Today's weird old title sequences are for The Avengers. You remember The Avengers don't you? Steed, this dapper bloke in a bowler hat, and his lovely sidekick Mrs Peel fight weird sci-fi crimes together?
Kind of.
You see The Avengers changed a lot over its six series. Originally envisioned as a vehicle for rising star Ian Hendry from Police Surgeon, it began with Dr David Keel (Ian Hendry) investigating the murder of Peggy, his office receptionist and wife-to-be, by a drug ring. A mysterious trenchcoat-wearing stranger named John Steed (Patrick Macnee), who was investigating the ring, appeared on the scene and together they set out to avenge her death in the show's first two episodes – hence the show's title 'The Avengers'. Afterwards, Steed asked Keel to continue partnering him when needed to solve crimes.
In this first series, Steed was the secondary character - he doesn't even appear in some episodes. He also isn't the dapper man about town we all grew to know and love, either. He was a hard-edged, ruthless character, willing to do what it took to get the job done, with Hendry's Keel providing the moral centre for their work. In keeping with this blunt, down-at-heel approach, the show got some equally down-at-heel titles, with Hendry and Macnee lurking around on street corners in their trenchcoats, and - oh f*ck no - a jazz theme tune.
But slowly, the show began to change - and get a whole load more weird title sequences.
Be still my beating heart. Ali Larter could be on her way to London next year to film a $150 million remake of Gerry Anderson series UFO, in which she'd play the part of Virginia Lake (more on her in a minute). I obviously don't have pictures of that (yet), so here's a picture and a vid from the first annual Los Angeles Gala, which was raising money for Friends Without Borders.
Significantly, though, this means we can have the first Random Acts of Ali Larter/Weird Old Title Sequences tie-in here on the blog. Because UFO had some weird old titles.
UFO
UFO was Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson's first attempt at a fully live-action show. He'd had a sort of stab at it with Secret Service, in which Stanley Unwin voiced a puppet version of himself, but whenever they did a long shot, they'd just use live action footage of him instead. It was about as convincing as it sounds.
But UFO got Gerry Anderson into live-action proper. The plot to UFO was similar to that of other shows he'd done before, particularly Captain Scarlet: The Earth is under attack from an alien race. What for, we don't know at first, but it soon becomes apparent they need us for our body parts.
Yep, they're kidnapping us, stealing our organs, and transplanting them into their bodies. A later episode, The Cat With Ten Lives adds a little wrinkle to that, but all the same, it's pretty sick and a great concept.
Naturally, when we humans find out about this, it being Gerry Anderson world, we come up with a top secret defence strategy and matching organisation: SHADO (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organization). With submarines underwater that can launch planes, satellites called SID (Space Intruder Detector) in orbit for monitoring, a Moonbase that can monitor space for approaching UFOs and send out spaceships to intercept, and a whole load of ground-based attack vehicles, all it needs to be complete is a top-secret underground headquarters. Which it did - under Harlington-Straker Studios (really Pinewood) as a cover, of course, and not to save on production costs for the show.
Naturally, of course, because of all the powerful magnetic fields that the Moonbase equipment puts out, all the women running it up there have to wear purple wigs.
Still, everyone wore string vests down on the submarine.
A tussle The show itself was an interesting tussle between Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. On the one hand, Gerry wanted to do business as usual, and everything was going to be much as in Thunderbirds et al - that is, missions of the week.
Sylvia, on the other hand, wanted to do characters. She wanted to do stories that could be considered as drama. So the episodes of UFO vary between the same old plots you'd see already (Gerry's stuff) and interesting ones, such as Confetti Check A-OK, which looked at SHADO boss Commander Straker's guilt over the married he'd ruined (Sylvia's stuff).
He's a haunted man is Straker, channelling all his energies into his job, because he's screwed up his personal life. In A Question of Priorities, he even sacrifices his own son so that the aliens can be stopped.
