful, and since we’re used to seeing the 1940s in black-and-white in old movies the effect is quite startling. It’s another factor adding to the deliberately unrealistic feel - everything is bright and vibrant and awash with colour. Everything looks shiny and brand new. Everyone drives a car that looks like it has just driven out of a showroom. Everyone wears clothes that look brand new. Nothing is worn or battered. This might be considered a fault in any other series but in this case it gives the viewer the feeling of having stepped into a kind of alternative universe. Detective stories were often criticised as escapist entertainment and this TV series goes out of its way to present itself as unashamed escapism.

If your preference is for gritty realistic crime dramas then you’ll find the Ellery Queen series to be about as diametrically opposed to your tastes as a series could possibly be. 

Some episodes are based on Ellery Queen stories whilst others are original to the television series. In both cases a genuine and fairly successful attempt has been made to adhere to the rules of the classic fair-play detective story of the golden age of the genre.

The TV series does add some humour to the basic Ellery Queen formula but this is, very wisely, not allowed to dominate proceedings. Ellery himself at times strikes a mildly comedic note with a slight tendency to be totally disorganised about any aspects of life not directly connected to crime, but this is kept within very strict bounds. The temptation to make Ellery scatter-brained and bumbling is resisted. Jim Hutton has enough natural charm and warmth to make it unnecessary to play the role too overtly for laughs. Purists may feel that his version of Ellery is not quite the Ellery of the books, but on the whole his performance is not too much at variance with his literary original.

The tone is fairly light-hearted but then that’s basically true of the early Ellery Queen novels as well, which are mercifully larger free from the depressing grimness of so much modern crime fiction.

On the whole the Ellery Queen series is pure entertainment and it’s an absolute delight. Very highly recommended.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E., season one (1964)

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. began its run on NBC in 1964 and was cancelled in 1968, midway through the fourth season. I have very fond memories of this series and it’s proving to be just as much fun as I’d remembered it. I’ve been working my way through Season 1 (it’s a long season of no less than 29 episodes).

The pilot episode was interesting, showing how there was originally going to be just one Man from U.N.C.L.E., Napoleon Solo. The pilot also demonstrates just how much the original concept owed to James Bond creator Ian Fleming. The original idea actually came from Fleming and it was Fleming who came up with the name Napoleon Solo. At a very early stage he realised that with the Bond movies proving to be so successful he was competing against himself and dropped out. Fleming’s actual contribution to the series was  minor but there’s no question that without James Bond there would have been no Man from U.N.C.L.E. From the outset it was planned as James Bond for American television.

The tone of the series changed a little after the first season. In season one the series is not really an outright spy spoof as such. The aim seemed to be to capture the flavour of the early Bond movies (not surprising given Ian Fleming’s part in devising the series). The tone is semi-serious. There’s a definite tongue-in-cheek element and an engaging wittiness but it’s mostly not played for pure comedy (although some episodes are definitely heading in that direction). The humour is generally used as a seasoning but without overwhelming the main course which is secret agent action-adventure. It’s witty and sometimes outrageous but it doesn’t descend into mere silliness. It’s almost precisely the formula that would prove so successful for The Avengers at its peak.

One key feature of the series was producer Norman Felton’s insistence that wherever possible each episode would feature a hapless civilian bystander who gets accidentally caught up in the world of espionage and intrigue. Felton’s idea was that the heroes being highly trained professional super-spies it was essential to include guest characters that the audience could relate to - perfectly ordinary people who understand little of what is really going on but who do their best to help out. It was a sound idea and it works well.

The Finny Foot Affair, involving a secret formula that speeds up the ageing process, is also particularly good. The Shark Affair, which seems to be about modern pirates but turns out to be much crazier than that, is even better. The Project Strigas Affair features guest starring performances by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy (appearing together for the first time).

The idea of creating exact doubles of people is one that was much over-used during the 60s. It’s employed here in The Double Affair, and in a much cleverer manner in The Double Decoy Affair. The Deadly Games Affair with the beautiful but deadly THRUSH agent Angelique is great fun as well.

The Fiddlesticks Affair sees Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin trying to break into an ultra-secure vault beneath a casino. The vault houses $55 million dollars belonging to THRUSH. They engage the help of a treacherous but skillful thief and an enthusiastic young woman named Susan, a good girl who is desperate to prove herself a glamorous deadly femme fatale.

The Yellow Scarf Affair takes Napoleon Solo to India, in search of a piece of top-secret equipment stolen by THRUSH. He finds that the cult of Thuggee, suppressed by the British in the 19th century, is not so dead after all. 

