A secret military agency hiding beneath a British movie studio
In short: In 1970, a television series imagined a world where the United Nations secretly funded a high-tech defense against an alien invasion. To keep the public in the dark, this global military force operated out of a real-world movie studio in England.
The series, UFO, centered on SHADO (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organisation). The United Kingdom, United States, Soviet Union, France, and Germany founded this covert organisation. Their mission was twofold: to defend humanity against an alien race from a dying planet and to keep the existence of these extraterrestrials a total secret from the general population.
The organization's headquarters were cleverly concealed beneath the Harlington-Straker Studios in England. The agency's leader, Commander Edward Straker, maintained a public cover as the studio's chief executive. This setting allowed the show to feature a variety of high-tech hardware, including the Space Intruder Detector (SID) satellite, the Moonbase, and the Skydiver submarine, all while maintaining the illusion of a normal film production.
The narrative was grounded in a grim reality: the aliens were humanoid beings harvesting human organs to prolong their own lives. The show even explored complex themes of mind control, suggesting some 'aliens' were actually humans possessed by alien minds. This concept was a direct evolution of the Andersons' previous work, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. Production was famously disrupted by a five-month break when the original studio closed, forcing the move to Pinewood Studios and resulting in a rotating cast of personnel.
The series eventually paved the way for Space: 1999. While UFO focused on the covert defense of Earth, it established the visual language of high-tech lunar bases and supersonic jets that would define British science fiction for a generation.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: UFO (British TV series)
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