The Complete Book of Gerry Anderson's UFO (revised and expanded edition)

Chris Bentley's Definitive Guide Book To The Classic Gerry Anderson Series UFO. everything you need To know at your fingertips as Author Bentley leaves No stone unturned on The making of a TV classic. filled with excellent colour plates Throughout showcasing Actors and vehicles used in The series To merchandise for The show ranging from books jigsaws super 8mm Home movies To bubble gum cards. Each episode for The series is broken down To give a fresh insight into The episode including Deleted scenes That never made The final cut. one chapter I found really fascinating was UFO's scheduling around The TV regions as The series was up against other TV classics of The Day such as The Champions and Jason King. of course we should not overlook The Actors Themselves Chris Bentley Delivers a wealth of information on all The actors and supporting players featured in The series and lists Their TV film credits prior To and after UFO. No Gerry Anderson series would be complete without it's famous Hardware vehicles all of The vehicles used in The series The fabulous interceptors The super sub Sky 1 The Shado Mobiles are all listed respectively To The episodes That They appeared in. And with UFO we get The fabulous Moon base Girls who could forget Lt Ellis played by Gabrielle Drake or Col Virginia Lake played by The very Talented Wanda Ventham all of The actresses featured in The series are given Their own spotlight if you love This series I simply can't praise This book enough. if you already own Networks recently remarkable Blu-ray set of The series Chris Bentleys The Complete Book Of Gerry Andersons UFO will and does believe me make an excellent companion piece To your collection. printed on High gloss paper The colour photos spread Throughout are reproduced beautifully. The whole book comes in a solid Hardback format and The front cover keeping in line with The Blu-ray release is The same in a sense you really can't have one without the other. As TV books go This is one of The best of it's kind with a wealth of information you really just can't put it down. The Definitive book on a very special underrated series for its time.

Another brilliant book by Chris Bentley, the complete book of UFO is well written and you will not be able to put it down once you start to read this. Ideally you should read this book and then watch the DVD or video's. Ed Bishop's foreward is a very good insight and informative look into UFO from the actors perspective. The book then goes into newspaper reports from 1878 to 1970 about UFO's and the Before UFO is a good look at Lew Grade and his biography which includes ATV's history and includes the Anderson's productions. The pre-production, the British MGM and Pinewood Studio's are brilliant and then we have the main cast with their biog's that is excellent and up to date at time of print. Other background information about the TV show is very informative and the photo shots are great. Then comes the Guide to the Episodes which, like other Bentley books, are brilliant but also includes the Location shoots along with the transmission premier and network premier (known as first transmission and UK National transmission on previous books), the notes and oops as well as detail to each episode, are like the Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet books. It also includes the deleted scenes and actors lines and stage descriptions. The episode orders include the ITC screening along with the USA syndication and Japanese screenings order. I can say without doubt that you will enjoy this book and if you love UFO, this is a bonus. Brilliant value that you will read over time and again.

Fabulous, a work of love by Chris Bentley. The lack of colour plates didn't bother me too much, at least it has photos and lots of them. Loved seeing Ed Bishop on set, reading about the stories in some depth/alternative ideas, and learning about the locations. The insights into the characters and the actors that played them is brilliant. The book is a lot of money because its a collector's item now, you feel a bit sick when you see the original price on the reverse! But I say it's very well worth it if you are a fan! Save up, and make sure you get one that's in good nick because you're likely to treasure it for a long time.

Am I really the first person to write a review of the new 2016 hardback edition of this book? (No, I'm actually the second!) Well, despite it selling out almost as soon as it was published, and despite there still being a message on this page saying that the book is 'temporarily unavailable' - The Complete Book of Gerry Anderson's UFO landed today! What can I say? Better than expected service from Amazon and a much improved version of an already brilliant book. Everything you want and need to know about the Andersons' greatest ever TV series. And now with every page in eye-watering full colour! And there are 300 of them too!!! The perfect companion to the recently released Blu-Ray set. Whatever the price, this book is an essential addition to your collection. Buy it now.