The Mad, Mad Tea Party Affair is the series at its best - an intricate and outlandish combination of conspiracies plus a touch of the surreal (and as the title suggests some Alice in Wonderland references). It compares very favourably to the best episodes of the Avengers. The Bow-Wow Affair involves gypsies and killer dogs and features some of the season’s best action scenes. Episodes like this are enormous fun and fine examples of the strength of the writing in season one. Even better is The Never-Never Affair, a delightfully crazy episode with delicious performances by guest stars Barbara Feldon and Cesar Romero. This one is well and truly in spy spoof territory but it’s done with a wonderful lightness of touch.

The Gazebo in the Maze Affair benefits from the presence of George Sanders, one of my all-time favourite actors (and Sanders would pop up again in the second season)

An impressive aspect of the series is the way they give the impression of lots of gadgetry while in fact spending almost nothing on the gadgets. On a television budget (and with television shooting schedules) they could not possibly compete with the Bond movies. Instead they had to rely on getting a high-tech flavour on the cheap and generally speaking this is done effectively.

The first season was a definite hit. The latter part of the second season would see the series moving further into out-and-out spy spoof territory, not always successfully.

The U.N.C.L.E. initials might suggest that Solo and Kuryakin are working for a United Nations agency but in fact they stand for United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. Making one of the lead characters a Russian was rather bold for 1964 and was an attempt to avoid straightforward Cold War themes. As in the later James Bond books the main enemy is an international criminal organisation, rather than the Soviet Union. It also throws in assorted diabolical criminal masterminds and mad scientists. The avoidance of Cold War themes has had the advantage of making the series seem now less dated than it might have been. It’s interesting that the most successful British spy series of the same era, The Avengers, also adopted a generally similar approach.

The fine performances by the two leads, Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, obviously contributed a great deal to the success of the series. Both actors have the ability to strike the right balance, not too serious but not too silly. David McCallum’s role was originally intended to be quite minor but once the first few episodes went to air it became obvious that he was going to be immensely popular. As a result there was a quick rethink and Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin became equal partners with McCallum sharing top billing.

Another reason for the success of the series was the very high quality of the guest stars - people of the calibre of George Sanders, Ricardo Montalban, Carroll O’Connor, Jill Ireland and Anne Francis. Not forgetting Barbara Feldon’s delightful guest appearance as a very enthusiastic would-be secret agent.

Compared to the exactly contemporaneous British spy series Danger Man it’s clear that Danger Man is more concerned with character and with moral dilemmas. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is more interested in style and action. The comparisons are perhaps a little unfair. Danger Man belongs more to the gritty realist style of spy thriller while The Man from U.N.C.L.E., even in its first season, was definitely uninterested in anything approaching gritty realism. Both series are excellent in their very different ways.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was successful enough to spawn a spin-off series, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. That came somewhat later when the parent series was moving further and further into out-and-out spoof territory. The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. has its moments but it was probably stretching a good idea rather too thinly.

This first season of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. remains one of the true classics of 1960s television. It really is a delight. 

UFO (1969)

All of Gerry Anderson’s 1960s puppet science fiction series were great fun and were notable for a level of style and visual sophistication that was quite unexpected in what were after all puppet series aimed mainly at children. The odd man out among these shows was Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. For a puppet series it was extraordinarily bleak and downbeat. It was a superb series that still holds up incredibly well today. In fact it was so bleak and downbeat that in retrospect it should have been done as a live action series aimed at an adult audience, which was of course exactly what Gerry Anderson had wanted to do right from the beginning. In 1969 Anderson finally got to do UFO, a science fiction series with live actors aimed at an adult audience, and it’s perhaps not surprising that UFO is very similar thematically to Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.

In both cases Earth faces a menace that threatens its very survival and the menace is all the more terrifying in that the danger comes from an unknown enemy whose motivations are obscure. And in both cases there is no way of striking back at the enemy. All humanity can do is try to defend itself and success seems very uncertain indeed.

Stylistically UFO owes a lot to Gerry Anderson’s excellent and very underrated 1969 science fiction feature film Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (also known as Doppelgänger).

UFO kicks off with the episode Identified which gives us the backstory we need to understand the series. The episode begins with a kind of prologue set in 1969. There’s been a series of incidents involving UFOs going back for quite a few years and various governments, particularly the US and British governments, have now decided that action needs to be taken. It is no longer possible to ignore the evidence. A high-level meeting is to take place between the British Prime Minister and a senior American general. The evidence is contained in a file in the keeping of an American officer, Colonel Straker (Ed Bishop). There is another UFO attack which Straker narrowly survives. 

We then jump forward to 1980. Straker is now in command of an international military organisation, SHADO (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organisation). And SHADO may be on the verge of achieving one of its chief goals - the capture of an alien, still alive. The episode fills in the backstory neatly and economically, it includes some action, gives us a glimpse of some of SHADO’s high-tech weaponry, and most importantly it establishes the tone of the series - dark and brooding, intelligent and complex, with an emphasis on the human cost of the struggle. Anderson insisted, in the face of considerable misgivings on the part of ITC, on ending the first episode on a very downbeat note. It was a courageous move but it works. 

