Mon 11 Jun 2012
A TV Review by Mike Tooney: UFO “The Square Triangle” (1970).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV Science Fiction & Fantasy[8] Comments
“The Square Triangle.” An installment of UFO: Season 1, Episode 10. First broadcast: 9 December 1970. Ed Bishop, Michael Billington, Ayshea, Gabrielle Drake, Adrienne Corri, Dolores Mantez, Antonia Ellis, Allan Cuthbertson, Patrick Mower, George Sewell, Anthony Chinn, Keith Alexander, Gary Myers, Hugo Panczak, Godfrey James, Norma Ronald, Mel Oxley (the voice of SID, uncredited). Producers and format: Gerry Anderson, Sylvia Anderson, and Reg Hill. Writer: Alan Pattillo. Director: David Lane.
“SHADO is headed by Commander Edward Straker (played by Ed Bishop), a former United States Air Force Colonel and astronaut…”
It’s been a hard day’s night for our blue-skinned alien: He has just flown almost thirty trillion miles from his home planet to Earth (which his race is anxious to colonize) without being detected — until the last few thousand miles of his journey.
An Earth-orbiting space detector (a posh-voiced computer system named SID) picks up his saucer-shaped spacecraft and directs a Moon-based rocket fighter to intercept him just outside Earth’s atmosphere.
Although he manages to avoid destruction, the alien must still make an emergency landing somewhere in rural southern England. Leaving his ship behind, he wanders through the woods more or less aimlessly — until he finds a small cottage. As he stealthily pushes the door open, the last thing he would expect to find on the other side is a woman with a gun.
And a space alien is the last thing the woman with the gun would anticipate seeing — because for some time now she and her lover have been waiting nervously for her husband to come home and walk through that door….
This episode of UFO seems to be one of those “high concepts” — in this case Earth vs. the Flying Saucers meets Double Indemnity.
However, don’t dismiss this one too hastily. If you accept the show’s “reality” (sometimes called “willing suspension of disbelief”), then “The Square Triangle” actually succeeds.
The man in charge of hunting down alien intruders (Bishop) has his hands full with this case, and because of it he is impaled on the horns of an ethical dilemma. He has uncovered a foiled murder plot. What actions should he take? He can’t arrest them because they’ve killed an alien who officially doesn’t exist — if he does he’ll have too much explaining to do, thereby exposing his super tip-top secret operation to the world. However, if he lets the plotters go, they may try it again.
His decision, a tough one, might not sit well with some viewers, but it’s what makes “The Square Triangle” one of the best episodes of the otherwise mediocre UFO series.
…and if you happen to watch this particular show, stay with it through the final closing credits, where you’ll see the ultimate resolution of the plot line.
Gerry Anderson (born 1929) will always be fondly remembered for his children’s shows featuring brilliant marionette and scale model work: Supercar (1961-62), Fireball XL5 (1962-63), Stingray (1964-65), Thunderbirds (1965-66), Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967-68, with a CGI reboot in 2005), and Terrahawks (1983-86).
Anderson is also infamously and perhaps unfairly known for his two live-action SF series UFO (1970-71) and Space: 1999 (1975-77), but he was also responsible for a fairly entertaining crime-adventure show called The Protectors, starring Robert Vaughn (1972-74, 52 episodes). He also produced one fascinating science fiction feature film, Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (1969, a.k.a. Doppelganger).
Finally, some trivia: Col. Virginia Lake, a continuing character in the UFO series (but absent from “The Square Triangle”), was played by Wanda Ventham, who would become the mother of Benedict Cumberbatch, the actor currently making a big splash as Holmes in the Sherlock series.
NOTE: This episode may be seen on YouTube in five parts, beginning here.
June 11th, 2012 at 11:44 pm
UFO is one of my favorite 70s TV series. It is certainly believable after watching some of THE AVENGERS sf based episodes. The purple wigged women on the Moon station. The clothes and cars. The aliens in their flying tops. Pure cheese but so much fun to watch.
One of the better ideas the series had was the top secret alien fighting organization had bases on the Moon, under the sea, and under a British film studio. Bishop’s character did not just run the top secret organization but a movie studio as well. This allowed them to use their own studio lot as a set.
Mike, Wanda was the Diana Rigg for UFO fans. It is nice to learn Cumberbatch is her son. The kid is certainly a better actor than his mother, but many of us remember Wanda fondly.
