Gerry Anderson’s UFO Revealed !

This classic was designed & built in 1969 by Derek Meddings for Gerry Anderson’s British sci-fi TV series UFO, broadcast in the UK in 1970 & set, moonbases and all, in 1980. Medding’s design is clearly some kind of flying saucer (it is round & it spins) but brilliantly avoids all the usual saucer cliches. The large transparent hull sections, blurred fast-spinning vanes & lack of any recognisable features such as windows, hatches or landing gear make it unfathomable at first glance &, combined with the eerie “hooooo-wissshhh“ sound effect, create a strikingly alien effect. Medding’s turned metal & perspex mechanisms spun at 200 rpm, driven from within by fast motors powered by currents passed down the (mostly) invisible support wires & on the telly they looked like real heavy metal machines. It is discovered by .’s resident Doctor Douglas Jackson (The unforgettable Vladek Sheybal) that the UFO pilots are actual human bodies maintained by spare-part surgery & he proposes that they act as vessels for some kind of implanted intelligence, perhaps not even an alien ego, just a wetware programme. The UFO interior would therefore have absolutely no consideration of comfort. The pilots breathe an oxygenated green fluid to protect them from acceleration forces, which would be pointless unless their entire bodies were immersed in the same fluid during flight. The UFO’s appear quite bulky but in fact they are mostly clear upper & lower (non-spinning) domes with spinning lateral vanes around a central relatively narrow spinning cylinder. Unless the occupants are also spinning then there must be a smaller cylinder inside that one that does not spin, supporting the upper dome from a non-spinning upper bullet shaped tip & the lower dome from a non-spinning disc. This is how the models built by Meddings actually worked. The UFO size is never mentioned explicitly but in the few episodes where one is seen near to a car or house they appear to have an outer diameter of at most 9m, leaving enough space inside for a habitable non-spinning cylinder barely 2m diameter. In 26 episodes no alien is ever seen next to his craft and the few aliens actually depicted entering or leaving are always shown from very tightly cropped confusing angles. The few glimpses of the UFO interior are always dark trippy 60s psychedelic revealing no mechanical details whatsoever and making it appear far too big inside, demanding either a TARDIS-type dimensional control, an oscillating magnetic drive that causes hallucinations (even in the audience) or a lack of concern by Mr Anderson. Traditionally all flying saucer interiors are mysterious but as an engineer I had to design something definite, if somewhat cramped. The only physically possible place for a hatch would be under the lower disc which it lands on, but the UFOs usually land slightly tilted which might make enough space for an alien to crawl out from underneath. This seems crude but it is frequently implied that the aliens are stretching their technology to get to Earth in these tiny capsules. Many episodes hinge on the fact that coming in from deep space they follow almost ballistic trajectories & can only manage limited course corrections as they approach to land. There must be enough room inside for 2 aliens & at least 1 human abductee (in the first episode 2 aliens are shown abducting Captain Peter Carlin’s sister). The 16 exterior vanes suggest a 4-fold interior symmetry & my interior design assumes a 9m diam UFO, just big enough for a cabin with 4 vertical fluid filled acceleration tubes (2 pilots 2 abductees), standing room only. The underside is never seen clearly & I have assumed a single central round hatch to a short tunnel leading up through the centre of the lower non-spinning drive motor. In the cross-section spinning parts are depicted green, non-spinning blue. There are no ablutions or canteen. The green fluid provides not only oxygen but also some kind of high tech medical means of nutrition & waste elimination through systems built into the pilots’ red & silver suits. Each suit features a silvery backpack & this plugs into a socket connecting to support systems in the back of the acceleration tubes. There is a small services room above the cabin with tanks to store the displaced life-support fluid during planetfall.