There's also a slight disconnect because the show was shot in two filming blocks due to a change of studios. During the second block, which also saw a change in the writing department, George Sewell, who had played Straker's second in command Alec Freeman during the first block, was unavailable. In his place came Wanda Ventham as the more memorable Virginia Lake. Because initially she essentially had a man's lines - just like Cathy Gale before her on The Avengers - Lake was strong, tough and took no nonsense from Straker or anyone else. Because she's a character who was co-opted at the last moment, she's also notable for having been a research scientist in the pilot episode, a computer specialist and headed up Moonbase at one point.
From UFO to Space: 1999 The show didn't do too badly, but it didn't do as well as everyone hoped. By the time the second season was ready to go, it became clear it wasn't going to pan out, even though the show's creators had hoped a shift of focus to life on the Moonbase might have helped out.
So instead, Gerry and Sylvia decided to come up with an entirely new show set on the moon: Space: 1999, which I believe I've already covered.
On the whole, it wasn't a great show, it has to be admitted. It definitely had its moments and in terms of plot, although not in terms of charm, it's head and shoulders above Anderson's previous shows as well as Space: 1999, although the latter trounces it significantly for production values. There are a few classic episodes, but no more than a handful, so I wouldn't be buying too many from Amazon, if I were you.
Anyway, brace yourself for the weird old title sequence of UFO. In case I forgot to mention it, UFO was set in the then far off future of 1980, where all the fashions were strange and futuristic and the cars were just mental, too. But all of that gets explained in…
If they are going to remake an episode for the movies - for there are three planned - I'd recommend Mindbender, which involved everyone hallucinating because of a strange moon rock. Standout moments, apart from the fact Stuart Damon of The Champions is in it, is when Commander Straker gets affected and begins to hallucinate that his entire life is fictional and is being filmed as part of a TV series, masterminded by a woman called Sylvia. The clue, as they say, was in the episode title. You can watch the whole thing below. Aren't I nice?
Have you seen Ali Larter acting randomly? If so, let us know and we'll tell everyone about it in "Random Acts of Ali Larter"
Look up into the sky. Is there a round, silvery shape there? No, of course not. As we all know, the Moon left the Earth's orbit back in 1999 following a cataclysmic nuclear explosion caused by waste from Moonbase Alpha going into chain reaction.
That, at least, was the scenario painted in Space: 1999, even if it - obviously - never came to pass. Made by Gerry Anderson, originally to be the second season of his earlier live action show UFO, Space: 1999 was a mix of many elements, some good, some bad. On the one hand, it did have some fantastic model work, cinematography and sets, the likes of which probably haven't been bettered.
On the other hand, the acting was dreadful, and the plots… oh, the plots. They were concept sci-fi: great big ideas about philosophy, the universe, etc, but handled so badly, and usually with a plastic-looking monster, that it was impossible to regard them with any seriousness, particularly since the science part of the science-fiction was so ineptly handled.
The show was also hampered by having husband and wife team Martin Landau and Barbara Bain as the two leads. Okay, they'd been fine on Mission: Impossible but their marriage was now breaking down and they could barely stand the sight of each other. Therefore, zero chemistry between the leads.
After a first, not terribly successful series, a new producer was brought on board to help boost the ratings. Unfortunately, they brought on board Fred Freiberger, the US TV producer responsible for the changes made to season 3 of Star Trek that got it cancelled, and who went on to make the changes to The Six Million Dollar Man that got it cancelled. So despite the introduction of hot, shape-changing alien Maya, and an Italian lothario, guess what happened to the proposed season three.
During this time, Space: 1999 went through a couple of title sequences. For the first season, we got the funky disco theme coupled with the "This episode" (did you miss that? We said "This episode", loser!) montage of highlights that Ronald D Moore copied for Battlestar Galactica. It also (weirdly enough) had Barbara Bain on a turntable.
Season two grabbed itself a whole new set of titles and a new theme. It wasn't as cool, didn't have Barbara Bain on a turntable, and it had a stupid "Red alert" on it. But it was more action packed and it did explain the plot.
These, however, were not the weirdest title sequences for Space: 1999. In overseas markets, there were completely different sets of titles that pioneered whole new areas of weird. The Japanese set was perhaps the least weird, since all they did was add a really odd new electronic/lounge theme to the first season titles.
No, for absolute weirdness, you had to go to Italy and watch Spazio: 1999's second season titles.