It also had the advantage of making it clear that UFO was not going to be a kids’ adventure series. It was going to be grown-up science fiction dealing with serious and sometimes tragic themes and it was going to be an intriguing mix of glamour and grittiness. In fact the mood of the series is almost identical to that of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons but with the advantages of an hour-long format allowing greater story complexity and character development.

UFO would turn out to be bleak and uncompromising at times but it never succumbs to the temptation of fashionable cynicism or nihilism. SHADO’s struggle is a difficult one, there will be defeats and even when victories are won the price is sometimes high but it is an absolutely necessary war and SHADO’s personnel are motivated and determined. 

Straker himself is very much aware of the costs but he is unshakeable in his resolve. In fact at times he becomes (despite being an American) a rather Churchillian figure. 

If there’s one theme that dominates this series it’s the responsibility, and the loneliness, of command. There are times when Straker has to make decisions that are necessary but that can cost people their lives. He has to balance individual lives against the greater good. He is also keenly aware that an incorrect decision can cause valuable opportunities to go to waste and these opportunities may not recur. He has to make the right decision. Straker is not the sort of man to shirk his responsibilities. He enjoys the challenge of command but there is a personal cost, sometimes a very high one. A private life is a luxury he cannot afford. Throughout the series the issue of command is stressed and it’s dealt with in an intelligent and complex manner.

Computer Affair is an episode that is very typical of this series’ approach. Gerry Anderson was always keen to have female characters in responsible positions and one of the most important commands in SHADO is held by a woman, Lt. Ellis (Gabrielle Drake), commander of Moonbase. At the same time this episode is prepared to deal directly with the potential problems of having men and women fighting side by side - emotional entanglements are inevitable and can cause serious difficulties and can cost lives. The episode deals with these issues intelligently and unflinchingly. 

Flight Path is another fine episode focusing on the human costs of the struggle against the alien invaders and on the conflicts between duty, loyalty and emotion.

The Square Triangle demonstrates the moral difficulties that can confront a secret organisation. A crime may have been committed but any investigation of the crime could threaten SHADO’s security.

The emphasis is always on the human dimension. The action scenes are well-executed but they’re used to advance the story and to make a point. If a particular story doesn’t require action scenes then they’re kept to a minimum. The production team was confident enough in the ability of the writers (and the actors) to engage the viewer’s attention without non-stop action. Despite its very strong character-driven focus the series is never in danger of becoming dull. The characters are sufficiently real to make us care about them and the situations they find themselves in are sufficiently interesting to keep us involved.

There’s also a heavy reliance on suspense rather than continual action.

Ed Bishop’s performance as Straker is extraordinary. Straker is not an obviously sympathetic character but we grow to respect him and Bishop is able to give just a touch of wry humour to humanise him. The acting in general is exceptionally good, with the actors appreciating the opportunity to do a science fiction series and still be able to do some real acting.

Other major characters, such as Straker’s second-in-command Colonel Alec Freeman (George Sewell), Colonel Paul Foster (Michael Billington) and Moonbase commander Lt Ellis (Gabrielle Drake), are also more complex than was usual in sci-fi series. The relationship Straker and Colonel Freeman is particularly interesting - they’re friends and they have great respect for each other’s abilities but their approaches and their philosophies are very different, leading to a certain amount of tension. Straker is able to subordinate everything to the number one priority, combating the aliens. Freeman struggles with this concept. He knows Straker is right but he still has difficulty reconciling some of the decisions that have to be taken with his own moral code.

Unfortunately (according to Sylvia Anderson) George Sewell was deemed to be not sexy enough for US audiences and was replaced by Wanda Ventham, playing Colonel Virginia Lake. Ventham is quite a good actress but this was definitely a bad move, removing one of the series’ more interesting characters.

UFO is about a war and victory involves paying a price. It involves moral compromises. Very few science fiction TV series, before or since, have been prepared to confront such subject matter as boldly and as uncompromisingly as UFO. It’s not only by far the best of all Anderson’s series, it’s one of the very best science fiction series ever made. Superb television.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, season 1 (1964)

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, which aired on the US ABC network from 1964 to 1968, remains one of the iconic science fiction TV series of its era. The series was based on the successful 1961 movie of the same name. Producer Irwin Allen was able to re-use sets and models from the movie thus keeping production costs within reasonable limits.