June 12th, 2012 at 9:17 am
Based only on hearsay evidence, or more likely, from what I’d always assumed, I’d always thought of UFO as an afternoon TV show for kids. Now that I’ve watched this episode on YouTube, it’s easy to see that this wasn’t so, not at all.
It is of its era, though. If you were to compare the special effects with those on FRINGE and other recent shows, the special effects on UFO are almost laughably primitive — OK, cheesy — but Michael, I have to agree with you. It was fun to watch.
June 12th, 2012 at 1:46 pm
I’m a big fan of UFO. Like SPACE 1999 it was supposed to be an adult SF show (the episode THE LONG SLEEP has a plot that revolves around the taking recreational drugs). It’s a very uneven show, although when it’s on form it’s excellent. The look of the show, which is the 1970s view of the 1980s, can be rather amusing, but it’s really no different from STAR TREK’s very 1960s far future in that respect.
I would dispute the ‘cheesy special effects’ charge. After all, Derek Meddings was the effects supervisor, and he did the same job on the first Christopher Reeve SUPERMAN, not to mention a host of Bond films such as THE SPY WHO LOVED ME and GOLDENEYE (SPACE 1999 had both him and Brian Johnson, who designed and built the models for 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY). The effects are done differently than they would be done now, but they’re not actually bad. This was pre-STAR WARS by nearly a decade.
It’s worth going back to this series with a fresh eye. If you’re going to try it out, you might like to see the first two episodes IDENTIFIED and EXPOSED, as well as a couple of the really weird later episodes MINDBENDER and TIMELASH.
June 12th, 2012 at 2:25 pm
Gerry Anderson had two very valuable assets in Barry Gray, whose music enhanced even the weakest of Anderson’s shows:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0336460/
and, as Bradstreet notes, in Derek Meddings:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0575439/
with a kicky opening titles sequence for UFO that combines the two:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XAIXP937Ac
June 12th, 2012 at 3:46 pm
I failed to mention one other Gerry Anderson crime series, SPACE PRECINCT (1994-95, 24 episodes), which I enjoyed but always felt could just as well have been set in 20th-century Chicago for all the science fictional elements it contained:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108938/
June 12th, 2012 at 5:35 pm
SPACE PRECINCT was absolutely bizarre. The unscreened pilot episode (which did the rounds at various Anderson conventions for many years) was an out and out comedy. When the series eventually got made it looked like it was supposed to be a comedy, with wacky aliens in police costumes, but was written and performed in a totally serious manner. Mind you, the female lead made the show watchable. Simone Bendix was gorgeous.
November 29th, 2022 at 3:13 pm
UFO was not a mediocre series and in fact was very inventive.
The physics of course were absolutely dopey, but this was science fiction.
It’s a great shame that it never made it to series 2
March 26th, 2024 at 4:37 pm
UFO was originally cleared for a second season using the title UFO 2, which entered pre production in late 1972. This series would be set into the 1990’s with the focus being on moonbase which has grown into a lunar city and becomes the new Shado HQ. They had started to build everything for the new show, new sets, new costumes the whole nine yards. the focus would be placed on the Aliens and their plans to destroy the base. They had commissioned Bob Bell and Keith Wilson as design interior of the new Moonbase and Brian Johnson, the exteriors. With Tony Barwick deep set into The Protectors at the time, Chris Penfold was brought on board as the new script editor. Ed Bishop, Mike Billington and many others were excited about reprising their roles…as the show aired in the US on Saturdays at 7 and followed by All in the Family which was coming to the season end, the ratings took a dip. Rather than investigate the cause, ITC in New York pulled the plug in early 1973. Gerry then suggested a new project be born out of the money invested in UFO 2. The idea was to be subject to certain conditions imposed by ITC America. Abe Mandell representing the U.S backers and a thorn in Gerry’s side for years, insisted that no shows were to take place on earth. as he puts it “people having tea in the Midlands” the Andersons proposed blowing up the earth as a solution however it was declared too grim for the time slot it held. Gerry rang Abe back and said, fine. I’ll blow the moon out of orbit with everyone on it. This idea was given the green light so Gerry and Sylvia began to write a new thirty minute script called “Zero G” which after several reworks became Space: 1999 in 1973.