It's not very long and it doesn't show you that much, but here's a promo for AMC's remake of The Prisoner, starring Jim Caviezel and Sir Ian McKellen. It'll be showing in 2010 in the UK on ITV1 in case you were wondering.
After Christianity became the dominant religion in the West, the Greek gods could have taken it easy and had a rest. Some suggest they did; others, however, tell a different story.
Modern US television suggests that right now, they're off running their own companies in Valentine, trying to matchmake mortals in Cupid, or both. Back in the 90s in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, they were either trying to make television shows while trying to rescue innocent mortals or sabotaging their relative's TV show so they could sit back and watch Millennium and Cop Rock in peace:
But if we go back to the late 70s, back when they were still in Greece (or Cyprus at least), they were busily helping to solve crimes - in their own inimitable way.
When David Collier arrives on Cyprus following the death of his brother, Barry, in what Collier believes was an accident, he meets the beautiful Helene and her mysterious companions, Basileos and Charalambous, who appear to know a great deal more about his brother's death than anyone is admitting. Slowly Collier is drawn deep into a complex conspiracy until neither he, nor the viewer, know who he can trust, particularly when it becomes apparent that someone is trying to kill him. The police, in the form of Inspector Dimas, don't believe a word Collier says, since every time he finds something, or someone, that could substantiate his story they inexplicably vanish.
When all is revealed and Barry's murder is solved, there's one last mystery: Collier discovers that rumours of the deaths of the gods Aphrodite (Alexandra Bastedo from The Champions), Pan (Stefan Gryff) and Dionysus (Brian Blessed in full Brian Blessed mode) have been greatly exaggerated.
It's not been repeated since UK Gold showed it a decade ago, it's never been released on DVD, although you can find it on YouTube (playlists later): it's The Aphrodite Inheritance and it's a Lost Gem. Here's the title sequence and for those who want to cut to the chase, the final ten minutes of the final episode in which the gods' game with the poor mortals is finally uncovered.
Last night, the NFT was running an evening dedicated to Roger Moore's TV career. Starting with a double bill of TV shows that Moore directed and starred in, it was followed by an interview with the man himself, complete with eyebrow-raising and celebrity audience members.
Yesterday, we had a little look at the location of the remake of The Prisoner. We also had a look at an old sci-fi pilot of Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie's. If only there were some way to combine Fry, Laurie and The Prisoner…
Oh wait, there is! The Laughing Prisoner was the final (sort of) episode of popular Channel 4 music show The Tube, which was hosted by Jools Holland and Paula Yates. In it, Holland resigns from The Tube and is promptly taken away to the Village, where he finds the new Number 2 is Stephen Fry. Siouxsie and the Banshees are there, too, as is Hugh Laurie.
Given that Holland is a lifelong The Prisoner fan and somehow managed to get references to the show into just about everything he's ever done, it shouldn't be too much of a surprise to discover it's desperately authentic and true to the original series, right down to being filmed in Portmeirion – it also includes plenty of clips from the series proper, so presents a good intro (sort of) to The Prisoner, if you've never seen it. And if you have seen, you'll probably be able to name every episode that gets referenced, as it's referenced.
Over to you, Mr YouTube. It doesn't properly kick off until a few minutes in, though.
About the blog
This is a UK media blog with daily news, views, exclusive reviews and good conversation. There's a bit of a bias towards the latest and greatest US TV, but we also cover British TV ranging from new Doctor Who to old Z Cars, Property Ladder to Big Brother, and BBC4 to S4C – yes, this blog is firmly part of the conspiracy to promote all things Welsh where possible, particularly Caerdydd.
Add in film, theatre, art, books, events and media journalism and you've (hopefully) got one of the best places on the web for media lovers. Oh yes, and there's The Carusometer, the ultimate guide to quality TV.
About me
I'm Rob Buckley, a freelance journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of. I've edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for trade magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and contributed sarcastic articles about television to the blink-and-you-missed-it "web site for urban hedonists" The Tribe. I'm freelance now and have contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly and TV Scoop. Have pity on me.
Read more on Friday's Sitting Tennant (week 11, 2010)