UFO (RSD 24)

After a decade of creating pioneering puppet series made for children, Gerry & Sylvia Anderson took their first steps into live action, with the 1969 feature film Doppelgänger (re-titled outside Britain as Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun). This science-fiction film approached its outer space subject matter with a gritty realism and would set the tone for what was to be their first live-action television series: UFO.

This new series took as a starting point the pioneering work of Dr Christiaan N. Barnard, the surgeon who performed the world’s first heart transplant operation. In UFO a dying race of aliens travel across vast distances of space to harvest organs from human beings to help ensure their own survival. To combat this threat the United Nations created SHADO, a top-secret organisation utilising the latest technology available to defend the Earth. To complement the series, the Andersons frequent musical collaborator Barry Gray created a multifaceted score that gave the programme its own musical identity.

Elegantly crafted and a firm favourite with Barry Gray fans, the sound of UFO is a joy.