JAFFE@RUTGERS.ARPA (07/08/85)
From: Alastair Milne <milne@uci-icse>
Those who remember this favourably remember more than I can answer to. I
can't easily think of another show, sf or otherwise, with as grey a
disposition, or such unfailingly unattractive characters. Col. Lake
particularly always looked as if she were sucking lemons, or expecting the
world's worst line from the next man she encountered. I can't recall ever
seeing Straker looking other than grim, even after he was just married.
Snideness seemed a way of life for Alec Freeman and Paul Foster. Captain
Carlin and Captain Waterman appeared too seldom for anybody to say what
they were like. General Henderson was an ogre. The only person I
remember in any really good light is Miss Eland, and her appearances were
limited to Straker's arrival at his "office".
While this sounds superficially as if it might be closer to reality than
series where everything always ends happily ever after, it really isn't
any better balanced, or a more accurate view of life. One side says
things are always basically good; the other says things are always
basically grim. The first, if inaccurate, at least leaves a generally
good mood behind. The second, no better in accuracy, just leaves a sour
feeling. If you enjoy sour feelings, take them and welcome. I suppose
lots of people must, or Trevanian's novels wouldn't sell nearly so well;
but that doesn't mean at all that all of us do. And it's no better a way
to understand people.
The pseudo-science they managed to avoid getting too terrible
by avoiding for the most part the whole subject, and staying mostly with
Earthside events. But there were still a lot of strange things: why the
women on moon base wore lavender hair (though they looked normal enough on
earth); why moon base was equipped with exactly 3 interceptors, whose
(single) projectile was almost the entire front half of the craft, which
seems to lack a little for efficiency; why, for all the oceans of Earth,
there was **one** Skydiver -- with one Sky fighter plane; or how the
craft -- I hardly dare call them rockets -- that shuttled to moon base
managed to land backward in their gantries, as if the pilot were backing
his car into the garage. Their only propulsion was a single rocket at the
stern.
The earth side of things was done moderately well. Low, sleek cars, with
gull-wing doors. The doors opened just quickly enough so that you
couldn't really say "nobody would ever use something like that", but no
quicker. The clothes were certainly nothing impressive, not even the
fishnet jumpsuits that SHADO personnel (male and female) always wore.
Perhaps the best things were the UFOs' attacks while on earth. The
sequences were usually swift and taut, with a minimum of special effects,
and the attacking craft often partly hidden by trees or brush (over many
roads in England the trees almost meet overhead, forming a virtual tunnel),
which heightened the tension and the horror: you could hardly tell where
it was, or where the next shot would come from.
There were, I grant, one or two episodes worth seeing. I recall one where
Col. Foster crashed on the moon, and was injured, with his spacesuit
damaged. He was found by an alien who, instead of killing him, assisted
him back toward moon base, several days' journey, with constant repairs
needed to Foster's suit, and the constant fear between the two temporary
allies who otherwise would have been deadly enemies. It was powerful.
There was another good one where the aliens created models of SHADO's
operations, for the purpose of disrupting SHADO's communications and
originating orders of their own.
Unfortunately, these good ones stand out against a grey, uninspired
background. One cancellation I can't regret.
Alastair Milne