Anyone that's bought UFO on DVD in the last 18 months should buy this book - if anyone knows this series and the Andersons inside out then it's the author Chris Bentley. They don't make series like this anymore and unfortunately never will again. The only slight disappointment initially was the lack of colour printing inside (especially as the series had such a high visual impact), however I've heard that this allowed for an increase in the number of pages and therefore you get much more detail (which is fine by me). It's easy to forget just how many people worked behind the scenes on a show such as this (shot on film to a feature film standard), and thankfully there's plenty of information on un-credited cast & crew as well as the many interesting stills taken during filming. In addition, there's pages on pre-production, cast & character biographies, deleted scenes and more. One major oversight is the lack of a pull-out poster of Deborah Grant or Ayshea - but you can't have everything I suppose! :) Recommended!!

I had days of fun reading this book. It is going very much into detail on absolutely every aspect of UFO. Wonderful photos (but too small sometimes). I do agree to all the rave of the earlier reviewers here. As Lieutenant Keith Ford of S.H.A.D.O. would have said: "This book is worth every penny. I repeat: THIS BOOK IS WORTH EVERY PENNY."

Received 29 November 2016, despite being informed by Amazon a few days earlier that it would not be delivered until 23 December. This is an excellent book, lavishly illustrated in full colour. It's a comprehensive guide to just about anything you could wish to know about the programme, obviously prepared with a great deal of affection and attention to detail. It really is an improvement on the earlier edition, especially with the added section on "Doppelganger" aka "Journey to the Far Side of the Sun." At this price, it is a bargain.

