Sure. Joe is a mild-mannered little boy whose father is a scientist who works for a spy agency. Joe’s father has created a device which can download personalities into a person, and he experiments with this device by downloading personalities into Joe, which is both bad science and bad parenting. He then sends Joe out onto very dangerous spy missions, where Joe does things like kill and torture people. Of course, since the main character is a 9-year-old boy, this darkest and most violent of the Anderson shows was marketed at 9-year-old boys.
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Worse yet - if I recall correctly, he’s the stepdad.
Also, I’ve always thought this was the Andersons’ answer to Jonny Quest
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This was Anderson’s first attempt to do a mature, aimed at adults TV show, and as a result it’s full of really incongruous “adult” content that just feels out of place - like brief shots of female crew on the moonbase in their silver underwear, or a line about something being tighter than a stripper’s G-string in the first episode. All pretty mild by modern standards but it reminds me a lot of Manga Entertainment spicing up the language of their anime dubs in the 90s to get a 15s or 18s certificate instead of PG.
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I wonder if Joss Whedon ever watched Joe 90.
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I still hear the theme music in my mind sometimes! I loved the show but I grew up with a B&W television in my home until the late 1970’s so I was pretty shocked when, a couple years ago, I came across the show again and saw the purple hair!
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I did not realize it at the time, since I was 7, but to a real degree UFO is a SF retelling of the Battle of Britain. Women are staffing the Moonbase in charge of tracking and sending the male pilots out to intercept oncomming attackers. So rather than being progressive, the roles of the sexes are actually rather retro. One suspects that this re-imagining of “their finest hour,” resonated strongly in the UK.
Of course even as a kid, I always wondered why the aliens never seemed to realize that they should approach the Earth from the opposite side of the Earth from the Moon to avoid those pesky interceptors.
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Dad was stationed in England in the early '70s with the USAF, so I remember watching UFO as a 6 or 7 year-old. It was totally baffling to me, though visually interesting, and I loved the theme music.
Fast forward to 2015, and a friend of mine loaned me his UFO DVD set. I watched the entire series and … it was totally baffling to me, though visually interesting, and I still love the theme.
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A couple of things:
- The show got really really dark at times. (ex Straker loses his son over a command decision. SHADO lets a man be murdered by his wife to preserve their secrecy)
- The concept of interceptors with only one missile were based on WWII torpedo bombers
- There was a Doctor Who novel written as homage to Gerry Anderson
The Indestructible Man (novel) | Tardis | Fandom
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Love Gerry Anderson’s stuff. I was a big fan of UFO back when it originally aired. And I always thought everyone needed bushier eyebrows.
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It seemed all the women on moonbase had purple hair? Or was it just the command crew?
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Well the simple answer is that from the moon, the earth occupies only two degrees of arc. The blind spot would be exceedingly small, and with two seperate antipodal monitors on the moon the blind spot would be practically nonexistent.
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I wasn’t so much thinking of the blind spot, after all the UFOs are usually detected by SID in Earth orbit. Rather I was thinking that the interceptors wouldn’t be able to get into an intercept position since they’re starting out more than 200,000 miles away in the wrong direction.
edited to add: and we can easily assume that like Chain Home, or the DEW Line, SID is actually a network of radars.
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They all had purple hair on the moonbase - but only while being on the moonbase. Not while on Earth. This is never satisfactorily explained.
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Anyway:
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But Bourbon IS whiskey.
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Exactly.
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They should reboot the series. Episode 1 could be Colonel Edward “Ed” Straker being sent to talk to S.H.A.D.O.'s human resources department and then being escorted out of the facility by armed guards. A female director would then be installed.
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I would love to hear the production meetings:
“We’ll give all the moon girls purple hair!”
“Why?”
“It will look cool!”
“Uh… OK! Uh… are they supposed to be seen as wearing wigs or
did the lunar environment change hair change color or was it dyed
or is it functional to their uniform or–?”
“I don’t know! Their hair is purple! It will look cool!”
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Yikes! So not exactly Bazooka Joe then, except, maybe literally
In interviews, Sylvia Anderson said that the wigs were part of the moonbase women’s uniform. You’re right though - they never explain that. It’s just the way it is - on the moon.
You may also have noticed that the men’s eyeliner (Straker’s in particular - it’s blue) is clearly visible and they sometimes seem to be wearing rouge. This is not an error - she conjectured that part of everyday business wear for men would be makeup in the distant future world of 1980!
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