When UFO (the Gerry Anderson show) was first shown in my neighborhood (Wisconsin, Green Bay channels, circa 1970) I SWEAR is was broadcast as a half hour show. I specifically remember this because when Space:1999 started and it was an hour, I noted that the producers must have had more clout or something and could now make a full hour show.
Some episodes were hard enough to understand as it is, but try to figure out what is going on in Timelash or* Mindbender* if you are missing half the episode!
Maybe the local channel made their own cut, and no other market had the half-off version. I’ve tried hunting down old TV Guide magazines, but it is difficult to find a specific issue to prove it one way or the other.
Anybody remember it that way, either in Green Bay or their own market? Or are my childhood memories totally wrong?
I dunno, I watched it sporadically in Atlanta, and whenever I saw that one lunar space babe with the huge eyes and forehead and even huger boobs AND the purple hair, I sort of blanked out.
I can’t speak for “UFO” (IMdB says the episodes are 45 minutes), but they did the same thing to “Night Gallery” many years ago; a 45 minute episode with Leslie Nielsen had about 20 mins cut and made not one whit of sense.
Hmmm. Was the show originally on the BBC or ITV in the UK? Cause one had commercials (ITV) and the other didn’t. Made showing their shows on commercial US channels (non-PBS or HBO etc.) tricky. They either had to run a ton of extra ads to fill an hour, edit the show heavily to fit ads into just the half hour, or possibly as you remember split a full 30-minute episode into two (again heavily commercial-laden) half-hour episodes.
No, I do remember them as half hour “full” episodes, but the eps are really 50 minutes.
Why I think my memories are correct: my dad an I used to watch it regularly, and we both commented on how “stupid” the episodes were, how hard it was to make sense out of them. They make sense now when I watch the DVD. They might not if too much was cut out.
Why my memories could be incorrect: who would go to the trouble of hacking out half an episode? The episodes probably didn’t make sense because a) I was too young, or b) British sci fi never makes sense (see: Space: 1999).