I was saddened over Christmas to read of the passing of Gerry Anderson, whose name fronted some stunning programmes I and many generations of children around the world grew up watching. UFO was Anderson's first foray into live action following a successful run of puppet series and it is only now(having watched the series recently on DVD) that I see the adult quality compared to, say, Thunderbirds. As such I would like to use this opportunity to not only review Chris Bentley's book, but the series as a whole. I recall UFO initially being shown in the Saturday teatime slot on London Weekend Television in 1971 (it clashed with Dr Who on BBC1 for a while!) To me as a 5 year old it was an action series and the scenes of the interceptors launching or the SHADO Mobiles moving through woodland all seemed very real and made a great impression on me. A number of scenes from certain episodes remained with me for years: the Aliens shooting at SHADO troops from behind trees in a pine forest, a frightened Lieutenant Nina Barry crawling through the ducting of a Skydiver and, most vividly, Paul Foster, after having being kidnapped by the Aliens and fitted with one of their space suits, vomitting green liquid out of his lungs as they removed his helmet. Episode endings were rarely optimistic: whereas on Thunderbirds, there would be some tomfoolery between the Tracey brothers, a typical episode of UFO concluded with a solemn-looking Ed Straker seated behind his desk, contemplating how much more there was learn in the combat against the Aliens. A couple of episodes - A Question of Priorities and Confetti Check AOK - I find disturbing as they illustrate to what extremes Straker was prepared to go for the sake of his job, the price being his family. SHADO, as a number of episodes showed, was an obsession with Straker. I first watched repeats of the series more than 15 years later and it was here that I first realised weaknesses. In particular the latter episodes tended to rely on surreal and drug-induced plotlines that were a side step away from the tension and drama of the earlier episodes, surpassing that of even Anderson's puppet series. Also a couple of plotlines stretched credibility somewhat: in The Square Triangle, an Alien intrudes in a house where a couple having an affair are conveniently waiting to kill the woman's husband. And in A Question of Priorities, the Alien takes refuge in the house of a blind woman, thereby removing any shock for her. Generally, though, the series with it's convincing combination of live and model action was good and is worth a rewatch every few years. And so to Chris Bentley's book, published in 2003, more than 30 years after the initial screening of UFO, a period in which sci-fi themes and particularly those on the TV landscape have changed dramatically. This could have made the book a purely retrospective tribute to UFO, but the author has brought us up to date with how UFO is received in the digital age. The book is just short of 180 pages, which is by no means a criticism as UFO lasted only 26 episodes, so does not warrant an encyclopedic reference work worthy of say, Star Trek. The book is by no means too short but is very detailed and thorough (I can't tell if there are any relevant facts overlooked!) Getting Ed Bishop to write the forword must have been the icing on the cake for Mr Bentley. I like the incorporating of suitable episode titles into chapter headings. Chapter 1 - Close Up opens with Gerry Anderson and Lew Grade - who was responsible for bringing many of Anderson's creations to the small screen - sitting in a darkened screening theatre watching, not the first episode of UFO, but that of it's little known predecessor The Secret Service. This series is very much at the bottom of a list of Anderson's series, though Mr Bentley goes into detail about the film Doppelgänger, which in many ways precursed UFO, notably in featuring bit parts for Ed Bishop and George Sewell - key actors in UFO. The author does not overlook the input into UFO by other members of Gerry Anderson's staff, in particular visual effects expert Derek Meddings and model designer Mike Trim, both responsible for the various stunning vehicles featured in the series, especially the Interceptor and the SID satellite. Of course, it is hard not to overlook the contribution of Gerry Anderson's wife Sylvia, who virtually single-handedly designed the costumes for the show. I think the word "style" springs to mind when describing the visual content of UFO as a whole and this definately comes across in the final product. The show's trademark was undoubtedly the model shots which like those of virtually every other Gerry Anderson show, are second to none and are very realistic for the times they were made. For me the illusion is only shattered here, as I saw photos of production staff holding Inteceptors and Skydivers under the glare of studio spotlights! But that's what behind-the-scenes is all about I guess. One gets the impression that there was little or no tension between all involved in the show's production, be they actor, cameraman or director. The only real stumbling block for UFO came as MGM British Studios closed down and production was halted before resuming at Pinewood. The biographies of the chief actors are thorough enough. Chapter 3 - Exposed takes the form of a dossier detailing the formation of SHADO, the equipment and vehicles it uses and the personnel involved. In comparison to the pre-production section, this is interesting as Ed Bishop, born in Brooklyn. suddenly becomes Ed Straker, born in Boston, Mass. The most detailed chapter is Screened, a guide to all 26 episodes of UFO. Interestingly, here the author provides no rating system or gives a critical analysis of each episode, but instead provides objective plot outlines, information about guest cast ( it is interesting how many of them can be cross-referenced to other shows of the era, in particular The Saint and The Avengers) locations and major equipment seen. The bloopers are (unfortunately) plenty in number, the most common one being the repeating of certain scenes in other episodes. Judging by the episode orders section, each ITV region at the time was a law unto themselves when it came to programme scheduling of the series. As the author points out, programme schedulers were undecided at the time as to whether UFO was aimed at an adult or a children's audience. This had a knock-on effect on the merchandisers trying to promote the series. Probably the most interesting chapter of all for me is the final one: Survival which notably gives details of the Dinky Toy models produced during the series intial run. Upon receiving the book in 2007, this was the first part I turned to as I was anxcious to see the Inteceptor once again and, sure enough, there is a small photograph of the model, flanked by those of the SHADO 2 Mobile and Straker's car. Great stuff! There was never a gift I had wished for for Christmas quite as much before or since as the Inteceptor and I have never forgotten the pleasure at 5 1/2 years old of opening it on Christmas morning 1971. I gather there is a book dedicated purely to the models manufactured for Gerry Anderson's programmes which must be quite fascinating. The author tells us why a second series of UFO was started but never finished and what became of the pre producion work done on it. Finally, the book concludes with a section about repeat showings of UFO and how the series has now been brushed down, updated and is now available in HD quality for the digital age. My criticism of this book was pointed out by another reviewer, which is the absence of colour photographs. As illustrated as it is, a book on such a colourful series deserved equally coloured photos. I assume cost was an overriding factor here. All in all though, well done to Chris Bentley and to all who helped put the book together. I think it will go someway towards helping future generations to appreciate the fantastic contribution Gerry Anderson made to the world of TV entertainment. Gerry Anderson RIP.