Rating: 
Summary: Pure 1970's Go-go Camp!
Review: I saw this series when it was imported by ITC for the United States and decided it had to be part of my extensive DVD collection. I'm not sure that it is something that I'll ever showcase, though I do find myself watching the series from time to time.There are good points and bad points. First the good: Excellent transition (as mentioned in the formal Amazon review) in both picture and sound (it was never this good when broadcast).
Now the bad - The Anderson's approach to FX (Thunderbirds - style miniatures) tends to be distracting. The music is downright irritating. The stories drag and linger when you'd rather get on with them. If that isn't enough to turn you off to the series, then you'll want this collection for its place in the SF television genre. This is the prequel series to the much better Space:1999.
There are some disturbing stories, including one that deals with time... Far too many of the episodes, though, deal with personality matters and there is considerable 1970's sexism and racism, so be warned if you are sensitive toward those attitudes. The show attempts to overcome them, but their presence, unlike the better-handled concepts in the original Star Trek series, is obvious and irritating. Still, if you are a collector of SF from television, this is an important series in its progression...
Rating: 
Summary: Hot chicks with purple hair and mini skirts
Review: It's got hot chicks with purple hair wearing mini skirts. Do you really need anything more?
Rating:
Summary: A Great Vision ... A Nice Premise
Review: No regrets about this purchase. However, it has a large "cheese factor." I happen to LOVE sci-fi cheese. I remember, as a kid, all the cool hardware these Brits would throw against alien invasions -- not to mention the cool chicks who work in close quarters on Moon Base Alpha, at HQ, and down on the submarines. Goodness. Great retro television viewage. The plots aren't Star Trek worthy, but more than a few involve a nice look at the humans who work so hard to keep Earth safe and add some nifty commentary on what it means to want to remain unique and unconquered in this universe. Hmmm.
Rating: 
Summary: Intelligent SF on the small screen
Review: No, I don't have the DVDs yet. I already know that I want this. Years before the (recurring) intelligence of The X-Files was UFO. The reason I knocked this down one star was that it could so easily have been a live-action version of Thunderbirds.. but for the most part it resisted the "dark side of The Force." The basic premise is that there's a (British) secret agency that is investigating &/or dealing with an alien invasion of Earth. From there, all bets were off! I managed to see about half the episodes in their US play before they were squeezed off by endless repeats of the delightfully cheesy Space: 1999. Chris Carter must've seen UFO, too. Let's put it this way. The aliens are on their way. Or they're already here. They may even be in control of some areas (a la The Invaders). Or it might all be a part of a plot to turn the planet into a police state: the invasion hasn't happened yet... or might have a beachhead... or might already be in control... or might be entirely a fiction. My memories of the plots I recall, which I've recounted dozens of times, are not only quite similar to the adventures of Mulder & Scully, but form a rather chillingly prescient parallel to the Bush Administration, the Project for a New American Century (www.newamericancentury.org), Halliburton/Brown Root, the Christian Recontructionist movement, etc. Hey, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean you're wrong. <g> Don't buy this if you want cheesy sci-fi thrills. The explosions aren't much, & if you're reading this you see better special effects on half the HTML screens you browse (like Amazon). But the plots are creepy, thought-provoking, & surprisingly well-acted for a short-lived marginal TV series. The writing is great, the direction & editing are tight, & the actors come across as "this show is doomed so let's do our absolute best." I can't wait until I have the DVD in hand, & can enjoy the commentaries!
Rating:
Summary: Greatest series since Trek!!!
Review: This DVD set is great, I normally do not write reviews but for this one I will. As a kid I remember the Saturday late afternoon line up UFO, Star Trek then Space 1999 which myself and my best friends in the world used to watch Mike, Jim and Bob. When I received it I had to watch them all the first night, watching this DVD set reminded me of younger years with my friends alternating houses to watch it together. GREAT SET!!! I highly recommend it to any Sci-Fi buff.
Rating:
Summary: Speculative Fiction and Real Life Dramatragedy Together
Review: When I watched UFO as a small child in the early Seventies, I was always looking for the gadgets. On some of the episodes, none of SHADO Control's vehicles, moon bases, submarines, mobiles, and interceptors would appear and I would be bored and dissapointed by my thwarted expectations. Although I was surprised that I remembered many of the plotlines re-watching the show now, they didn't speak to me at all as a six or seven year old child the way they do to me now as a 39-year-old adult.
There is, of course, the speculative, Science Fiction, facet to UFO. There is also, however, the dramatic, pessimistic, human, emotionally-wretching side. What happens to people who, because of circumstance, or duty or inertia, find themselves alone, as adults, aging, within a small, contained, almost trapped in a particular subcultural milleau? There were three episodes in which Commander Streaker has to give up anything emotional that means anything to him. In one, his wife, in another, his son, and in a third, another girl with whom he forms a real, human, emotional bond. Always it is because of duty, because of his serious, completely-committed devotion to the extreme secrecy of his calling: to investigate the reason and motives of the UFO attacks and to try to defend humanity from it.
That is why, today, I consider UFO to be special, unique in its form, complex and non-ideal-ideological in its content. In spite of the unrealized fashion projections of the show for 1980, the people are recognizable, and real, and like us. The other characters on UFO are also trapped by their jobs, and trapped by their possibilities because of their dedication to the cause. It doesn't come easy, or natural, to them, it only comes to them at a terrible personal cost.
The other subtext to the show is that the SHADO organization intercepts only a few of what is to be assumed to be a far greater number of UFO visits to the Earth. One watches one episode and then can only think: How much more of this is actually going on?
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