In common with so many TV adventure series of the 60s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea changed direction during the course of its run. The first season dealt with Cold War and international intrigue themes as well as science fiction themes. The second season, the first to be shot in colour, began the move towards more of a “monster of the week” theme, a process that became even more marked during the final two seasons. Many fans prefer the more realistic flavour of the first season although personally I find all four seasons to be thoroughly enjoyable.

Admiral Nelson is an intriguing hero. He’s a scientist who has designed his own super-submarine, the Seaview, for research purposes. The Seaview is however also a serving missile-armed US naval vessel. Nelson is an admiral in the US Navy although he seems to be pretty much given free rein to use the Seaview in any way he pleases. It’s a rather unlikely scenario but the series was a product of an era that saw the scientist as hero and saw no problem with allowing a scientist to use a missile-armed nuclear submarine as a private toy. In fact the exact status of the Seaview is slightly ambiguous. In the episode Hail to the Chief Captain Crane describes it as a civilian vessel and a crew member states that he’s not actually in the navy. The idea of a nuclear-armed civilian submarine is certainly interesting.

While Nelson is a good scientist it goes without saying that there are evil scientists as well, and they figure quite prominently as villains in the series. The evil scientists are, not surprisingly, mostly from other countries. While some episodes deal with straight Cold War scenarios the enemies that the Seaview and her crew encounter are often from unnamed Third World nations. These are usually nations with ambitions to advance themselves into the ranks of the super-powers. While today it’s usual to have fairly romantic notions about the Third World this series takes a rather more sceptical view of the matter. In an episode like The Blizzard Makers we’re left in no doubt that allowing small nations to become nuclear powers is not a terribly good idea, and that such nations are likely to become catastrophically dangerous rogue states.

The weather seems to be a major pre-occupation of this series with a number of episodes dealing with calamitous changes to weather patterns brought about either through natural disasters or human malice. The obsession with the weather might suggest that the series was anticipating later environmental concerns, and this is true to some extent. On the other hand it’s amazing how often these environmental threats can be defused by the judicious use of nuclear weapons, a method that would be rather unpopular today.

The science fictional element varies from story to story, being almost completely absent from some episodes and being almost completely dominant in others.

Richard Basehart does a fine job as Admiral Nelson. He’s a dedicated scientist but he’s a man of action as well. Basehart was a little old to be a really effective action hero so that rôle is usually filled, very efficiently, by the Seaview’s younger and much more dashing skipper, Captain Lee Crane (David Hedison).

The potential conflicts of interest caused by Admiral Nelson’s position are not glossed over. The actual commander of the Seaview is Captain Crane and he is quite prepared to assert his authority if he feels the submarine and its crew are being endangered unnecessarily. The responsibilities of command are a recurrent theme, just as they were to be in another US science fiction series of the same era, Star Trek. The divided command structure makes Captain Crane’s position both easier and more difficult than Captain Kirk’s.

The Seaview itself is the same submarine that had appeared in the feature film and the same (very impressive) miniatures are used in the series. It’s a great looking submarine and the fact that unlike actual submarines it has windows is a major plus, and the windows are used to full dramatic advantage. The design of the Seaview was changed slightly for the second season when the hatches for the Flying Sub were added.

The first season tried to retain some degree of plausibility. Nuclear submarines existed in 1965 and the Seaview is simply a bigger more sophisticated nuclear submarine, which is perfectly reasonably given the series was set a few years into the future. The Mini-Sub with features in several season one episodes is just a standard sort of midget submarine. The technology is for the most part extrapolated from existing technologies or at least sounds like the sort of technologies that might have existed within a few years. There are cool gadgets but they’re not overly ridiculous. In The Condemned a scientist devises an ingenious modification that allows the Seaview to dive to the very deepest depths of the ocean. It’s not the sort of thing a conventional submarine could actually do but it’s not outlandish - specially designed research vessels really did reach such depths during the 1960s.

This kind of vague scientific plausibility would gradually give way to out-and-out Buck Rogers-type technologies such as the Flying Sub in the later seasons.

I’m also quite fond of the espionage-themed episodes that were a major feature of season one. Episodes like The Exile, in which the Soviet ex-premier wants to defect to the West, are really pure spy stories without any real science fictional content but they’re well-written and entertaining.

Irwin Allen’s later science TV series would become increasingly far-fetched (although still hugely enjoyable) but season one of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea still stands up as generally intelligent and well-written science fiction. In the very brief interview he contributed to the DVD release David Hedison tells of his extreme reluctance to accept the rôle of Captain Crane and of being pleasantly surprised by how well the first season turned out.

All four seasons are available on DVD in both Regions 1 and 2, while the first season has also been released in Region 4. The series looks great on DVD.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is still one of the best-loved science fiction TV series of the 60s and deservedly so. The first season struck an almost perfect balance, taking itself just seriously enough and never descending into self-parody. Superb entertainment.